Migrating to OpenClaw from another personal AI assistant

Migration migrationimportexporthistory OpenClaw Guide Editorial 📅 2026-09-03 ⏱ 5 min

How to import history, contacts and skills when moving to OpenClaw from ChatGPT, Claude, Notion AI, Replika or a previous self-hosted assistant.

Coming from ChatGPT, Claude, Notion AI, Replika or another self-hosted assistant? OpenClaw ships first-party importers for the most common cases. This guide walks through the import path for each, what gets carried over, and what intentionally does not.

Before you start

Have ready:

An export archive (or live account) from your previous assistant.
A working OpenClaw install — see Getting Started if you have not done this yet.
~30 minutes for a typical personal migration (longer for multi-year histories).

Migration is additive. OpenClaw never deletes anything from the previous service. You can run both in parallel for as long as you like and switch over whenever you feel ready.

From ChatGPT

ChatGPT lets you export your data from Settings → Data controls → Export data. The archive contains a conversations.json plus uploaded files.

openclaw migrate chatgpt --from ~/Downloads/chatgpt-export.zip

The importer:

Converts each conversation into an episodic memory session.
Extracts durable facts into semantic memory (only after you confirm the prompt).
Indexes file attachments as searchable text.

To skip the confirmation prompt (for scripted migrations):

openclaw migrate chatgpt --from ~/Downloads/chatgpt-export.zip --auto

Custom GPTs do not transfer automatically — you will need to recreate them as OpenClaw skills. The Skills tutorial walks through that.

From Claude

Use the claude.ai data export. You will receive an email with a download link within 24 hours.

openclaw migrate claude --from ~/Downloads/claude-export.zip

Projects and project-scoped knowledge transfer as a single namespace inside OpenClaw memory:

namespace: claude-project/

This keeps work done inside one Claude project isolated from your general memory.

From Notion AI

Notion exports as a zip of HTML and Markdown files. The importer walks the zip, infers which blocks were AI-generated and turns them into memory entries:

openclaw migrate notion --from ~/Downloads/notion-export.zip

By default it asks before importing each top-level page. Pass --auto to import everything.

From Replika or character.AI

These services do not offer a structured export. The community maintains a third-party importer:

openclaw migrate replika --from ./replika-export.json

Conversational companions can carry strong emotional context. Review the import before letting the assistant learn from it. The importer defaults to --review-each for this reason.

From another self-hosted assistant

If you are coming from a previous OpenClaw install (for example, you are moving to a new machine), the path is the same as a backup restore:

tar xzf openclaw-memory-2026-09-21.tgz -C ~
openclaw serve

If you are coming from a different self-hosted assistant such as Home Assistant + LLM, Open Interpreter or Aider, the migration scripts repository has maintained recipes for each.

What does not migrate

A few things are intentionally not imported:

Item	Why
Voice / video calls	Recordings are not portable across assistants.
Custom personality fine-tunes	Each assistant tunes its own system prompt.
Marketplace GPTs	Recreate as OpenClaw skills; the underlying APIs differ.
Subscription billing	Cancel the previous service manually to avoid double-charging.

Validating the migration

After the import, walk through three sanity checks:

Open the dashboard and search for a fact you know was in the export. Confirm it is in ~/.openclaw/memory.sqlite.
Open one of the old conversations in the dashboard. Confirm the session replay works.
Ask the assistant something that requires old context:

   what did we discuss about the kitchen renovation last March?

If the answer is wrong, fine-tune by deleting the bad fact and re-prompting:

openclaw memory delete

Next steps

Run memory through what was imported and prune anything you do not want the assistant to retain.
Add channels so the migrated history is reachable from your chat apps.
Read the security guide before installing any community skills on a freshly imported install.

OpenClaw Guide Editorial

Independently maintained walkthroughs and ecosystem notes for OpenClaw.

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