---
title: "Politiclaw: Building a Local-First Political Co-Pilot With Openclaw at Minnebar (2026)"
source: "/speaks/politiclaw-building-a-local-first-political-minnebar-may-2026/"
---

Speech

# Politiclaw: Building a Local-First Political Co-Pilot With Openclaw

Alec Rippberger

May 2, 2026

## About the talk

OpenClaw is an open-source agent framework. It moves the AI paradigm from "chatbot" to something that runs in the background, remembers what you've told it, and acts on a schedule. It also has a plugin ecosystem, allowing you to expand base functionality or build your own tools.

I'll start with a quick tour of OpenClaw for folks who haven't seen it: gateway, tools, skills, cron, memory. Then the plugin SDK: What definePluginEntry actually does; How to register tools the agent can call; How to ship skills as Markdown files a user can override without touching your code.

Then PolitiClaw: an OpenClaw plugin I've been working on. It watches federal legislation, scores reps against stances a user has declared, and drafts outreach letters that can be pasted into an email client.

No OpenClaw experience needed. A little TypeScript helps but isn't required.

## Presented by

Alec Rippberger

Software Engineer

[More from Alec](/team/alec-rippberger/)

Alec Rippberger

## About Livefront

Livefront builds intelligent products, platforms, and agents for the world's most admired companies. Partner with us to move faster, think bigger, and drive material business outcomes with AI.

### Tags

[AI & Automation](/insights/all/?topic=ai-automation) [AI Agents](/insights/all/?topic=ai-agents)

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