---
title: "How to set up an AI agent: five step-by-step guides · AgentDots"
description: "Setup guides for Claude, Dots, Gemini Spark, Muse and OpenClaw: what to have ready, each step in order, a safe first week and the mistakes worth avoiding."
url: https://agentdots.org/setup/
lang: en
---

Set-up

# How to set up an AI agent: five step-by-step guides

Five agents, one sensible order: secure access, connect the minimum, write the rules down, and make the first tasks ones that cannot do harm.

Much of the trouble people report in their first week with an agent comes from doing things in the wrong order: connecting everything, then writing rules after something has already gone out. Each guide here runs the other way round. You confirm that your plan and country qualify, grant as little access as possible, write down what the agent may do alone, and only then hand it a task that reads rather than acts. Setup takes from about five minutes for Muse to half an hour for OpenClaw.

about 10 minutes · 5 steps

## [How to set up Dots in ChatGPT: a step-by-step guide](https://agentdots.org/setup/dots/)

Making a Dot takes about ten minutes, and deciding what it may do without asking deserves far more thought than choosing its colour.

about 5 minutes · 5 steps

## [How to set up Muse: app, WhatsApp and boundaries](https://agentdots.org/setup/muse/)

Muse is up and running within minutes, which is exactly why your boundaries message should go out before its first errand does.

about 10 minutes · 5 steps

## [Gemini Spark setup guide: apps, tasks and triggers](https://agentdots.org/setup/gemini-spark/)

Spark arrives already knowing your Google account, so setting it up is mostly a matter of subtraction: fewer apps, fewer tasks, closer watching.

about 10 minutes · 5 steps

## [How to set up Claude as a personal agent](https://agentdots.org/setup/claude/)

Claude has no agent switch to find: on Pro and Max it judges for itself when a message calls for a longer job, so setup is about what it can reach.

about 30 minutes · 7 steps

## [How to install OpenClaw: setup guide with Telegram](https://agentdots.org/setup/openclaw/)

Allow about half an hour to go from a bare machine to a self-hosted agent that answers in Telegram and follows rules you wrote yourself.