Your First Bot

A realistic walkthrough: build a support bot that drafts replies and waits for approval.

Let's build something useful instead of a hello-world. We'll make a customer support bot that watches an inbox, drafts replies to incoming questions, and waits for a human to approve before sending. End to end. No skipped steps.

1. Create the bot

Bots → New Bot. Name it support-assistant. Pick Anthropic as the provider. Save and open it.

2. Open the builder

Hit Edit blueprint. You'll see an empty canvas.

Drop these blocks onto it from the palette:

  1. A trigger node, set to "New email in Gmail"
  2. A Gmail skill node configured to read the message
  3. A reasoning step with the prompt "Draft a reply that addresses the customer's question. Be concise and friendly."
  4. An approval gate that waits for a human to review
  5. A Gmail skill node set to send the drafted reply

Connect them top to bottom. Save.

3. Authorize Gmail

In the right panel, click each Gmail node. The first time you'll be prompted to authorize. ShipClaw uses Composio for OAuth, so you authorize once per workspace and the bot inherits the connection.

4. Deploy

Click Deploy. The wizard walks you through five steps. Stick with the defaults for runtime and skills. On the channels step, enable API. Skip automations. Review and ship.

When it's done you'll see a green badge and a URL.

5. Try it

Open the Chat tab. The test panel lets you simulate an incoming email. Send a fake question. The bot should:

  • Read the email through the Gmail skill
  • Draft a reply
  • Pause at the approval gate (you'll see this in the Inbox)

Open the Inbox, find the pending approval, click approve. The bot sends the reply.

What you actually built

Not a toy. The same blueprint, deployed to 100 different customers, gives each one their own isolated runtime. Their own Gmail connection, their own state, their own logs. One blueprint, one hundred clean separations.

Where to go from here

  • Add more skills. The Skills catalog has 1000+ options.
  • Set up Automations to trigger this bot on a schedule.
  • Configure Channels so the bot talks to Slack or a web widget too.