Smithers Onboarding Interview

When a new user logs in to Pinchy for the first time, they are greeted by Smithers — their personal AI assistant. Smithers kicks off a short onboarding interview to learn about the user, so that every agent on the platform can give better, more relevant answers.

What is Smithers?

Smithers is the personal assistant that every Pinchy user gets automatically. Each user has their own Smithers instance with its own conversation history and context. Think of Smithers as an executive assistant — warm, professional, and eager to help.

Smithers is created the first time a user logs in, pre-configured with the “Butler” personality preset.

The onboarding interview

The first time you open Smithers, he starts a short conversational interview. This is not a form — Smithers asks questions naturally, one or two at a time, and builds on your answers.

What Smithers asks

Smithers gathers three key details:

1. Role and responsibilities — What you do and what you work on, so agents can pitch answers at the right level.
2. Preferred language — Smithers pays attention to the language you write in and remembers it.
3. Communication style — Whether you prefer brief and direct answers or detailed explanations.

The conversation is flexible. If you want to ask Smithers something else mid-interview, he will help you first and then steer back to the onboarding.

Admin vs. regular user onboarding

Regular users go through the personal onboarding described above. Admins get an additional step: after saving the personal context, Smithers asks about the organization.

The organization questions cover:

• Company name and what the company does
• Team structure
• Domain-specific terminology and conventions

This organization context is applied to all shared agents on the platform, so every team member benefits from it.

Tip

Regular users only have save_user_context available. Admins also get save_org_context, which is why only admins are asked about the organization.

How context is saved

Smithers uses the pinchy-context plugin to save context through two tools:

• save_user_context — Saves a Markdown-formatted summary of the user’s personal context (role, preferences, work style). Available to all users during onboarding.
• save_org_context — Saves a Markdown-formatted summary of the organization context (company info, team structure, conventions). Available to admins only.

When Smithers calls these tools, the context is stored in the database and written to the agent workspace. Once both the personal context (and organization context for admins) are saved, the onboarding instructions are removed from Smithers’ prompt automatically, and future conversations proceed without the onboarding flow.

Note

The onboarding prompt is written to USER.md in the agent’s workspace. OpenClaw reads this file as part of the system prompt. Once onboarding completes, the file is replaced with the saved context and the ONBOARDING.md file is deleted.

Editing context later

After onboarding, you can review and edit your context at any time:

1. Go to Settings → Context.
2. Personal context is shown for all users — edit your role, preferences, or communication style.
3. Organization context is shown for admins — edit company info, team structure, or terminology.

Changes to context are picked up by agents on the next conversation.

Summary

Step	Who	What happens
First login	All users	Smithers greets you and starts the onboarding interview
Personal context	All users	Smithers asks about your role, language, and communication style, then saves it via save_user_context
Organization context	Admins only	Smithers asks about the company and saves it via save_org_context
Onboarding complete	All users	Onboarding instructions are removed; Smithers behaves as a regular assistant going forward
Edit later	All users	Go to Settings → Context to update your context at any time