Connecting OpenClaw with Confluence: A Practical Guide | Cody

Confluence is the wiki backbone for many engineering and product teams. Connecting it to OpenClaw means your Slack bot can surface documentation, ADRs, and meeting notes on demand. Here's how to do it.

How OpenClaw Integrations Work

OpenClaw is a self-hosted AI assistant that runs on your own server — typically an EC2 instance — and connects to Slack. It uses Claude under the hood to process requests. Out of the box, OpenClaw doesn't ship with pre-built connections to third-party tools. Instead, integrations are built using the skills system: markdown files in ~/.openclaw/skills/ that give Claude instructions for a particular domain, combined with HTTP tool calls to any API you expose to it.

In practice, adding a real integration means: getting API credentials from the third-party service, building or configuring a small proxy/endpoint that OpenClaw can call, and writing a skill file that tells Claude how to use it. For some tools this is an afternoon of work. For others — like Confluence — it's considerably more involved.

Connecting OpenClaw with Confluence: Step by Step

Step 1: Get Your Atlassian API Token

Same token as Jira if you're on Atlassian Cloud — go to id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens. The Confluence Cloud REST API base is https://yourcompany.atlassian.net/wiki/rest/api.

Step 2: Use the Content Search Endpoint

The key endpoint is /rest/api/content/search?cql=... which uses Confluence Query Language (CQL) — similar to JQL. You can search by space, label, title, and content type. Build your proxy around this and a content retrieval endpoint to fetch the full body of matched pages.

Step 3: Write the Skill File

Document your Confluence spaces and common search patterns in ~/.openclaw/skills/confluence.md. Tell Claude your space keys (e.g., ENG, HR, PROD) so it can scope searches appropriately.

Challenges and Caveats

Content Is Returned as Atlassian Document Format

Confluence pages are returned in Atlassian Document Format (ADF) — a JSON schema, not plain text. Your proxy needs to convert ADF to readable text before passing it to Claude. Atlassian provides libraries for this, but it's an extra step.

CQL Has Its Own Learning Curve

Confluence Query Language is powerful but quirky. Claude can generate CQL queries, but they're not always syntactically correct. Expect to iterate on the skill file to get reliable query generation.

Skip All of This — Use Cody Instead

Cody has Confluence integration built in. Ask your Slack bot to find any page in your wiki — no CQL, no ADF conversion, no setup.

Get started with Cody →

Related Guides

Need the model-flexible version? See: How to Connect Confluence to OpenClaw: Setup, Models, and Workflow Guide.