Your AI Agent Just Got LinkedIn Superpowers: Meet the LinkdAPI OpenClaw Skill

I spent this morning asking my AI agent to find CTOs at Series B startups in Berlin.

Not by googling. Not by scrolling LinkedIn. Not by manually copying profile URLs.

I just... asked. In plain English. From WhatsApp.

Twenty seconds later, I had a list of names, companies, emails, recent job changes, and mutual connections.

This is what happens when you give OpenClaw access to professional data. And it's stupidly simple to set up.

What the Hell is OpenClaw? (And Why Everyone's Talking About It)

If you've been living under a rock for the past month: OpenClaw is the open-source AI agent that's been absolutely exploding.

The quick version:

• It's an AI assistant that runs locally on your computer
• You talk to it via WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack — whatever chat app you already use
• It doesn't just chat. It actually does things: clears your inbox, manages your calendar, writes code, automates workflows
• Created by Peter Steinberger in November 2025, now has 220k+ GitHub stars
• Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO) called it "one of the most important software breakthroughs of the current era"

Why it's different:

Most AI assistants are glorified chatbots. They answer questions. They write text. That's it.

OpenClaw is like having a really smart intern sitting at your computer 24/7. It can:

• Browse the web and fill out forms
• Read and write files
• Run terminal commands
• Connect to any API
• Remember everything across sessions
• Work while you sleep

And here's the kicker: you extend its capabilities by installing "skills" — kind of like apps for your AI agent.

ClawHub: The App Store for AI Agents

This is where it gets interesting.

OpenClaw by itself is powerful but generic. To make it useful for your specific work, you install skills from ClawHub — the official skill registry.

Think of it as:

• npm for AI agents
• The App Store, but for giving your AI new capabilities
• A massive library of 3,000+ community-built skills

How skills work:

Each skill is basically a markdown file that teaches OpenClaw how to do something specific:

• The GitHub skill teaches it to manage pull requests and issues
• The Google Workspace skill teaches it to read Gmail and manage your calendar
• The Obsidian skill teaches it to organize your notes
• The Slack skill teaches it to monitor channels and respond to messages

You install a skill with one command:

1clawhub install @username/skill-name

And boom — your AI agent now knows how to do that thing.

No code. No configuration. Just natural language instructions.

Introducing: The LinkdAPI OpenClaw Skill

We built a skill that gives OpenClaw full access to professional data — profiles, companies, jobs, posts, everything on LinkedIn.

What it does:

The LinkdAPI skill teaches your OpenClaw agent to:

• Find people by job title, company, location, skills
• Look up anyone's full professional profile
• Get contact information (emails, phones, social profiles)
• Search for companies and get employee lists
• Track job changes and career moves
• Analyze posts, articles, and engagement
• Find connections between people
• Search for jobs and see who's hiring

How it works:

You just talk to your AI agent like you would a human research assistant:

"Find me the VP of Engineering at Stripe"

"Who recently joined Y Combinator companies as a product manager?"

"Get me contact details for founders in the fintech space"

"Show me everyone who worked at both Google and Meta"

Your agent understands the question, figures out which LinkdAPI endpoints to call, retrieves the data, and gives you a clean answer.

No LinkedIn scraping. No proxies. No getting your account banned. Just clean, real-time professional data.

Real Examples: What You Can Actually Ask

Let me show you what this looks like in practice.

Example 1: Building a Lead List

You: "Find 20 CTOs at B2B SaaS companies in San Francisco with 50-200 employees"

Your OpenClaw agent:

1. Uses LinkdAPI's people search to find profiles matching those criteria
2. Fetches full profile data for each person
3. Gets their current company details
4. Pulls contact information
5. Returns a formatted list with names, companies, LinkedIn URLs, emails, and recent activity

Your next message: "Save that to a CSV and email it to me"

Your agent: Does it. Immediately.

Example 2: Research Before a Meeting

You: "I'm meeting with Sarah Chen tomorrow. She's the Head of Growth at Notion. Tell me about her background."

Your agent:

1. Searches LinkdAPI for "Sarah Chen" + "Notion" + "Growth"
2. Fetches her complete profile
3. Gets her full work history, education, skills
4. Checks her recent posts and articles
5. Finds mutual connections
6. Summarizes everything in a brief you can actually read

Output:

1Sarah Chen - Head of Growth at Notion
2
3Background:
4- Previously: Growth Lead at Figma (2 years)
5- Before that: PM at Stripe (3 years)
6- Education: Stanford CS 2015
7
8Recent activity:
9- Posted about PLG strategies 3 days ago (high engagement)
10- Speaking at SaaStr Annual next month
11- Recently promoted from Senior Growth Lead
12
13Mutual connections:
14- You both know Alex Wang (CEO at Scale AI)
15- Common: Stanford CS network
16
17LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sarahchen-growth

All of that took 10 seconds.

Example 3: Competitive Intelligence

You: "Who left Anthropic in the past 3 months and where did they go?"

Your agent:

• Searches for people who previously worked at Anthropic
• Filters for recent job changes
• Maps out where they went
• Identifies patterns (are they all going to the same competitor?)

This is the kind of research that used to take hours of manual LinkedIn stalking.

Example 4: Finding the Right Person to Talk To

You: "I need to talk to someone who can make procurement decisions for developer tools at Airbnb. Who should I reach out to?"

Your agent:

1. Looks up Airbnb on LinkdAPI
2. Gets the company structure and employee list
3. Identifies people in Engineering Leadership, DevTools, Infrastructure
4. Checks their seniority and responsibilities
5. Gets contact info for the top 3 candidates

You get back:

1Best contacts for developer tools at Airbnb:
2
31. David Liu - VP Engineering
4   - Oversees infrastructure and tooling
5   - Previously built dev tools at Google
6   - Email: d***@airbnb.com
7   - LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidliu-eng
8
92. Priya Sharma - Director of Developer Experience
10   - Direct ownership of developer tools
11   - Active in dev tools community
12   - Email: p***@airbnb.com
13
143. [...]

Example 5: Keeping Track of Your Network

You: "Set up a weekly alert for when anyone in my network changes jobs"

Your agent:

• Connects to your CRM or contact list
• Pulls LinkedIn profiles for everyone
• Monitors for job changes using LinkdAPI
• Sends you a Slack message every Monday with updates

You'll never miss when a contact moves to a new company (perfect timing for outreach).

Example 6: Content Research

You: "Find the top 10 posts about AI engineering from the past week. Show me who wrote them and what companies they work at."

Your agent:

1. Searches LinkdAPI for recent posts about "AI engineering"
2. Ranks by engagement (likes, comments, reshares)
3. Gets author profiles
4. Pulls company info
5. Summarizes the key insights from each post

Perfect for staying on top of industry conversations.

The Questions You Can Ask (Complete List)

Here's a non-exhaustive list of things you can now ask your OpenClaw agent:

People Search & Discovery

• "Find software engineers in NYC who used to work at FAANG companies"
• "Who are the top AI researchers at DeepMind?"
• "Show me product managers with experience in fintech and crypto"
• "Find all YC founders from the W24 batch"
• "Who recently got promoted to VP at enterprise SaaS companies?"

Profile Research

• "Tell me everything about Elon Musk's professional background"
• "What skills does [person] have endorsed on LinkedIn?"
• "Show me [person]'s full work history with dates"
• "What certifications does [person] have?"
• "Get me [person]'s education background"

Contact Information

• "Find email addresses for CTOs at Series A startups"
• "Get me contact info for [person]"
• "What's [person]'s phone number?"
• "Find [person]'s Twitter and GitHub profiles"

Company Intelligence

• "How many employees does Stripe have?"
• "Who are the executives at Notion?"
• "Find all companies in SF working on AI infrastructure"
• "What's the company description for Anthropic?"
• "Show me Airbnb's recent job postings"

Job Market Research

• "What are the latest ML Engineer jobs at top AI companies?"
• "Find remote product manager positions at startups"
• "Show me engineering roles in Berlin paying €100k+"
• "What companies are hiring for [specific role]?"

Relationship Mapping

• "Who do I know that worked with [person]?"
• "Find mutual connections between me and [person]"
• "Show me everyone who worked at both Amazon and Microsoft"
• "Map out the network around [person]"

Content & Engagement

• "What has [person] posted about recently?"
• "Show me [person]'s most popular posts from this year"
• "Find articles written by [person]"
• "What are people saying about [topic] on LinkedIn?"
• "Who's engaging with [company]'s posts?"

Monitoring & Alerts

• "Alert me when anyone at [company] changes jobs"
• "Let me know when [person] posts something"
• "Monitor for new hires at [company]"
• "Track when people join [specific industry]"

Data Enrichment

• "Take this CSV of names and add their current companies"
• "Enrich my CRM contacts with LinkedIn data"
• "Update this spreadsheet with email addresses"
• "Add job titles to this list of people"

How to Install the LinkdAPI Skill

Ready to give your AI agent professional data superpowers? Here's how:

Step 1: Install OpenClaw

If you haven't already, set up OpenClaw:

1. Visit openclaw.ai
2. Follow the installation guide for your OS
3. Connect it to your preferred chat app (WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, etc.)
4. Connect it to Claude, GPT, or your LLM of choice

Step 2: Get Your LinkdAPI Key

1. Sign up at linkdapi.com/signup
2. You get 100 free credits to start (no credit card required)
3. Grab your API key from the dashboard

Step 3: Install the LinkdAPI Skill

From your terminal:

1# Install the ClawHub CLI if you haven't
2npm install -g clawhub
3
4# Install the LinkdAPI skill
5clawhub install ethcipher/linkdapi-official

Or visit the skill page: clawhub.ai/ethcipher/linkdapi-official

Step 4: Configure Your API Key

Set your LinkdAPI key as an environment variable:

1export LINKDAPI_KEY="your_api_key_here"

Or add it to your OpenClaw config file (~/.openclaw/config.toml):

1[env]
2LINKDAPI_KEY = "your_api_key_here"

Step 5: Start Using It

That's it. Just start chatting with your agent:

"Hey, find me the CTO of Vercel"

"Who recently joined Anthropic as a researcher?"

"Get me contact info for the head of sales at Salesforce"

Your agent now knows exactly how to handle these requests.

What Makes This Different from LinkedIn Scraping

I know what you're thinking: "Can't I just scrape LinkedIn?"

Technically, yes. Practically, no. Here's why:

LinkedIn Scraping = Painful

The traditional approach:

1. Build a scraper
2. Deal with proxies and rotating IPs