How do I customize skills without keeping the repo dirty

Use managed overrides instead of editing the repo copy. Put your changes in ~/.openclaw/skills/<name>/SKILL.md (or add a folder via skills.load.extraDirs in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json). Precedence is <workspace>/skills > ~/.openclaw/skills > bundled, so managed overrides win without touching git. Only upstream-worthy edits should live in the repo and go out as PRs.