What is OpenClaw? The Open-Source AI Assistant Explained

Getting Started · 8 min read

What is OpenClaw? Everything You Need to Know

Last updated: February 2026 · Reading time: 9 minutes

You've probably seen OpenClaw mentioned on Twitter, Reddit, or Hacker News. Maybe a friend told you about it. Maybe you stumbled across the GitHub repo and its 190,000+ stars. Whatever brought you here, the question is the same: what actually is this thing?

The short version: OpenClaw is a personal AI assistant that you run yourself. It lives inside WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, or whatever messaging app you already use. You text it like you'd text a friend, and it handles things — emails, scheduling, reminders, research, web browsing, even controlling your smart home.

The longer version is more interesting.

How It's Different from ChatGPT or Claude

You might be wondering why anyone would bother setting up their own assistant when ChatGPT and Claude already exist. Fair question.

ChatGPT and Claude are chatbots that live on a website. You open a browser tab, type something, get a response. They're powerful, but they're passive. They wait for you to come to them, and they can't do anything outside that browser window.

OpenClaw flips that model. Instead of going to an AI, the AI comes to you — wherever you already are. It sends you a WhatsApp message at 8am with a summary of your unread emails. It reminds you on Telegram that you have a meeting in 15 minutes. You text it "book me a table at that Italian place for Saturday" and it browses the restaurant's website and figures it out.

The key differences:

It meets you where you are. No new app to install, no website to bookmark. If you use WhatsApp, your assistant lives in WhatsApp. If you use Slack at work, it's there too. It works across 14 different messaging platforms simultaneously.

It can actually do things. Not just answer questions — but browse websites, run code, manage files, send messages, trigger automations, and interact with other services. ChatGPT can tell you about a website. OpenClaw can go to that website, extract the information, and send it to you on Telegram.

It remembers everything. Your conversations persist across sessions. Tell it your preferences once — "I like window seats on flights" or "always CC my business partner on client emails" — and it remembers. Commercial chatbots reset or have limited memory.

Your data stays with you. OpenClaw runs on your own hardware. Your conversations, your files, your API keys — none of it passes through someone else's servers. For anyone who cares about privacy, this is a big deal.

It runs 24/7. Set it up on a small server and it's always on, always watching for triggers, always ready to respond. It doesn't need a browser tab open.

What Can It Actually Do?

The feature list is broad, but here's what most people actually use it for day-to-day.

Email Management

Connect your Gmail and OpenClaw reads your inbox for you. It can summarize unread messages, draft replies, flag things that need attention, and ignore the noise. Some users set up a morning routine: every day at 7am, the assistant sends a WhatsApp message with the three emails you actually need to deal with.

Calendar and Reminders

Tell it "remind me to call the accountant on Thursday at 2pm" and it does. It reads your Google Calendar, creates events, and warns you about conflicts. The reminders come through whatever channel you're chatting on — WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack — not some notification you'll swipe away.

Web Browsing and Research

OpenClaw can control a real browser. Ask it to check flight prices, look up a restaurant's hours, read a news article and summarize it, or monitor a product page for price drops. It navigates the web the way you would, just faster and without the tab clutter.

Task Tracking

It works as a running to-do list that talks back. "Add buy groceries to my list" works, but so does "what was that thing I asked you to remind me about last Tuesday?" It maintains context across conversations, so it can actually answer that.

Smart Home Control

If you run Home Assistant or a similar setup, OpenClaw can control your devices through natural language. "Turn off the living room lights" or "set the thermostat to 22 degrees" over WhatsApp. Some people find this more convenient than dedicated smart home apps.

Automation and Cron Jobs

This is where it gets powerful for technical users. You can schedule recurring tasks — daily email summaries, weekly report generation, monitoring dashboards — and OpenClaw runs them automatically. Webhooks let you trigger actions from external services too.

Who Built It?

OpenClaw was created by Peter Steinberger, an Austrian developer well known in the Apple and open-source communities. He built it as a personal project — an AI assistant for himself — and open-sourced it in late 2024.

It grew fast. The GitHub repository has over 190,000 stars as of early 2026, making it one of the most popular open-source AI projects in the world. Thousands of contributors have added features, and a vibrant community has formed on Discord.

The project mascot is a lobster named Molty, which explains the crustacean branding and the catchphrase "EXFOLIATE! EXFOLIATE!" that you'll see in the documentation.

The software is licensed under MIT, meaning it's completely free to use, modify, and distribute. There's no company behind it trying to upsell you. No premium tier. No "free version with limitations." You get the full product.

How Does It Work (Non-Technical Explanation)

Think of OpenClaw as three layers working together.

The brain — This is Claude (by Anthropic) or GPT (by OpenAI). It's the AI model that understands your messages, reasons about what to do, and generates responses. OpenClaw doesn't have its own AI — it connects to these existing models through their APIs.

The body — This is the OpenClaw Gateway, a program that runs on your computer or server. It receives your messages from WhatsApp/Telegram/etc., sends them to the AI brain, gets a response, and sends it back to you. It also manages tools like the web browser, file system, and calendar connections.

The channels — These are the messaging platforms where you actually talk to your assistant. WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Signal, iMessage, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, and more. The gateway connects to all of them and routes messages to and from the AI brain.

When you send "What's on my calendar today?" on WhatsApp:

  1. WhatsApp delivers the message to the OpenClaw Gateway
  2. The Gateway sends it to Claude (or GPT) along with your conversation history and available tools
  3. Claude decides to use the calendar tool to check your schedule
  4. The Gateway executes the tool and sends the results back to Claude
  5. Claude writes a natural response summarizing your day
  6. The Gateway sends that response back to you on WhatsApp

The entire round trip takes 2–5 seconds for most messages.

How Does It Work (Technical Explanation)

For the developers and tinkerers in the room.

OpenClaw is a Node.js application (requires Node 22+) that runs a WebSocket-based gateway as its control plane. The gateway manages sessions, channels, tools, and events through a single WebSocket connection at ws://127.0.0.1:18789.

Architecture:

The gateway is the hub. Messaging channels (WhatsApp via Baileys, Telegram via grammY, Slack via Bolt, Discord via discord.js, etc.) connect to it as channel adapters. The AI agent runtime uses RPC to communicate with the model provider. Tools — browser (CDP-based Chromium control), canvas (A2UI visual workspace), cron, webhooks — are registered with the gateway and invoked by the agent as needed.

Multi-agent routing: You can run multiple isolated agents, each with their own workspace, session, and channel assignments. Inbound messages are routed to the correct agent based on channel, account, or peer.

Security model: The main session runs tools on the host by default. Non-main sessions (groups, channels) can be sandboxed in per-session Docker containers where bash and other tools run isolated. DM pairing is on by default — unknown senders get a pairing code instead of a response.

Skills system: Extensible through workspace skills (~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/) and a public registry (ClawHub). Skills are essentially prompt injections with tool definitions that extend the agent's capabilities.

Configuration: Single JSON file at ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json. The openclaw onboard wizard generates this interactively. Model failover, session pruning, retry policies, and streaming/chunking are all configurable.

What Does It Cost?

OpenClaw itself is free. Always has been, always will be (it's MIT licensed).

Running it costs a small amount because you need two things: access to an AI model and a computer to run the gateway on.

AI model costs depend on which model you choose and how much you use it. Claude Sonnet 4.5 — the recommended default — costs most people $3–15/month. The cheapest option (Claude Haiku) can run under $1/month for light use.

Server hosting is optional if you run it on your own computer, or $4–12/month for a small cloud server that keeps your assistant running 24/7.

Total for most people: $5–25/month. Comparable to a Netflix subscription, less than a ChatGPT Plus subscription, and a fraction of what a human virtual assistant costs.

→ Full cost breakdown with real monthly budgets

Is It Hard to Set Up?

It depends on your comfort with technology.

If you've used a terminal before — it takes about 30 minutes. Install Node.js, install OpenClaw, run the onboarding wizard, connect a messaging channel. The wizard handles most of the complexity for you.

If you've never opened a terminal — it's a stretch, but people do it. The community has written guides aimed at complete beginners, and the onboarding wizard is genuinely helpful. Expect to spend an hour or two, including some Googling.

If you want to skip the technical setup entirely — DigitalOcean offers a 1-click deployment in their marketplace. You click a button, wait two minutes, and SSH in to run the onboard wizard. It removes the hardest parts of the process.

→ Follow our beginner-friendly setup guide

Is It Safe?

Two angles to this question.

Privacy: Your data stays on your machine. Conversations, files, and credentials are stored locally — nothing goes through OpenClaw's servers (there are no OpenClaw servers). The only external service your data touches is the AI model provider (Anthropic or OpenAI), which is necessary for the AI to function.

Security: OpenClaw connects to real messaging platforms and can execute tools on your machine. The project takes this seriously. DM pairing prevents strangers from talking to your bot. Allowlists restrict which contacts and groups have access. Non-main sessions can be sandboxed in Docker containers. The built-in openclaw doctor command checks your configuration for security issues.

That said, you are running an AI agent with access to tools on your server. If you misconfigure permissions or disable safety features, there's real risk. Follow the security defaults and you'll be fine. Don't expose your gateway to the public internet without authentication.

→ Read more about OpenClaw security

How Popular Is It?

Very. As of early 2026, OpenClaw has over 190,000 stars on GitHub, making it one of the most starred AI projects ever. It has over 1.2 million downloads and a Discord community of thousands.

The growth has been explosive — most of those stars came in the second half of 2025 when the project went viral on tech social media. It's frequently compared to (and often preferred over) commercial alternatives from well-funded startups.

The community is active and welcoming. If you get stuck, the Discord server is the best place to ask for help.

How Do I Get Started?

Three paths depending on your situation.

Fastest path (no technical setup): Use DigitalOcean's 1-click marketplace deployment. New accounts get $200 in free credit, which covers months of hosting. Get $200 free credit →

Standard path (30 minutes): Follow our step-by-step setup guide. It covers everything from installing Node.js to sending your first message.

Docker path (for the technical crowd): Run OpenClaw in a Docker container on a cloud server. Cleaner, more portable, easier to update. Read the Docker guide →

Whichever path you choose, you'll have your own AI assistant responding on WhatsApp or Telegram within the hour.

Want to understand the costs before committing? See our full cost breakdown. Need help picking a server? Read our hosting comparison.