Ask HN: Is OpenClaw a groundbreaking feat, a highly useful product or both?

[chirau]

I am not trying to shit on it. I am just curious whether the code and approach itself was something a lot of people have previously tried and failed, like genome sequencing or the hypothetical Weissman score from HBO's Silicon Valley, or it is more of just a highly relevant product/utility that is not necessarily super complex, like Twitter when it came out or Vine, TikTok etc.

[Sevii]

LLMs are continuously improving. So something that didn't work a year ago became possible in November. If you tried to build Openclaw in 2024 it wouldn't have worked. Openclaw isn't groundbreaking, but it is extremely on the edge of the LLM capability curve.

[pearlos]

Probably both. The concepts themselves don’t seem entirely new, but execution and timing matter a lot. Sometimes the real breakthrough isn’t the idea itself, but when the surrounding ecosystem finally makes it viable.

[theredbeard]

It’s not groundbreaking in a technological sense. The codebase is actually a bit of a monstrosity. But it removed guardrails that were artificially put on these LLMs which suddenly gave it an entire new dimension and the timing was right.

[verdverm]

it's a small and well done bit of engineering and ux

not groundbreaking, not the first take on how to do this, not the last, simply a step in progress

where OpenClaw is, is not ready for enterprise, that product more than likely requires major rewrites and feature progress

[alonsovm]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47028623 check out my project

[alonsovm]

what is OpenClaw and why there is so much fuzz right now?

[stop50]

Its an software that connects an chat with an chatbot with an terminal on your computer: An huge risk of loosing data and/or loosing money