[Gareth321]

It was surprisingly difficult for me to understand the use case as well. Here is my best attempt at an elevator pitch:

At present your memories are proprietary data in whichever LLM you use. ChatGPT keeps all your conversations and output and data forever. What if you don't like GPT 5.2? What if you want to use other models as well? Or use the best model for the job? OpenClaw gives you that ability. Your memories and conversations are permanently stored wherever you choose. [Note: this doesn't mean your data isn't also being stored in whichever LLM you routed your queries through.]

Secondly, OpenClaw allows you to integrate with whichever services you like. Google, Microsoft, etc. ChatGPT locks you into whichever integrations they offer. You can give OpenClaw full systems access. It can monitor files, emails, network, etc. Obviously one should be very cautious of giving an autonomous algorithm full system access. We don't fully understand how they are motivated and work, and there are plenty of examples of unexpected outcomes.

Third, OpenClaw allows you to run your models as agents. Meaning perpetual and iterative. They can much better handle recurring tasks, monitor things, etc. In a sense, they're "alive" and can live however you program them. We already have examples of these agents creating an AI religion, an AI social network (which debated how to keep humans out using a human captcha), attempting to legally separate from their creators, and in one case called its owner on the phone, unprompted, just to say hi (https://www.fintechbrainfood.com/p/the-ai-that-called-its-hu...).

[corndoge]

> At present your memories are proprietary data in whichever LLM you use.

I store my "memories" in markdown on disk, accessible with RAG independent of which model i use or where inference runs. This is pretty common I think?

> What if you don't like GPT 5.2? What if you want to use other models as well? Or use the best model for the job? OpenClaw gives you that ability

I use primarily local models so I don't have this problem to begin with, but to my understanding openrouter provides that for people using cloud models. What does openclaw do specifically in this area?

> OpenClaw allows you to integrate with whichever services you like. Google, Microsoft, etc. ChatGPT locks you into whichever integrations they offer. You can give OpenClaw full systems access. It can monitor files, emails, network, etc.

Any frontend that supports tool calls can do this, what is unique to openclaw?

> Third, OpenClaw allows you to run your models as agents. Meaning perpetual and iterative. They can much better handle recurring tasks, monitor things, etc.

What does this actually mean? is there a cron job that runs an agent on a schedule or something?

I'm asking not to disagree but because i still do not understand what is novel in openclaw.

[mbrock]

If you stop trying to find something like truly ontologically novel about it, you might be able to understand what it actually is. Okay it's not impressive. It's not incredible. It's not groundbreaking new technology. It is what it is.

[DaedalusII]

i dont use clawbot or whatever its called today myself

it is basically the productisation of what you have described, which allows for social diffusion. buy mac mini, choco install {symbolic abstraction of corndoge entire local gpt/storage stack that I dont understand the mechanics or consequences of}

[catlifeonmars]

> We already have examples of these agents creating an AI religion, an AI social network (which debated how to keep humans out using a human captcha), attempting to legally separate from their creators

Didn’t these turn out to be fake and/or humans cosplaying as bots?

[an0malous]

It doesn’t even matter anymore. The hype is an unstoppable force

[slightwinder]

> At present your memories are proprietary data in whichever LLM you use.

There is an export-function.

> What if you want to use other models as well?

Then do that? Does one AI having chats with you, prevents you from using the other?

> Third, OpenClaw allows you to run your models as agents.

Don't they all allow that?

> We already have examples of these agents creating an AI religion

More like Humans playing bots, doing some shenanigans. That was all stage play, humans and bots role-playing what western culture expects to happen in such a scenario.

[root_axis]

> They can much better handle recurring tasks, monitor things, etc. In a sense, they're "alive" and can live however you program them. We already have examples of these agents creating an AI religion, an AI social network (which debated how to keep humans out using a human captcha), attempting to legally separate from their creators, and in one case called its owner on the phone, unprompted, just to say hi

Total nonsense.

[ceroxylon]

All of this, plus you can plug in an openrouter API key and test a plethora of models for all use cases. You can assign different models to different sub-agents, you can put it in /auto mode, and you can test the latest SOTA models the minute they're released...

It can also edit its own config files, monitor system processes, and even... check and harden its own system security. I still don't have it connected to my personal accounts, but as a standalone system it is very fun.

People ask me "what would I even do with it?", when I think of dozens of things every day. I've been working on modding an open source software synth, the patch files are XML so it was trivial to set up a workflow where I can add new knobs that combine multiple effects, add new ones, etc from just sending a it a message when I get inspired in the middle of the day.

A cron job scans my favorite sites twice a day and curates links based on my preferences, and creates a different list for things that are out of my normal interests to explore new areas.

I am amazed at how stubborn and un-creative people can be when presented with something like this... I thought we were hackers...?

[josteink]

> We already have examples of these agents creating an AI religion, an AI social network

That to me sound like a reason not to use this particular aspect of the AI hype.

We need to be better at controlling what AI does and how it does it, not giving it more leeway to do whatever it assumes makes sense.

[kurthr]

I hear all these words and try to imagine what useful tools could be written that didn't rapidly enshittify the commons where they were used, but all I see is a highly capable footgun.

I feel fairly sure that clever folks will come up with useful (not just interesting or funny) things to do with them, but I'm also fairly sure there will be a lot of missing feet.

[BiraIgnacio]

Oh thanks, this is a pretty good elevator pitch, now I see the connections I was missing.

[ai-christianson]

Gobii did always-on, connected to comms channels (sms, email), full computer/headed browser 8 months ago, in a much more secure and k8s-native way.

[Gareth321]

I agree it's pretty close, but it's proprietary, expensive, business focused, and more difficult to implement. It was never going to get the same consumer penetration of OpenClaw. Which is open sourced, almost no guardrails, easy to set up, and locally hosted.