OpenClaw

About

OpenClaw is an open-source personal AI assistant that runs on your own computer and talks to you through the messaging apps you already use: WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage, Slack, Discord, Signal, Teams and more than twenty others. You give it access to things like your inbox, calendar and files, and it can actually carry out tasks rather than just chat. It suits tinkerers and power users who want an always-on assistant they control, and small teams who want a shared one. OpenClaw began life as Clawdbot, a side project by Peter Steinberger, the founder of PSPDFKit, briefly became Moltbot, and turned into one of the most talked-about open-source projects of 2026, with hundreds of thousands of GitHub stars. It is also a flagship example of agent-built software: Steinberger has said openly that he wrote it by directing AI coding agents, mostly Codex and earlier Claude Code, and that he ships code he does not read line by line. When he joined OpenAI in February 2026, the project moved to the independent OpenClaw Foundation, a 501(c)(3) that now employs the core team. Highlights: • Connects to WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, iMessage, Signal and other chat apps • A local Gateway keeps state, memory and credentials on your own hardware • Swappable model providers, including Claude, Codex and local models • Tools, skills and plugins, with a community skill hub called ClawHub • Companion apps for macOS, iOS, Android, Windows and Linux add voice, camera and screen actions • Control UI, terminal UI and CLI for managing sessions • Minimal telemetry by default, with opt-in statistics and an off switch OpenClaw is free and open source under the MIT license, with no paid tier, hosted service or token. You pay only for whichever model provider you connect, or nothing if you run local models. It installs on macOS, Linux and Windows (via script or npm), with companion apps for iOS and Android.

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