Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

news.ycombinator.com

181–190 of 428 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#181

Tried it for a few weeks, was really buggy and unpredictable. Kudos for the concept though, I ended up rolling my own agentic system with Claude Code from scratch that works much more reliably for my use cases.

Yep. I had posted a comment earlier detailing my usecases. But I too replaced that with my own system that does those same things. It's way too bloaty, felt like operating windows start menu search. But you might have missed so far some of the ideas they have. So it's useful to try it out, see what combination of features you use in particular and then just set those up for yourself with claude code or whatever as th…

Definitely worth following for ideas.

How did you solve memory in your system?

I ended up using QMD + custom skills to keep it up to date as new data comes in. Essentially a cross-referenced set of markdown files forming a knowledge base: https://github.com/tobi/qmd

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#182
post #153
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 is just Siri/Google Assistant with extra steps (and expense). #2 could be a scheduled task (cron job or something higher level) that calls a plain old AI provider API. IIRC most providers can even do those natively now.

Your comment reminds me of the FTP/Dropbox one.

That would be valid if setting up a scheduled AI task actually took any technical knowledge, but it doesn’t. ChatGPT lets you schedule tasks natively in the UI, and I assume others do as well.

(And OpenClaw is hardly nontechnical!)

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#183
I still try to figure out how to use it to its full potential.

I mainly run it through github-copilot/claude-sonnet-4.6 using GitHub Copilot Pro + at 39$/month

Task management: My entire todo system runs through GitHub Issues. I just tell it things like "mark that done" or "add a task for X" in Slack and it handles the gh CLI calls. Sounds trivial but removing the friction of opening a browser actually changed how consistently I maintain my list.

Morning/EOD briefings: Cron jobs post a structured summary to Slack every morning and evening — calendar, open GitHub issues, important emails. It pushes a RSS feed of my tasks that I can view on a widget on my phone.

Server management agent: I have a different agent which acts as the server admin. It runs Jellyfin, a few *arr apps, AdGuard, mealie, etc. I don't touch config files or docker compose manually anymore. I just describe what I want changed. I have it run its own security audits frequently.

I also have a personnal coach agent which tracks my weight, my weekly exercices using gcal and creates meal plans which gets pushed to mealie so I can know what to buy for grocery and what to cook.

Literature reviews: I describe a research question and it runs a full pipeline — searches Semantic Scholar + Google Scholar, creates a Zotero collection with clean metadata, then tries to fetch PDFs through 9 different strategies (institutional repos, arXiv, Unpaywall, EZproxy with my university credentials, etc.). Gets about 60-65% PDF coverage automatically.

I have a personal shopper agent called Betty which role is to get out there and find deals about stuff I want to buy.

I also use it to run data pipelines for research project. It's instructed to use opencode with openai/gpt-5.4 for coding with beads and gastown.

I still have to figure out how to manage model switching efficiently. I'm not there yet.

It's the first AI setup that genuinely changed how I work rather than just being a fancy search engine.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#184
Think about what you would want an assistant to do. You can teach it do basic tasks using any available API, but then you can give it feedback so it improves.

For example my agent can control home automation via Home Assistant or any other API. My agent contributes to websites and open source projects. When you give it feedback it updates its skill files.

It checks and answers email, can receive and place phone calls, and do general research and monitoring online. I was even playing around with it to create music. The list of things to try is limitless.

I think just like LLMs, people get discouraged when it doesnt one-shot a problem. This technology thrives on feedback. It will make mistakes, your job is to make sure it learns from those mistakes so it doesnt repeat them.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used it very similarly to you, but found it to be about $3.50 per day, or $100 a month. It wasn't worth that.

Couldn't you use it with a Codex subscription? Plus is $20 per month

I think the claude EULA has now explicitly banned this use https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/907074/a...

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#186
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on a framework since the end of January or so. I'm on my 7th draft. As I've gone along, each draft gets markedly smaller. The overlaps between what I'm building and openclaw are significant, but I've realized the elements that make up the system are distinct, small, and modular (by design). There are only a few primitives: 1. session history 1a. context map + rendered context map (think of a drive p…

Wow, looks like you've put a lot of thought into this! I skimmed the breakdown, and you've inspired me try something along these lines... Thank You For Making And Sharing :)

Please do! My goal with this project has been to build something that helps other people, so if I've inspired you to build, all the better!

Is there a place you share this kind of stuff? I'd love to follow along.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#187
post #41

I’m a professional maintenance gardener and I have used NanoClaw running on my Mac to do the following: Schedule jobs on my job management tool (I vibed it) using a custom MCP. I’ll ask it questions like “what jobs are on today” etc. start the job, complete the job etc. It will watch Gmail using a MCP for work orders from local real estate agents, where it will schedule quote visits. After the quote visit I add the p…

Great use-case!

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#188
post #184

Think about what you would want an assistant to do. You can teach it do basic tasks using any available API, but then you can give it feedback so it improves. For example my agent can control home automation via Home Assistant or any other API. My agent contributes to websites and open source projects. When you give it feedback it updates its skill files. It checks and answers email, can receive and place phone calls…

I hope none of your accounts are associated with that email address that can be read by an LLM that has access to untrusted input.

OpenClaw lives right in the prompt injection lethal trifecta.

The idea of an OpenClaw instance having the ability to reset passwords on your accounts sounds sketchy as shit to me.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you use it with a Codex subscription? Plus is $20 per month

I think the claude EULA has now explicitly banned this use https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/907074/a...

That's Anthropic. Codex is OpenAI.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#190
I have an instance that does search related to my research interests, tracks news related to viruses in the US, events happening around my area and an “urgent” news job that uses searx and for things going on around me. I used Qwen 3.5 9B and tuned some of the jobs with GPT 5.4. I recently switched to use Gemma 4 and there was seemingly no major difference. I’ve found it useful for the digest and for findings papers without much effort.
Post reply on HN