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Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

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Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#261

Post by godot »

I use it, it works well for a certain limited category of tasks once you've set it up properly, it's not as easy and straightforward as it seems, but once you've learned its quirks you can make it work.

The category of task I have it do is basically the pattern of "scrape some certain websites on a regular schedule, do some light data processing/understanding/analyzing, report the result to me [all or sometimes only when there is something worth mentioning]".

You could simulate the same things with cron jobs on a server and some scripts and LLM APIs. But having Openclaw do it does make it a little bit easier to set up and make changes.

The initial setup was a bit more time consuming than I thought it would be. I set it up on a VPS, I already have scripts to set up a server and tighten security normally, so I could just use that, but people who don't already have that stuff would have to do that first. Then the Openclaw setup and configuration was like a 20~30 step situation, lots of API keys to get, etc. I opted for Slack over Telegram or Discord (I don't use either of those regularly) and you pretty much have to set up a new slack bot app yourself (you follow their listed steps, but there's still hiccups here and there), you have to debug and solve issues etc. to get through it all.

Then even after all the initial setup is done, it takes some time to learn and get used to its quirks and behaviors, at the beginning there's just a lot of frustration about things it can't do, or things it says it can or will do, but doesn't.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#262

Post by jimmygrapes »

littlemishka wrote: post #193
bigpapikite wrote: post #84

I don't personally know many people who've used it so I'm not sure if this was a me thing but here was my experience in short: I set up OpenClaw on a raspberry pi 4 that I could ssh into using my main computer. My main goal for using OpenClaw was just as a morning debriefer that could scan my google calendar, trello board, and gmail to let me know what I had happening for the day and also weekly to give me a forecast…

I work on something called Town (town.com) and your morning debriefer is basically a preset workflow we ship out of the box. You connect your Google Calendar and email, flip it on, and it just sends you a daily rundown. No cron jobs, no token tuning, no "I fixed myself" lies. Took us a while to get the reliability right but it genuinely doesn't break every other morning. It's free still for early tester, feel free to…

> No X, no Y, no Z.

Please, everyone, stop this.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#263

Post by nathan_f77 »

I wrote a blog post about what I did with OpenClaw in the first few weeks. [1]

Then I was experimenting with a fleet of OpenClaw agents for a while. I was running 14 different instances, each with their own roles (project management, software developer, personal assistant, etc.) The experiment didn't work very well. I burned through a lot of tokens and didn't end up with much to show for it. I'm back to just running one agent and am not using it very much. I'm planning to be much more careful about any work that I ask it to do, and I want to have full visibility into everything it's doing.

I think we are about 6-12 months away from the AI models that would allow me to accomplish what I was trying to do with those 14 agents.

[1] https://madebynathan.com/2026/02/03/everything-ive-done-with...

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#264

Post by somewhatgoated »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #119
redact207 wrote: post #39

When I saw Jensen's talk about how Openclaw surpassed React and Linux in terms of GitHub stars within a few months, I knew the whole thing was manufactured bot hype. No one can tell me a compelling use case. The whole thing seems designed around getting people to burn more tokens.

"Thing that has huge adoption is fake, they're all morons!"

Unironically yes

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#265

Post by borplk »

redact207 wrote: post #39

When I saw Jensen's talk about how Openclaw surpassed React and Linux in terms of GitHub stars within a few months, I knew the whole thing was manufactured bot hype. No one can tell me a compelling use case. The whole thing seems designed around getting people to burn more tokens.

My observation is that people who love this stuff are not programmers so they feel like they have been empowered to automate things that they could not otherwise automate.

For people who are already highly skilled in scripting/automation it's a lot less impressive.

They notice all the things that could go wrong. All the non-determinism issues. And they think I could do this better with a custom script myself.

The use cases I have heard all seem like gimmicks to me.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#266

Post by utkarsh_apoorva »

I disagree with practically every take here, and likely will get hate for this message.

Personally it has been a huge unlock and here are some specific use cases.

1.Context engineering for “any task”: my claw agents debate with me, and write me files to be picked up by Claude code or Claude cowork to write code/build presentations.

2. Discovering this page: my personal newsfeed that took me 10 mins to setup. Never had any newsfeed before this which could be personalised like this.

3. Strategy: similar to point 1 above. I set up a “tough-coach” skill. Now all my 1am ideas go through the wringer of why they suck, and what, if anything could be differentiated about them.

4. Many other small-ish things that are important enough for me to spend on them, but not important enough to invest my time.

I run a conversational AI startup in India working mostly in Financial inclusion space - so most of time is spent in meetings (:-/).

With openclaw, the 2-3 hours before I sleep (low energy, high on ideas), convert into pretty productive sessions. No more “this is a great idea, I will do it tomorrow”. Instead “oh this sounded great but my agent just called it shit - what if I modify it a bit, and then let’s see”.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#267

Post by bryan0 »

BeetleB wrote: post #198
bryan0 wrote: 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…

How are you handling memory? That's what makes it "not work" for most people.

Yes memory is a key part. I’m using sqlite and markdown files. Sqlite is so it can easily search its conversation and thoughts by time and full text search. I actually always put the last 5 hours of so I’d conversation into the context. Markdown is for more standard agent instructions, skills, and lessons

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#268

Post by hatmanstack »

godot wrote: post #261

I use it, it works well for a certain limited category of tasks once you've set it up properly, it's not as easy and straightforward as it seems, but once you've learned its quirks you can make it work. The category of task I have it do is basically the pattern of "scrape some certain websites on a regular schedule, do some light data processing/understanding/analyzing, report the result to me [all or sometimes only…

So now all I really want to see is your setup script...you go first.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#269

Post by xstas1 »

ratsimihah wrote: post #154
xnx wrote: post #94

The main function of OpenClaw was for people to signal how advanced and cutting edge and thought-leader-y they were. All those Mac minis are sitting idle now.

I bought a Mac mini m4 before openclaw to use as a music production machine, when it turned out not to work out I tried setting up openclaw on it after hearing all the noise, but that turned out not to work out either. I’ve found a much better use for it now. I use it as a Tailscale + ssh + tmux + Claude code machine, which gives me an always on Claude code environment with persistent sessions. I ssh from my phone us…

I just run claude code on my phone, in termux

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#270

Post by headcanon »

I tried openclaw when it was released, but I preferred the minimalism of nanoclaw and replaced it. I have it on a mac mini now

For context: I have additional automation with scripts set up on the mini, some of them call LLMs to do things like summarizing today's news.

I have other automations that are agentic and just run "claude -p" (mainly just checks status of other jobs and fixes them automatically). Agentic automations are great because they can handle unexpected situations (at the cost of predictability). They're all sandboxed and we have control over tools for the most part. Any files it would write to are typically git-controlled so we have change records and rollback built in.

Nanoclaw acts as an agentic layer but combines it with the communication layer over telegram to make it interactive.

I use it to go through my centralized task list (currently beads in my main 'wiki' monorepo), give me nudges for todos, I can also send it pictures of say, food and it will fetch a recipe and sort it into the wiki via a general "inbox" skill (claude has it as well). Every day at 12:30 it will give me a mini "standup" of all my personal projects and todos, and once in a while will give me some thoughts based on my interests.

Its set up to do appropriate tasks with local models to keep token costs down, so far it doesn't seem to cost more than $10-20/mo, it would use less if I didn't drive it with sonnet.

I'm still experimenting with it, and trying to go slow, one thing at a time. I don't give it access to anything super sensitive yet, and try to keep it observable.

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