Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 428 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#361

Post by ethbr1 »

snypher wrote: post #299
bdcravens wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I've sat down to consider how it could be useful, I can't think of anything that I couldn't build as a series of cron jobs and Playwright scripts. (even using Claude Code to do the heavy lifting at first, but then the tokens are spent and I don't have ongoing cost) I can only guess it's really not for "us", but rather for those who aren't afraid of technology but aren't really engineers.

>series of cron jobs and Playwright scripts This is approximately the Dropbox reply. >I can only guess it's really not for "us" Exactly correct.

numberOfProgrammersInTheWorld : numberOfPeopleInTheWorld

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#362

Post by carimura »

I asked both sonnet 4.6 and gpt-5.3 to summarize the use cases in this room, looks pretty different. Chatgpt tries a lot harder to categorize whereas Claude is more straightforward about just listing out use case examples.

https://chatgpt.com/share/69e0de34-4048-83ea-9704-4ea18d4b41...

https://claude.ai/share/291ccf67-19d1-4187-bfb4-968d1ecc0bc1

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#363

Post by bdcravens »

snypher wrote: post #299
bdcravens wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I've sat down to consider how it could be useful, I can't think of anything that I couldn't build as a series of cron jobs and Playwright scripts. (even using Claude Code to do the heavy lifting at first, but then the tokens are spent and I don't have ongoing cost) I can only guess it's really not for "us", but rather for those who aren't afraid of technology but aren't really engineers.

>series of cron jobs and Playwright scripts This is approximately the Dropbox reply. >I can only guess it's really not for "us" Exactly correct.

> >series of cron jobs and Playwright scripts

> This is approximately the Dropbox reply.

lol that wasn't my intent but I totally see it now.

I actually don't want to be dismissive of OpenClaw; I want to believe the hype. It's just what I've heard and what I see don't add up to me. If anything, it's a calculus where I have to decide if it's worth the time of setting up a machine and the learning curve.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#364

Post by rafram »

mv4 wrote: post #158
mv4 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operations: mostly tasks and reminders, I often think of something while on the road and send a voice message (like I would to a real PA). I use Kokoro-based TTS for local text-to-speech. Anything from "remind me to discuss X with so-and-so tomorrow" to "I have a multiple PoC projects w/ large entities starting next week - think about how I can best handle that" to "brainstorm how can I maximize upfront revenue with…

No recurring expense, just the hardware upfront cost. My next step is run the models locally as well. I used to work at FAANG (incl. compliance) and I would never use a cloud-based assistant of any kind.

> No recurring expense, just the hardware upfront cost. My next step is run the models locally as well.

So, at the moment, yes recurring expense?

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#365

Post by tcoff91 »

bryan0 wrote: post #197
tcoff91 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course, you need to be careful about what access you give to your agent. I gave my agent its own email, and I can forward it emails if I need it to read anything in my inbox. Everyone will have their own threshold for what type of access they want to give their agent. some people will give it access to their personal email, bank account, etc, but I wouldn't recommend it yet! But I bet in a couple years this will b…

There’s a lot of humans I wouldn’t trust to be an assistant with access to my bank account. It’s bold to assume that within 2 years these things are going to be scam resistant.

It’s going to be bleak when there’s articles about how “my agent fell for a scam and now my life savings are gone”.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#368

Post by SunshineTheCat »

dplgk wrote: post #274
Jtarii wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gives me a pleasant interface to talk to my desktop from my phone. I can just send my computer a discord message and have it execute some arbitrarily complex task for me.

The question is what wonderful task do you need to trigger while you're at the grocery store?

You're hitting the nail on the head with this one, a solution in search of a problem lol.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#370

Post by piotraleksander »

I've setup one on Hetzner. I got it a dedicated email account (via agentmail.to). Installed couple of skills, last30days and context-mode being the most useful so far (https://github.com/mvanhorn/last30days-skill and https://github.com/mksglu/context-mode).

The biggest unlock was wiring it up to my agency's whatsapp group - it's now basically a multiplayer chatgpt. Not a "personal" assistant, but more of agency's assistant. It can send ad hoc mails to our clients when asked, but also tells jokes when atmosphere is tense.

Each day it checks it's own inbox and once a week it sends me a kind of social listening report, but those are kind of workflows easily reproducible elsewhere.

I'm actually so bullish on the potential of openclaw kind of software I've built a desktop app for it, stagewhisper.io.

It's like a Granola for your OpenClaw. It listens to your system audio, records your screen (all data stays on your computer) and asks your assistant for suggestions or creates a tasks. Example: client asks for referrals during a call, StageWhisper.io picks it up and asks OpenClaw to send email with case studies.

It's absurdly fun to use, mainly because the delay between when the task pops up and the work starts is approaching zero.

Post reply on HN