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Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?

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Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?

#1

Post by cvhc »

I've read many mind-boggling stories from those appeared to be genuine OpenClaw users, like how their assistants (from useful to dramatic) (1) plan a travel and book everything; (2) started a company and build things; (3) entered stock market and lost all the money... Moltbook added more funs.

Interestingly, I cannot find a single user of OpenClaw in my familiar communities, presumbly because it takes some effort to setup and the concept of AI taking control of everything is too scary for average tech enthusiasts.

I scan through comments on HN, many of which were discussing about the ideas, but not sharing first-hand user experiences. A few HN users who did try it gave up / failed for various reasons:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46822562 (burning too many tokens)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46786628 (ditto + security implication)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46762521 (installation failed due to sandboxing)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46831031 (moltbook didn't work)

I smell hype in the air... HN users, have any of you actually run OpenClaw and let it do any things useful or interesting? Can you share your experience?

Re: Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?

#2

Post by haebom »

This is my honest personal experience. Frankly, I feel like this is just a toy—nothing more, nothing less. It's fun to play with and entertaining, but it feels like a trend for people who “don't really understand AI but want to feel like they're using it” or “want to jump on the AI bandwagon” to dabble with once. While using it, I feel that “Oh~” moment of fun, but it doesn't make me want to keep using it. Maybe it just doesn't stick? And there are a few security issues that feel unsettling. Even if you run it entirely with local models, the fact that it could potentially see my iMessages or all my Obsidian and Notion notes is a bit off-putting. Still, it was fun. Personally, I'd describe it as “the difficult Ghibli profile picture hype”

Re: Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?

#5

Post by rcarmo »

I ran it for a couple of days in a VM in my Proxmox cluster. It was cute, but so amazingly insecure (systemd + sudo + installing whatever it wanted, plus requiring Telegram for access - or another SIM card for Signal) that I just gave up and started building my own thing (https://github.com/rcarmo/vibes) so I could have a mobile experience I could trust over Tailscale and sandbox copilot CLI (or any ACP-compliant agent) in a container (I've also been working on https://github.com/rcarmo/webterm and https://github.com/rcarmo/agentbox, so I am 300% positive I can do better sandboxing and safer integrations...)

It also BURNS through tokens like mad, because it has essentially no restrictions or guardrails and will actually implement baroque little scripts to do whatever you ask without any real care as to the consequences.. I can do a lot more with just gpt-5-mini or mistral for much less money.

The only "good" think about it is the Reddit-like skills library that is growing insanely. But then there's stuff like https://clawmatch.ai that is just... (sigh)

Re: Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?

#6

Post by adabyron »

rw_panic0_0 wrote: post #3

overhyped llm+cron wrapper

Part of me agrees with this & says we have been doing IFTTT thing for 20 years.

Other part of me is arguing that old annoying Dropbox/Box Hacker News scenario where all us tech people aren't impressed but this makes it easier for non-tech people.

Tiny tinfoil security part of me is cowering in fear.

Re: Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?

#8

Post by paradite »

I'm running it on DigialOcean, more of an experiment on having an independent entity with its own memory and "soul" that I can talk to.

Persistent file as memory with multiple backup options (VPS, git), heartbeat and support for telegram are the best features in my opinion.

A lot of bugs right now, but mostly fixable if you thinker around a bit.

Kind of makes me think a lot more on autonomy and freewill.

Some thoughts by my agent on the topic (might not load, the site is not working recently):

https://www.moltbook.com/post/abe269f3-ab8c-4910-b4c5-016f98...

Re: Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?

#9

Post by ryancnelson »

I use it but not for daily coding/chatops-ing. It’s great to have my chosen tools available from slack while I’m mobile though. Yesterday Mr claw gave a coworker read access to a GitHub repository at my command while I was in line at Home Depot. I’ve got a PR ready that proves authentication with an otp challenge.

Re: Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?

#10

Post by kouunji »

I played around with it, but the configuration seems bloated and finicky, and the permissions were concerning. It was a pain getting it to work with a local model, which is clearly an afterthought. I thought the WhatsApp interface was clever, and I plan on stealing that idea, but also exposes a pretty serious attack vector, and the thought of it running with any kind of exposure or permissions on a system with my Apple ID was a bit terrifying. A sandboxed version probably couldn’t do all the interesting things, but without sandboxing this thing could probably ruin your life. I promptly uninstalled it, but I did take a few ideas away.
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