What are people using these things for? The use cases I've seen look a bit contrived and I could ask Claude or ChatGPT to do it directly
Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw
11–20 of 133 posts
Re: Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, in not vibecoding it yourself you are already saving tokens... Personally, I see no benefit in having an instance of something like this... so, I wouldn't spend tokens, and I wouldn't spend server-time, or any other resource into it, but a lot of people seem to have found a really nice alternative to actually having to use their brains during the day.
> a lot of people seem to have found a really nice alternative to actually having to use their brains during the day. Or have they have found a way to use their brains on what they deem as more useful, and less on what is rote?
Yeah, I guess I just don't really have a lot of meaningful things to take care of.
Re: Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, in not vibecoding it yourself you are already saving tokens... Personally, I see no benefit in having an instance of something like this... so, I wouldn't spend tokens, and I wouldn't spend server-time, or any other resource into it, but a lot of people seem to have found a really nice alternative to actually having to use their brains during the day.
I do see the potential in something like OpenClaw, personally, but more as a kind of interface for a collection of small isolated automations that _could_ be loosely connected via some type of memory bank (whether that's a RAG or just text files or a database or whatever). Not all of these will require LLMs and certainly none of them will require vibecoding at all if you have infinite time; But the reality is I don't…
Our team doesn't use things like OpenClaw. We use Windmill, which is a workflow engine that can use AI to program scripts and workflows. 90% of our automated flows are just vanilla python or nodejs. We re-use 10% of scripts in different flows. We do have LLM nodes and other AI nodes, and although windmill totally supports AI tool calling/Agentic use, we DON'T let AI agents decide the next step. Boring? Maybe. Dependable? Yes.
Re: Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw
#14Yeah I mean idk, my takeaway from OpenClaw was pretty much the same - why use someone's insane vibecoded 400k LoC CLI wrapper with 50k lines of "docs" (AI slop; and another 50k Chinese translation of the same AI slop) when I can just Claude Code myself a custom wrapper in 30 mins that has exactly what I need and won't take 4 seconds to respond to a CLI call. But my reaction to this project is again: Why would I use t…
So, as an OpenClaw disliker, the agent harness at the core of it (pi) is really good, it's super minimal and well designed. It's designed to be composed using custom functionality, it's easy to hack, whereas Claude Code is bloated and totally opinionated.
The thing people are losing their shit over with OpenClaw is the autonomy. That's the common thread between it, Ralph and Gastown that is hype-inducing. It's got a lot of problems but there's a nugget of value there (just like Steve Yegge's stuff)
Re: Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw
#15What are people using these things for? The use cases I've seen look a bit contrived and I could ask Claude or ChatGPT to do it directly
Yeah, I don't get it either. Deploy a VM that runs an LLM so that I can talk to it via Telegram... I could just talk to it through an app or a web interface. I'm not even trying to be snarky, like what the hell even is the use case?
Re: Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw
#16The main novelty I see in openclaw is the amount of channels and how easy it is to set them up. This just has whatsapp, telegram & feishu
Re: Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw
#17Skimmed the repo, this is basically the irreducible core of an agent: small loop, provider abstraction, tool dispatch, and chat gateways . The LOC reduction (99%, from 400k to 4k) mostly comes from leaving out RAG pipelines, planners, multi-agent orchestration, UIs, and production ops.
RAG seems odd when you can just have a coding agent manage memory by managing folders. Multi agent also feels weird when you have subagents.
I've been leaning towards multi agent because sub agent relies on the main agent having all the power and using it responsibly.
Re: Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw
#18Has anyone managed to get the WhatsApp integration working and chatting that way?
Re: Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw
#19What are people using these things for? The use cases I've seen look a bit contrived and I could ask Claude or ChatGPT to do it directly
Yeah, I don't get it either. Deploy a VM that runs an LLM so that I can talk to it via Telegram... I could just talk to it through an app or a web interface. I'm not even trying to be snarky, like what the hell even is the use case?
It's not even an LLM it's just to pipe api calls.
Re: Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw
#20What are people using these things for? The use cases I've seen look a bit contrived and I could ask Claude or ChatGPT to do it directly
I have no idea. the single thing I can think of is that it can have a memory.. but you can do that with even less code.
Just get a VPS. create a folder and run CC in it, tell it to save things into MD files.
You can access it via your phone using termux.