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Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

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Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#131

Post by jimbokun »

anticorporate wrote: post #61
pxc wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this be a bit of a Dropbox moment? What it adds is making this kind of thing easy for normies , even if it's neither the best way to do things nor very difficult for hobbyists to do using existing tech. Maybe it's the wrong approach, maybe what people really want is more deterministic software that they use agents to help write. But this kind of thing can maybe serve as a prototyping phase for that. Perhaps in…

That's actually the best hypothesis I've heard to date. My immediate reaction to anything someone says they're using OpenClaw for is "That's great, but it would have taken the same amount of effort to ask your LLM to write a script to do the same thing, which would be better in every possible way." My approach to automation projects is just about the polar opposite of something like OpenClaw. How can I take this mess…

This is a good description of the role of software engineer in the age of LLMs.

Most people still don’t think this way and need a software person to know enough about these things to describe them to the LLM.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#132

Post by jimbokun »

BeetleB wrote: post #67
anticorporate wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually the best hypothesis I've heard to date. My immediate reaction to anything someone says they're using OpenClaw for is "That's great, but it would have taken the same amount of effort to ask your LLM to write a script to do the same thing, which would be better in every possible way." My approach to automation projects is just about the polar opposite of something like OpenClaw. How can I take this mess…

> "That's great, but it would have taken the same amount of effort to ask your LLM to write a script to do the same thing As a no-longer-Claw-user, hard disagree. The convenience is being able to ask it to do something while I'm grocery shopping and have it automatically test it etc. Sure, I can set up Claude Code or some other tool similarly, but the majority of us aren't going to take the time to set it up to do wh…

Such as?

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#133

Post by Avicebron »

heliumtera wrote: post #104
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.

There is one usecase: you can laundry your actions and just say "oopsies, llms when rogue I guess" It's not pretty and not honest but if you're desperate I guess it's an option

I would prefer it if it could do my laundry. I can launder my actions on my own..

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#134

Post by obsidianbases1 »

gokhan wrote: post #97
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should ask claude code to write a bash script that does this for you. Then run that as a Cronjob every night. You might not need any inference at all to create the flash cards so it would be free.

> ...useful flashcards... How would the script do that without inference from free format md files?

Script can still run LLM inference

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#136

Post by ejoso »

mv4 wrote: post #117
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.

That's a fair assessment if you look at LinkedIn posts. Personally though, I am finding it incredibly useful and I use it daily to assist with operations, strategy, sales.

I’d be curious to hear more about how you use it for those 3 categories. Care to share?

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#139

Post by jimbokun »

razingeden wrote: post #46
valleyer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, like, a cron job.

>scripting and automation I cringe at my old boss’s handiwork in Claude and power automate sometimes and go “you know I could just do that in a script and a cron job and it would be completely bullet proof, right?” Then he just shoots back with, “yeah but now I don’t have to ask you.” This is my kludge, there are many others like it but this one is mine.

You know that was a good answer.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

#140

Post by yorwba »

Kiro wrote: post #103
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.

It's massive in China. Search for "raise a lobster" and check out the videos from the events.

It's massive in the sense of people hyping it on social media and grifters trying to profit from it. Pure FOMO, not dissimilar from the earlier "earning a side income using ChatGPT" hype. I doubt there are many people using it successfully for any purpose other than producing social media content promoting courses promising people to teach them how to use OpenClaw, for a fee of course.
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