I have been building a similar concept into my custom NixOS distribution, Keystone, where agents operate within their own user accounts with dedicated emails and SSH access.
> It utilizes the Claude, Gemini, and Ollama CLIs. Because it is built directly into the OS, it seamlessly integrates with native notes and records calls. Furthermore, an AI agent can access Immich to deduce my context by analyzing image metadata and tagged faces. It features dedicated calendars for task scheduling and native PDF extraction capabilities. The entire system is declarative via NixOS, allowing it to provision itself almost entirely automatically.
OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream
191–200 of 323 posts
Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
OpenClaw is just like any other tool, you need to learn it before its power is available to you. Just like anything in engineering really: you have to play around source control to understand source control, you have to play around with database indexes to learn how to optimize a database. Once you've learned it and incorporated it into your tool set, you then have that to wield in solving problems "oh, damn, a datab…
> OpenClaw is just like any other tool, you need to learn it before its power is available to you. That's ridiculous. The utility of any tool is usually knowable before using it. That's how most tools work. I don't need to learn how to drive a car to know what I could use it for. I learn to drive it because I want to benefit from it, not the other way around. It's the same with computers and any program. I use it to…
Such a wrong take.
The utility of a program like Excel, Obsidian, Notion, Unity, Jupyter, or Emacs far beyond the knowledge of knowing how to use the product.
All of these products are hammers with nails as far as your creativity will take you.
Its wild to have be on a website called Hacker News, talking about a product that can make a computer do seemingly anything, and insisting its a tool in search of a problem.
Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream
#193> Separate Accounts for your OpenClaw > As I have mentioned, treat OpenClaw as a separate entity. So, give it its own Gmail account, Calendar, and every integration possible. And teach it to access its own email and other accounts. In addition, create a separate 1Password account to store credentials. It’s akin to having a personal assistant with a separate identity, rather than an automation tool. The whole point of…
Of course there is! You want an AI agent to be able to do some things, but not others. OpenClaw currently gets access to both those sets. There's no reason to.
I've made my own AI agent (https://github.com/skorokithakis/stavrobot) and it has access to just that one WhatsApp conversation (from me). It doesn't get to read messages coming from any other phone numbers, and can't send messages to arbitrary phone numbers. It is restricted to the set of actions I want it to be able to perform, and no more.
It has access to read my calendar, but not write. It has access to read my GitHub issues, but not my repositories. Each tool has per-function permissions that I can revoke.
"Give it access to everything, even if it doesn't need it" is not the only security model.
Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream
#194Responding to the tweet quoted in the article: why are the examples given of futuristic capabilities always so visionless - it's always booking a flight or scheduling a meeting. Doing this manually is already pretty trivial, it's more productivity theatre than genuinely life-changing. There are real, impressive examples of the power of agentic flows out there. Can we up the quality of our examples just a bit?
Not using OpenClaw - but I have a limited agent running that currently does a few things well. Morning Briefing: - it reads all my new email (multiple accounts and contexts), calendars (same accounts and contexts), slack (and other chat) messages (multiple slacks, matrix, discord, and so on), the weather reports, my open/closed recent to dos in a shared list across all my devices, my latest journal/log entries of thi…
> Morning Briefing
How do you ensure that it's not hallucinating stuff, or ignoring something important?
Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream
#195Responding to the tweet quoted in the article: why are the examples given of futuristic capabilities always so visionless - it's always booking a flight or scheduling a meeting. Doing this manually is already pretty trivial, it's more productivity theatre than genuinely life-changing. There are real, impressive examples of the power of agentic flows out there. Can we up the quality of our examples just a bit?
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Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream
#196It is, but I thought security wasn't the point. The point was to give it unlimited access to your entire digital life and while I'd never use it that way myself, that's what many users are signing up for, for better or worse. Obviously, OpenClaw doesn't advertise it like that, but that's what it is. Needless to say, OpenClaw wasn't even the first to do this. There were already many products that let you connect an AI…
I don't know, I don't see the benefit in giving it that much freedom. I've given my agent very specific access and it does basically everything I want. I don't think I've ever thought "this needs more access, but I don't want to give it", and it's already very isolated. It runs in a bunch of containers that don't have access to any secrets or the host system.
I don't see what the extra benefit is that OpenClaw gets from being able to access everything.
Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why are the examples given of futuristic capabilities always so visionless - it's always booking a flight or scheduling a meeting. This AI wave is filled with "ideas guys/gals" who thought they had an amazing awesome idea and if only they knew how to program they could make a best-selling billion dollar idea, being confronted with the reality that their ideas are really uninteresting as well. They're still happy to…
I have "new genius" ideas very often. After doing quick search I discover that any idea worth thinking of implementation is either implemented already or what seems to be low barrier to entry clashes with some legal obstacles.
I have the opposite problem. I have a genius idea, and I start to research it.
I find a company that actually built a solid product, dangit this is really good. They appear to have executed well, but they failed, or went nowhere, heck the app is still out there. Maybe they are even chugging along but its a smaller business even with a better product than I would have been able to build. Had I been a founder of the product, I would be questioning staying.
Then I also find sometimes I was doing it all wrong and the world has moved past my notions of products. I think there's a market opportunity because I don't realize that the rest of the world is already cool using a $15 plant hygrometer bluetooth device which can also keep track of your medicine or food in your cooler, my notion of the value of something is skewed by western costs
Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have "new genius" ideas very often. After doing quick search I discover that any idea worth thinking of implementation is either implemented already or what seems to be low barrier to entry clashes with some legal obstacles.
Interestingly that sort of research is actually what I've used Claude/Chatgpt deep research and openclaw for. If I have an idea, I get an agent to go and do some product research for me and see if there is a market, if anyone has tried it, and if there is anyone doing it. It has unironically saved me a lot of time I would have otherwise spent going down rabbit holes. Of the models I've found that claude doesn't gas y…
Sure I do use AI to to do research on my ideas as well
Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream
#199Agreed! Made my own OpenClaw variant based on many of the same principles. It takes Simon Willies lethal trifecta and implements it to an OpenClaw like architecture.
Re: OpenClaw is a security nightmare dressed up as a daydream
#200> Separate Accounts for your OpenClaw > As I have mentioned, treat OpenClaw as a separate entity. So, give it its own Gmail account, Calendar, and every integration possible. And teach it to access its own email and other accounts. In addition, create a separate 1Password account to store credentials. It’s akin to having a personal assistant with a separate identity, rather than an automation tool. The whole point of…
Of course there is! You want an AI agent to be able to do some things, but not others. OpenClaw currently gets access to both those sets. There's no reason to. I've made my own AI agent ( https://github.com/skorokithakis/stavrobot ) and it has access to just that one WhatsApp conversation (from me). It doesn't get to read messages coming from any other phone numbers, and can't send messages to arbitrary phone numbers…
> "Give it access to everything, even if it doesn't need it" is not the only security model.
You're using stavrobot instead of OpenClaw precisely because the purpose of OpenClaw is to do everything; a tool to do everything needs access to everything.
OpenClaw could be kinda useful and secure if it were stavrobot instead, if it could only do a few limited things, if everything important it tried to do required human review and intervention.
But stavrobot isn't a revolutionary tool to do everything for you, and that's what OpenClaw is, and that's why people are excited about it, and why its problems can never be fixed.