Earlier quoted context omitted.
n8n can't handle abiguity, unless you program it to. Like if you want bad weather alerts, you need to specifically define every situation of "bad weather" by givin exact weather / wind / rain limits. What happens if it's cold, windy and rainy, but every value is juust 0.1 over the threshold of notifying you? It's still objectively shit weather. Or can n8n go through your emails and check for promo codes or sales you'…
I'd counter that n8n (or most other workflow tools) can handle as much ambiguity as OpenClaw - it has a LLM call node. Stuff the ambiguous parts in there, but don't burn a rainforests worth of compute figuring out how to call the weather API each and every time. Also, in the olden days of pre-AI, if our weather workflow did not notify us because conditions juuust failed to be met, we adjusted the thresholds. Uphill,…
OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub
371–380 of 388 posts
Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub
#372I keep reading folks saying OpenClaw has completely changed their life while posting a picture of 58 mac minis on their desk. But every single use case I've read so far could be done with a pretty affordable SaaS product, Zapier, Automator (app on a mac that's existed for over a decade), or something simple you could make yourself. It also feels like people are automating things that don't really need to be automated…
How much do you automate things in your life using Zapier and Automator? I know about those tools, and I'm always in the mood for automating thing... and yet I don't use them. I'm not yet running a Claw because of the prompt injection / lethal trifecta risks, but I absolutely understand the appeal. Reducing friction to automating stuff from "figure out Automator again" to "message your bot" is a material difference.
I'm not running OpenClaw either, but I'm getting a ton of value just from my homebrew deterministic "run while loop, wake up Claude if trigger event occurs".
Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all tradeoffs and threat models. You can prevent yourself from getting spam by not having an email account. But it's the nuclear option. I'm fine with a system that can just read mail - and I already built one of those. I personally never send emails anyway so it's not an issue for me.
So what do you do with your OpenClaw instance that has read-only access to your email and no Internet access?
All of my tools are geared towards reducing noise and condensing information.
- My weather scripts tell me just the exact metrics I care about
- My email filtering system surfaces only the mails that are relevant right now - I can check the rest later.
- My RSS feed hydrator pre-filters Hacker News and other RSS feeds and adds data like comment/vote count etc to the feed itself so I can determine whether the link is worth opening just based on the information presented
None of these require an LLM to have free rein to modify things for me.
Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
OpenClaw in most cases also going to use the very same dedicated tools, maybe variation of those tools dumbed down for LLM. Almost every time I have an idea for AI Agent, I end up just making a script/binary that does the same, but so much faster that adding AI to it feels silly. Recently I made a tool router that runs locally for such tools. Some tools have no arguments at all. Claude created a quick overlay where I…
Can you give an particular example?
Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub
#375I keep reading folks saying OpenClaw has completely changed their life while posting a picture of 58 mac minis on their desk. But every single use case I've read so far could be done with a pretty affordable SaaS product, Zapier, Automator (app on a mac that's existed for over a decade), or something simple you could make yourself. It also feels like people are automating things that don't really need to be automated…
I built clawr.ing so my agent can call me on the phone for urgent things like emails I’m waiting for or issues in production for any of my products
Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub
#376Look at the graph - https://api.star-history.com/svg?repos=facebook/react,opencl... React and Linux got their 200K stars slowly but surely over 10 years. OpenClaw got their 200K stars in like 3 months! Is this any meaningful comparison? Getting 200K stars today doesn't mean much because today stars can be bought. There's a big shady thriving business of selling stars. Stars today can be generated using swarm of thoug…
Everyone's Clawd has a Github account that most likely has liked the OpenClaw project Would be nice to see a graph of stars by account age, how many of the stars come from accounts that are under 6 months old for example?
Compared that to the people who have been starring my projects, and every single one of them had some sort of activity on record.
--edit--
Checked again now, seems more recent accounts have some activity. But still, lots of accounts like these
Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
this reads like “I don’t know why people are using instant messengers when you can just do SMS”
Apropos of nothing, I use SMS more than all the other instant messengers put together. It suits my purposes fine.
Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what do you do with your OpenClaw instance that has read-only access to your email and no Internet access?
Did I say my Claw (not Open) doesn't have internet access? All of my tools are geared towards reducing noise and condensing information. - My weather scripts tell me just the exact metrics I care about - My email filtering system surfaces only the mails that are relevant right now - I can check the rest later. - My RSS feed hydrator pre-filters Hacker News and other RSS feeds and adds data like comment/vote count etc…
> My email filtering system surfaces only the mails that are relevant right now - I can check the rest later.
So then you have not actually addressed the concerns expressed in my post. You indeed have an LLM with both email access and Internet access. Exactly the scenario I described. The amount of trouble those two accesses together can cause is huge.
> None of these require an LLM to have free rein to modify things for me.
Give me read access to your email and an Internet connection and I bet I can come up with all sorts of ways to modify things for you. So can an LLM. If your lucky it won't.
Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But every single use case I've read so far could be done with a pretty affordable SaaS product, reminds me of those "zune already does everything ipod does" posts.
The iPod came out way before Zune.
Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub
#380I keep reading folks saying OpenClaw has completely changed their life while posting a picture of 58 mac minis on their desk. But every single use case I've read so far could be done with a pretty affordable SaaS product, Zapier, Automator (app on a mac that's existed for over a decade), or something simple you could make yourself. It also feels like people are automating things that don't really need to be automated…
my friend just created a bot with OpenClaw to go through Linkedin messaging possible hiring companies. He had 6 interviews scheduled the first day. that's the only use case I heard so far that was compelling. Im not a dev, but pretty sure you could do that with other tools too.