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OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub

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Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub

#371

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,…

So what you have here is n8n-claw :)

Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub

#372
post #115

I 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.

Have you experimented at least with running Claude (or whatever) as a cron-job? I'm seeing a lot of things emerge from just that pattern alone. I'd recommend giving Claude a way to communicate with you if it has issues to raise though, even if it knows you're asleep.

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

#373

Earlier 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?

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 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

#374
post #273

Earlier 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?

Gotta be more specific, I made a lot claims haha

Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub

#375

I 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…

the main difference between openclaw and the traditional approach to promoting LLMs is that it can run asynchronously and prompt you, the human, when something happens

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

#376

Look 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?

I was looking at the accounts that have starred the OpenClaw project. Many seem relatively old, but I couldn't find more than a handful that seemed to be publicly active in any sense (e.g. making PRs or commits). Same story with the forks. A metric shit-ton ton of forks, no branches or commits or any sign of activity on the forks.

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

https://github.com/hannhow

https://github.com/197291

https://github.com/Honstanding

https://github.com/FriTOol

Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub

#377

Earlier 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.

No, you misunderstood my comment. this is what adults were saying when instant messengers were new

Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub

#378

Earlier 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…

> Did I say my Claw (not Open) doesn't have internet access?

> 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

#379
post #296
post #277

Earlier 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.

maybe it was complaints of iphone without a physical keyboard

Re: OpenClaw surpasses React to become the most-starred software project on GitHub

#380

I 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.

What if we think about the second order effects of this?
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