alt Hacker NewsIf you look at my comment history, you'll see what seems to be someone defending OpenClaw (even though I stopped using it).
I have some issues with the article, but I agree with some of the conclusions: It's great tinkering with it if you have time to spare, but not worth using weeks of your time trying to get a perfect setup. It's just not that reliable to use up so much of your time.
I will say, it's still amongst the best tools to do a variety of tasks. Yes, each one of those could be done with just a coding agent, but I found it's less effort to get OpenClaw to do it than you writing something for each use case.
Very honest question: One of the use cases I had with OpenClaw that I'm missing now that I don't use it: I could tell it (via Telegram) to add something to my TODO list at home while I'm in the office. It would call a custom API I had set up that adds items to my TODO list.
How can I replicate this without the hassle of setting up OpenClaw? How would you do it?
(My TODO list is strictly on a home PC - no syncing with phone - by design).
(BTW, the reason I stopped using OpenClaw is boring: My QEMU SW stopped working and I haven't had time to debug).
Replies
> I could tell it (via Telegram) to add something to my TODO list at home while I'm in the office. It would call a custom API I had set up that adds items to my TODO list. How can I replicate this without the hassle of setting up OpenClaw?
The general idea is make a simple deterministic program that runs on your PC at home in a never ending loop. Every minute or so, check Telegram for a new message. If a message is received, then the program runs "claude -p" with a prompt, whatever MCP tools or CLI permissions it needs, and the contents of your Telegram message. Just leave the program running on your home computer while you're out, and you're done.
I don't use Telegram, so coding the part to check Telegram would be the hard part. I use email instead, and have the program check every minute for new mail (I leave my email program running and check the local inbox file). I'd already coded up a local MCP server to manage my ToDo list (Toodledo) so Claude just calls the MCP tools to add the task.
I'd use Obsidian with the sync. Or you can vibe code a telegram bot that calls that API for you in like 50 lines or something.
You can do anything if you believe!
Re: QEMU: For the sandboxing I realized what I actually wanted was "it can't read/nuke my files", so I made a non-privileged linux user and added myself to its group. So I can read/write its files, but not the reverse.
> It would call a custom API I had set up that adds items to my TODO list
You can use anything to call this API right? I have multiple iPhone shortcut that does this. Heck, I think you can even use Siri to trigger the shortcut and make it a voice command (a bit unsure, it’s been a while since I played with voice)
i would just enterit in the todo app on my phone.
MS todo app, or any number of others. Added benefit of not needing telegram
> I could tell it (via Telegram) to add something to my TODO list at home while I'm in the office. It would call a custom API I had set up that adds items to my TODO list.
All the existing, commodity todo list apps on the market can't address your use cases?
At least I can't tell there is anything you can't do on your personal phone.