Ask HN: Who is using OpenClaw?

I tinkered with Hermes yesterday but it still seems like a solution to a problem I don't have as a programmer.

I tried it a bit, and while the potential is huge, I mostly just use a cli agent (claude/codex) via Blink shell (iPhone/iPad) with Wireguard for technical work or https://agency.nu for any automations using integration, voice chat etc.

I'm collecting caught-in-the wild use cases at https://www.clawdrop.org

I use it personally for cold outreach - specifically list building, enriching, and qualifying.

i am using Hermes

I still try to figure out how to use it to its full potential.

I mainly run it through github-copilot/claude-sonnet-4.6 using GitHub Copilot Pro + at 39$/month

Task management: My entire todo system runs through GitHub Issues. I just tell it things like "mark that done" or "add a task for X" in Slack and it handles the gh CLI calls. Sounds trivial but removing the friction of opening a browser actually changed how consistently I maintain my list.

Morning/EOD briefings: Cron jobs post a structured summary to Slack every morning and evening — calendar, open GitHub issues, important emails. It pushes a RSS feed of my tasks that I can view on a widget on my phone.

Server management agent: I have a different agent which acts as the server admin. It runs Jellyfin, a few *arr apps, AdGuard, mealie, etc. I don't touch config files or docker compose manually anymore. I just describe what I want changed. I have it run its own security audits frequently.

I also have a personnal coach agent which tracks my weight, my weekly exercices using gcal and creates meal plans which gets pushed to mealie so I can know what to buy for grocery and what to cook.

Literature reviews: I describe a research question and it runs a full pipeline — searches Semantic Scholar + Google Scholar, creates a Zotero collection with clean metadata, then tries to fetch PDFs through 9 different strategies (institutional repos, arXiv, Unpaywall, EZproxy with my university credentials, etc.). Gets about 60-65% PDF coverage automatically.

I have a personal shopper agent called Betty which role is to get out there and find deals about stuff I want to buy.

I also use it to run data pipelines for research project. It's instructed to use opencode with openai/gpt-5.4 for coding with beads and gastown.

I still have to figure out how to manage model switching efficiently. I'm not there yet.

It's the first AI setup that genuinely changed how I work rather than just being a fancy search engine.

I used openclaw until claude released sheduled routines.

Nowadays i just create a repo insert context and then run sheduled routines with claude windows app against it.

For my use cases thats all i need and the most important part is that I can officially use my claude subscription instead of an API key.

ITT: "I don't use it, but ..."

I still use it daily, mostly for managing information consumption. It reads my twitter feed and scans HN twice per day, and sends me a digest of the discussions on Discord.

The best part is that it reads the comments too, and sends me a quick blurb. For example, this is what it sent me earlier, commenting on [1]:

  TL;DR: A classic essay arguing that compiler construction isn't as hard as thick textbooks suggest, pointing to Jack Crenshaw's accessible "Let's Build a Compiler" series as the real starting point.

  The Vibe: HN agrees most CS textbooks are overcomplicated — developers sharing their own minimal compiler projects and alternative learning resources.

It runs in an isolated vm and doesn't have access to anything other than my X account, so I'm not too worried about prompt injection. I also don't have any skills installed other the ones I developed or carefully vetted.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47776796

The people who are using it can't post here because OpenClaw deleted their HN account.

It was very useful as an indication for who you can start ignoring in the ai hype space.

I'm only half joking. Blocked everyone / everything that hyped up openclaw and have been able to find much more interesting and reasonable ai related discussions in my feeds.

On iPhone I use ChatGPT via Shortcuts and a-Shell for tool execution and Files for memory and state. I can schedule it to run or can invoke it from the home-screen via a shortcut.

I've used I cannot figure out the real benefit of it beyond novelty purposes.

I find Chrome Claude extension more useful for automating tasks online. Before ai I was writing my own macros which basically did the same thing in a more reliable deterministic way.

Tried it for a few weeks, was really buggy and unpredictable.

Kudos for the concept though, I ended up rolling my own agentic system with Claude Code from scratch that works much more reliably for my use cases.

Telegram -> 1 Group/agent -> OpenClaw running on an old laptop

Using it for journaling and capturing ideas. Previous workflow as iPhone Memos. Now it's

voice message -> openclaw -> transcribe using parakeet -> git repo

The main thing why I started using it too late was the slop. it's in the end AI generated, yes it can take your tasks but i never felt in my personal use case how it can help me when it's just generating slop. I used claude cowork more than openclaw after trying once that too in a cloud container since I'm afraid of its security

I tried using it for a specific web search task. I wrote a skill, got it all set up and deployed. It worked. But also, would have worked just as well as a cron job with some LLM looking at Brave API results. Like a lot of AI tools, it was a lot of work for underwhelming results.

Tried it in the earlier days and it performed badly. I didn't give it free reign on my computer due to obvious security concerns so sandboxed it to a docker container instead. I think for a lot of tasks it's probably more trouble to set this up than to just DIY it.

I'm trying to. Currently there's a bug in the code that strips headers and doesn't allow me to authenticate to my AI Gateway service.

The whole thing is incredibly buggy. The dashboard is horrible, with page after page with similar-looking settings and what feels like hundreds of things I will never use. The categories in the dashbaord are also unintuitive. It's the kind of thing an AI would put together if it got very vague instructions. It doesn't scream quality and thoughtfullness. Not a bit.

IronClaw is much more promising imo. Trying it out right now. Much less issues so far.

This is a good example: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-openclaw-changed-my-l...

I am using it as one the agent that is automating LinkedIn outreach by running a bash script & using ai wherever it needs some decision like finding first name or what message to write, etc.

Yes, at our company we are using it very extensively. I genuinely believe we're near the forefront of usage. We have multiple isolated OpenClaw instances serving as employee within Slack.

i've been engineering things for almost 30 years and getting it wired up to Discord was worse than a root canal. Slack seemed just a tad better but it still doesn't even work.

I feel like most of this can be done with the platform tools at this point or a tiny bit of wiring of your own without the mega-bloat to make something generalized for the whole world.

its my remote control for claude code

it whatsapps me when its done or needs input it can not resolve, i start new session which are then done when i come to my computer

the reasons why i not use it more is tokens costs

yeah i could use a cheaper model for openclaw but then its just stupid

i am trying to run it on gamma next week

a friend is using it but it seems like it breaks a lot.

ive got the scheduled claude-code running a couple scripts to find what events are going on round town and what food is cheap at grocery stores, but how much am i looking at the results? not super often. its publishing to a discord channel rhat makes it real hard to read

It seems a lot like paying to run malware when shell scripts and cron will do.

I have openclaw as a default install on all my dev servers. Pretty minimal setup with Telegram and Codex (since oauth is still supported). The setup comes in handy since openclaw can open and connect to tmux sessions and interact with them. I can pretty much do anything from telegram now.

I tried twice and couldn’t extract value. Loaded it with ability. Still couldn’t.

I work for a huge company and we've just gotten access to Claude Code and now all the AI folks are pushing super hard to get EIS to open up so they can start using OpenClaw with Claude.

I'm the "internally screaming" meme after having been in several of these meetings where dev teams are pushing for it under the guise of getting better at utilizing AI. "Well, OpenClaw plays extremely well with Claude Code, it could really give our teams a huge boost."

Oy vey the next few months are certainly going to be an adventure!

I'm only using it until I can make my own TUI from scratch in C or Rust.

I've heard too many horror stories so I'm waiting.

I bought a Mac Mini, installed OpenClaw, and was impressed with the overall design and functionality. Then the problems started. Sometimes the gateway would crash, sometimes Signal (a channel I setup) would stop working. Upgrades seemed to break stuff. I had to dip into the terminal a lot to fix various things. It's quite useful if you don't already have Claude Code or similar tools setup, but frankly I haven't found a compelling use case that I can't get done in another more mature agentic harness.

I've had success using the underlying harness - pi-mono as a data analyst in a sandbox.

I saw some non-technical people automating or creating small great tools with it which they need for their profession. These people are not programmers.

I think everybody who has basic understanding of programming and deployment better should stick to some AI coding agent like Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode etc etc.

I don't think I'm missing out by not using OpenClaw & Co.

Context and memory storage, plus crons and tools

I love it, it is like Claude on steroids, I can just chat with it on my phone and iterate projects… sadly it’s really expensive now to keep using Opus, looking for alternatives that doesn’t gimp the reasoning and creativity is hard.

I've been trying out Hermes this week. OpenClaw felt like too much.

It was really easy to setup and I've been getting some value out of it but hasn't been the craziest thing in the world. I'm using it for:

- Unstructured note-taking: I suck at notes and todos and used to have a WhatsApp chat with myself (this is really common in Brazil) where I dump stuff. Now I dump into Hermes and it sorts whatever I put in there into one of various lists like to-do, to-read, to-try, to-buy, and so on.

- Briefings on a cron: I get reminded of my todos every morning and at the end of the day so I can cross stuff off. Later in the day I get reminded of my to-read list. I also get a summary of what went on from my coding orchestrator.

- Some coding: I built my own remote orchestrator and have been using Hermes to manage tasks, review code, and trigger tasks when on the move. Hermes has been a nice interface to allow me to use the orchestrator on my phone.

Haven't connected email or anything else yet. I feel like the security story here is lacking.

Overall it's been interesting but not mind-blowing. Plus setting up was easy but it's a bit buggy at times, messing up where files were and not being able to configure itself according to its own docs.

EDIT: Ah yes and voice notes via WhatsApp out-of-the-box is really nice

Heard too many horror stories, pass

I posted this comment in another thread so reposting it here:

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IMHO, the biggest problem with OpenClaw and other AI agents is that the use-cases are still being discovered. We have deployed several hundred of these to customers and I think this challenge comes from the fact that AI agents are largely perceived as workflow automation tools so when it comes to business process they are seen as a replacement for more established frameworks.

They can automate but they are not reliable. I think of them as work and process augmentation tools but this is not how most customers think in my experience.

However, here are a several legit use-case that we use internally which I can freely discuss.

There is an experimental single-server dev infrastructure we are working on that is slightly flaky. We deployed a lightweight agent in go (single 6MB binary) that connects to our customer-facing API (we have our own agentic platform) where the real agent is sitting and can be reconfigured. The agent monitors the server for various health issues. These could be anything from stalled VMs, unexpected errors etc. It is firecracker VMs that we use in very particular way and we don't know yet the scope of the system. When such situations are detected the agent automatically corrects the problems. It keeps of log what it did in a reusable space (resource type that we have) under a folder called learnings. We use these files to correct the core issues when we have the type to work on the code.

We have an AI agent called Studio Bot. It exists in Slack. It wakes up multiple times during the day. It analyses our current marketing efforts and if it finds something useful, it creates the graphics and posts to be sent out to several of our social media channels. A member of staff reviews these suggestions. Most of the time they need to follow up with subsequent request to change things and finally push the changes to buffer. I also use the agent to generate branded cover images for linkedin, x and reddit articles in various aspect ratios. It is a very useful tool that produces graphics with our brand colours and aesthetics but it is not perfect.

We have a customer support agent that monitors how well we handle support request in zendesk. It does not automatically engage with customers. What it does is to supervise the backlog of support tickets and chase the team when we fall behind, which happens.

We have quite a few more scattered in various places. Some of them are even public.

In my mind, the trick is to think of AI agents as augmentation tools. In other words, instead of asking how can I take myself out of the equation, the better question is how can I improve the situation. Sometimes just providing more contextually relevant information is more than enough. Sometimes, you need a simple helper that own a certain part of the business.

I hope this helps.

Yeah it’s a coding beast if you get it dialed in right

Frankly everything I have seen about says that the people using LLMs to develop it can not be trusted with LLMs so no. I am not using it. I'm not anti-llm's I'm anti-stupid-llm-usage.

I use it daily and also implemented it for a customer for a very specific use case. The Claude subscription change made it less desirable to use but I still enjoy it.

Not using it since Opus is gone

I'm planning to set it up as a auto-marketing and user acquisition agent, but I'm also backpedaling on the idea since (1) people can probably easily tell that it's AI (2) that will produce negative reputation as a "slop company" (3) that's feeding into the dead internet theory

So in short, there's not much to do. I don't really have tasks I can just "hand off to OpenClaw"

Interesting read, thanks for sharing.

https://openclaw.allegro.earth

I like Openclaw. It's able to interact with a bunch of apps I self-host (e.g. media server, home automation, productivity) and I generally prefer communicating with it over Claude directly. I would not tell people to go out and fork over money for a mac mini to use it. I already had a mac mini sitting idle, so I'm putting it to use.

Nope. I spun up a few Openclaws & a Hermes but never enjoyed the end results. Now I just use a telegram plugin for Codex. And run Codex on a miniPC I found in the trash. A $20/mo Codex sub gets me a GPT-5.4 agent that can make its own Automations (cron jobs), search the web, and modify the files and apps on the NAS drive I share. Simple and cheap works for me.

openclaw was the scrum of the ai generation. lots of money made by thought leaders and such. largely irrelevant today.

I can see some embryonic potential in the concept, almost like a little spark of genius. I'm convinced a variant of an agentic personal assistant will become commonplace within a few years and will likely gain widespread adoption.

That said, OpenClaw and most of its clones are extremely brittle right now. FWIW, I also tried building my own thinking the problem is surely the vibe coded complexity but it's not that, it's in limitations of the models and their training.

I do still have an OpenClaw instance running on an M1 Macbook Pro in my closet with a local ollama instance (qwen3.5:35b-a3b-coding-nvfp4). It mostly cleans up my notes in my Trilium instance and it helps monitor prices of homelab components (on eBay and Reddit) daily.

Everyone’s just making their own multi agent stacks now