I set it up and had some fun but it was super janky and regularly broke, especially the whatsapp integration

Now I have a separate plugged in macbook running nixos (that claude set up) and a single long-running claude code process with a channel to a Telegram bot. This means I can talk to it much like I could with OpenClaw, but it's much simpler (no weird soul.md etc). It feels more powerful than just claude code directly as it can set up software, build me throwaway websites with research etc, and "do" things, but it's a lot more stable and feels more controllable because I understand how it works and don't have to worry about it signing up to some social media platform and getting poisoned by another claw.