What is OpenClaw?

OpenClaw is an AI assistant you run on your own infrastructure - for yourself, or shared with your team. It replies on the messaging surfaces you already use (Discord, Google Chat, iMessage, Mattermost, Signal, Slack, Telegram, WebChat, WhatsApp, and bundled channel plugins such as QQ Bot) and can also do voice plus hosted widgets in chat, on session dashboards, and in the macOS panel. The Gateway is the always-on control plane; the assistant is the product. The same gateway scales from one person's WhatsApp to a shared workspace bot with multi-user sessions.

Yes. A shared gateway is a supported, first-class deployment: sessions carry an immutable creator, an assignable owner, and the people who prompted them; the Control UI shows who is viewing and typing in real time; and commits from shared sessions can carry Co-authored-by trailers for the people who steered them. Named operator roles bound what each teammate can do.

One boundary to respect: a gateway is one trust domain. Share it with people who trust each other; mutually adversarial users need separate gateways. See Team setup, Multi-user mode, and Security.

OpenClaw is not "just a Claude wrapper." It is a local-first control plane that runs a capable assistant on your own hardware, reachable from the chat apps you already use, with stateful sessions, memory, and tools - without handing your workflows to a hosted SaaS.

• Your devices, your data: run the Gateway wherever you want (Mac, Linux, VPS) and keep the workspace and session history local.
• Real channels, not a web sandbox: Discord/iMessage/Signal/Slack/Telegram/WhatsApp/etc, plus mobile voice and hosted widgets.
• Model-agnostic: use Anthropic, MiniMax, OpenAI, OpenRouter, etc., with per-agent routing and failover.
• Local-only option: run local models so all data can stay on your device.
• Multi-agent routing: separate agents per channel, account, or task, each with its own workspace and defaults.
• Open source and hackable: inspect, extend, and self-host without vendor lock-in.

Docs: Gateway, Channels, Multi-agent, Memory.

Good first projects: build a website (WordPress, Shopify, or a static site); prototype a mobile app (outline, screens, API plan); organize files and folders; connect Gmail and automate summaries or follow-ups.

It can handle large tasks, but works best split into phases with sub-agents for parallel work.

• Personal briefings: summaries of inbox, calendar, and news you care about.
• Research and drafting: quick research, summaries, and first drafts for emails or docs.
• Reminders and follow-ups: cron- or heartbeat-driven nudges and checklists.
• Browser automation: filling forms, collecting data, repeating web tasks.
• Cross-device coordination: send a task from your phone, let the Gateway run it on a server, get the result back in chat.

Yes, for research, qualification, and drafting: scanning sites, building shortlists, summarizing prospects, writing outreach or ad copy drafts.

For outreach or ad runs, keep a human in the loop. Avoid spam, follow local laws and platform policies, and review anything before it sends. Let OpenClaw draft; you approve.

Docs: Security.

No. OpenClaw is stewarded by the OpenClaw Foundation, an independent 501(c)(3). OpenAI is one of several donors, and its creator works there. Donors do not own, control, or direct the project. Codex is one agent harness plugin among several, and no lab's model is privileged in the code.

By default, a daily update check carrying the OpenClaw version, OS, Node version, and CPU architecture: the same information any package registry sees. Optional anonymous feature statistics are off by default and carry no identifier. No prompts, messages, model names, keys, paths, or machine identifiers are ever sent to the Foundation. Set update.checkOnStart: false to send nothing at all. Traffic to the model providers and chat platforms you configure is separate and goes to them, as always; see Is all data used with OpenClaw saved locally?. Details: Usage telemetry and update checks.

The Foundation is funded by donations and has no product to sell: no paid tier, no hosted service, no token. It is not venture-backed. Some other self-hosted agents are built by venture-funded companies that sell a subscription their agent offers during setup. That is a difference in incentives, not a judgment of their engineering; see the governance comparison.

OpenClaw is an assistant and coordination layer, not an IDE replacement. Use Claude Code or Codex for the fastest direct coding loop inside a repo. Use OpenClaw for durable memory, cross-device access, and tool orchestration.

• Persistent memory and workspace across sessions.
• Multi-platform access (Telegram, WhatsApp, TUI, WebChat).
• Tool orchestration (browser, files, scheduling, hooks).
• Always-on Gateway (run on a VPS, interact from anywhere).
• Nodes for local browser/screen/camera/exec.

Showcase: https://openclaw.ai/showcase.