openclaw
by openclaw
OpenClaw is an open-source AI assistant that runs on your own computer and replies to you in chat apps such as WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram and Discord. It is for people who want an assistant that can take actions for them, with its data kept on their own hardware.
- Stars
- 393.2k
- Licence
- MIT
- Runs on
- Your computer
- Setup
- Moderate
- Language
- TypeScript
- Age
- 337 days
This project gained a very large number of stars very quickly with few forks. That can mean bought or automated stars. How star watch works.
What you can do with it
- Message your AI assistant from WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram, Discord or iMessage and have it carry out tasks
- Swap between hosted models such as Claude or local models without changing the rest of your setup
- Extend the assistant with skills and plugins, or share one deployment across a team
Make money with it
An individual could offer setup and customisation of private AI assistants, with custom skills and chat integrations, for small businesses.
An idea, not financial advice. Check the licence before charging for anything built on it.
Ways a business could use it
- Give a small team a shared assistant inside Slack or Teams to answer routine questions and handle repetitive tasks, reducing time spent on admin
- Let a freelancer manage requests and reminders from their usual messaging apps, without paying for a hosted assistant service
Can you use it commercially?
Free to use, change and sell, including in paid products. Keep the copyright notice.
Not legal advice. Read the project's licence file before building a product on it.
Getting it running
Install with a one-line shell or PowerShell script, or with npm (Node 24.22.1+ or 26.12.1+), then run the onboarding wizard; Docker and Nix are also supported.
Follow the official instructions in the project README.
Things to check
- Needs an API key for a hosted model provider unless you use a local model, which may cost money
- Tools run directly on the host machine unless sandboxing is configured, so it needs careful security setup
- Inbound chat messages are untrusted input, so exposing it to other users or the internet carries risk
- The install script is run by piping a download into the shell
Who's talking about it
- Rost (rosgluk): Trending Open Source AI Projects on GitHub, October 2026 Featured in a roundup
- Rost Glukhov: Trending Open Source AI Projects on GitHub, October 2026 Featured in a roundup
Checked 27 Oct 2026. Summary drafted by AI from the project's README.
