OpenClaw: the open-source agent that went viral

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Open models
A free agent you run on your own computer and control from WhatsApp or Slack drew millions of visitors in a week.
Published

January 30, 2026

What happened

  • OpenClaw, first published in November 2025 as Clawdbot by developer Peter Steinberger, took its final name on January 30 after two quick renames.
  • It runs on your own machine, does tasks on it, and takes orders through chat apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram or Slack. It gathered well over 100,000 stars on GitHub.
  • The hype also brought scams and hacked accounts, and serious questions about security.

Why it matters for you

A personal agent no longer needs a big company behind it. But an agent with full access to your computer is a security risk: run it on a spare machine and never give it your main accounts.

Sources

Notes for learning. Nothing here is investment advice. All news