OpenClaw
An open-source AI assistant that runs on your own computer and works through your chat apps.
Instead of Hosted AI assistants such as ChatGPT agents and Copilot
Screenshot from openclaw.ai, taken 2026-10-23. The images belong to their makers and are shown to help you recognise the tool. Ask us to remove one.
OpenClaw is an AI assistant that runs on your own computer and talks to you through the chat apps you already use, such as Telegram, Signal, Slack or WhatsApp. It can take actions for you, like replying to emails, using whichever AI models you choose, and its memory and credentials stay on your own hardware. The code is MIT licensed and the project belongs to the OpenClaw Foundation, a non-profit, with OpenAI listed as a donor and not an owner. There is no paid tier, hosted service or token.
The catch is how much it can do on your behalf. To be useful it needs your logins, and the warnings are loud: Gartner called it an unacceptable cybersecurity risk for businesses, and one report counted more than 135,000 copies exposed to the internet. Its creator joined OpenAI in February 2026, which makes the foundation's independence worth watching. It scores well on Power and Lock-in and lower on being something an ordinary person can safely point at their whole life.