OpenClaw
OpenClaw is an open-source, self-hosted personal AI assistant platform that enables users to interact with artificial intelligence through various messaging channels. The project allows individuals to run their own AI assistant on personal hardware while maintaining control over their data and infrastructure.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. History
3. Mission and Objectives
4. Organizational Structure
5. Projects and Initiatives
6. Transparency and Funding
7. Partnerships and Collaborations
Introduction
OpenClaw is a community-driven AI assistant platform designed to operate across multiple operating systems and communication channels. The software, distributed under the MIT License, enables users to deploy personal AI assistants on their own devices rather than relying on cloud-based services. As of February 2026, the project's GitHub repository has accumulated over 220,000 stars and 42,000 forks, with contributions from approximately 370 developers.
The platform supports integration with major messaging services including WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Google Chat, Signal, Microsoft Teams, and iMessage, as well as companion applications for macOS, iOS, and Android. The system operates through a WebSocket-based Gateway control plane that manages sessions, channels, tools, and events.
History
OpenClaw originated as a weekend project in November 2025, initially conceived as "WhatsApp Relay." The project was first named Clawd, a reference to Anthropic's Claude AI assistant, but was renamed following a request from Anthropic's legal team. The project was subsequently renamed Moltbot in early 2025, chosen during a community discussion on Discord. The name referenced the molting process of lobsters, symbolizing growth and transformation. However, this name was ultimately considered insufficiently memorable.
The project adopted its current name, OpenClaw, following trademark clearance and domain acquisition. The name was designed to reflect both the project's open-source nature and its community origins, while retaining the lobster mascot that had become associated with the project. The official announcement of the rebranding occurred in early 2026 via the project blog.
Within its first two months of public release, the project attracted approximately 2 million website visitors in a single week and achieved over 100,000 GitHub stars. The first stable release was made available on November 24, 2025, with version 2026.2.22 released on February 23, 2026.
Mission and Objectives
The stated mission of OpenClaw centers on providing users with autonomous control over their AI assistant infrastructure and data. The platform is designed around three core principles:
Data Sovereignty: OpenClaw operates on user-controlled hardware, whether personal computers, home servers, or virtual private servers. This architecture ensures that user data remains under individual control rather than being stored on third-party cloud services.
Platform Independence: The system is designed to function across multiple operating systems (macOS, Linux, Windows via WSL2) and integrate with existing communication channels without requiring users to adopt new messaging platforms.
Community Development: As an open-source project, OpenClaw relies on community contributions for development, security auditing, and feature expansion. The project maintains active communication channels through Discord and GitHub for collaborative development.
The technical objectives include maintaining a modular architecture that supports multiple AI model providers, ensuring security through sandboxing and permission management, and providing extensibility through a skills and plugins system.
Organizational Structure
OpenClaw operates as an open-source project with a distributed organizational structure. The project founder, identified as Peter (GitHub username: steipete), initiated development and maintains a leadership role in project direction. As of February 2026, the project is transitioning to a multi-maintainer model to manage the volume of contributions and issues.
The project structure includes:
Core Contributors: A group of approximately 370 developers who have contributed code to the main repository. Top contributors include steipete, vignesh07, thewilloftheshadow, sebslight, cpojer, gumadeiras, obviyus, tyler6204, vincentkoc, and Takhoffman.
Community Governance: The project utilizes GitHub for code management and issue tracking (over 8,200 open issues as of February 2026) and Discord for community coordination. The community, self-described as the "Claw Crew," participates in development decisions and testing.
Development Model: The project follows a multi-channel release strategy with stable, beta, and development branches. Stable releases follow a date-based versioning scheme (vYYYY.M.D), with 50 releases published by February 2026.
The organization is exploring formalized maintainer compensation structures to support full-time development work on the project.
Projects and Initiatives
Core Platform
The OpenClaw platform consists of several integrated components:
Gateway System: A WebSocket-based control plane that manages sessions, channel connections, tool execution, and event routing. The Gateway operates as a central hub for all assistant interactions and can be accessed locally or remotely via Tailscale or SSH tunnels.
Multi-Channel Support: Native integrations with WhatsApp (via Baileys), Telegram (grammY), Slack (Bolt), Discord (discord.js), Google Chat, Signal (signal-cli), BlueBubbles (iMessage), Microsoft Teams, Matrix, Zalo, and WebChat. Additional channels can be added through the extension system.
Companion Applications: Optional native applications for macOS (menu bar application), iOS, and Android that provide voice interaction, canvas visualization, and device-specific capabilities such as camera access and screen recording.
Technical Capabilities
Multi-Agent Routing: Support for isolated agent workspaces with per-agent sessions, enabling different AI assistants to operate independently within the same installation.
Voice Interaction: Always-on speech recognition (Voice Wake) and continuous conversation mode (Talk Mode) for macOS, iOS, and Android, with support for ElevenLabs text-to-speech.
Browser Control: Dedicated Chrome/Chromium instance management with automated navigation and screenshot capabilities for agent-driven web interactions.
Skills System: Extensible plugin architecture supporting bundled, managed, and workspace-specific skills. The ClawHub registry provides discovery and installation of community-developed skills.
Security Features: Session-based sandboxing with Docker isolation for non-main sessions, permission management for system access, and configurable DM pairing policies to prevent unauthorized access.
Security Initiatives
In February 2026, OpenClaw released 34 security-focused commits addressing various vulnerabilities. The project published machine-checkable security models and maintains documentation on security best practices. The development team acknowledges that prompt injection remains an unsolved industry-wide challenge and recommends using robust AI models with strong prompt-injection resistance.
Security defaults include DM pairing policies that require unknown senders to complete verification before the assistant processes their messages, and sandbox modes that restrict tool access for group and channel sessions.
Transparency and Funding
OpenClaw operates as an open-source project under the MIT License, with all source code publicly available on GitHub. The project's development is transparent, with all commits, issues, and discussions accessible to the public.
Funding Model
The project accepts sponsorships and donations to support development. As of February 2026, documented sponsors include:
- OpenAI: Provides subscription-based model access
- Blacksmith: Infrastructure or services support
The project founder has indicated intentions to establish sustainable funding mechanisms to support full-time maintainers. The platform supports multiple AI model providers through subscription or API-based access, including Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (GPT), and various other providers through the Vercel AI Gateway.
The project does not charge licensing fees for the software itself, relying instead on community contributions, sponsorships, and donations for operational support.
Partnerships and Collaborations
Model Provider Integrations
OpenClaw maintains technical integrations with multiple AI model providers:
- Anthropic: Support for Claude models including Opus 4.6, recommended for long-context applications
- OpenAI: Integration with GPT and Codex models
Platform Services
Vercel AI Gateway: Default integration for zero-configuration model routing and API management, enabling support for multiple providers without requiring individual API key management for certain providers.
Tailscale: Integration for secure remote access to Gateway instances through Serve (tailnet-only) and Funnel (public) modes.
ElevenLabs: Text-to-speech provider for voice interaction features.
Community Collaboration
The project maintains active collaboration with the open-source community through GitHub and Discord channels. The "Claw Crew" community contributes code, documentation, security audits, and user support. The project welcomes contributions ranging from code submissions to bug reports and feature requests.
As of February 2026, the project continues to solicit community involvement in development, security review, and project governance decisions.
See Also
References
1. OpenClaw GitHub Repository - github.com/openclaw/openclaw
2. "Introducing OpenClaw" - OpenClaw Blog (2026)
3. OpenClaw Official Website - openclaw.ai
4. OpenClaw Documentation and Technical Specifications
External Links
---
*Categories: Free software projects | Chatbots | Artificial intelligence | Open-source artificial intelligence | Personal information managers | Cross-platform software*
*This page was last edited on 23 February 2026.*