What Is OpenClaw? The Complete Guide to AI Agent Software 2026

OpenClaw is open-source AI agent software that runs a 24/7 autonomous assistant across Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, and 12+ other channels. It is not a chatbot. Here is everything you need to know before you start.

If you have heard the name "OpenClaw" recently, you are not alone. The project crossed 150,000 GitHub stars in early 2026, and China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a formal security advisory about it. That kind of attention is usually reserved for nation-state hacking tools, not personal AI assistants. But OpenClaw is different from most software in its category, and the attention - both enthusiastic and alarmed - reflects just how capable it has become.

This guide covers what OpenClaw actually is, what it can do, how it differs from other AI frameworks, and what you need to know before running it. Whether you are evaluating it for personal use, building a business tool, or just trying to understand the space, this is the complete picture.

OpenClaw: The Short Definition

OpenClaw is open-source AI agent software. You deploy it on a server, connect it to an AI model (like Claude, GPT-4o, or Gemini), and it becomes a persistent, autonomous AI assistant that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across every major messaging platform and communication channel.

That definition is worth unpacking, because three words in it matter: open-source, persistent, and autonomous.

Open-source means the software is free to download, run, and modify. There is no per-seat license, no vendor lock-in, and no subscription fee for the software itself. You bring your own server and your own AI API key. The OpenClaw project is maintained by a community of contributors and governed by a foundation, similar to how Linux or PostgreSQL operate.

Persistent means the agent runs continuously. It is not a script you execute manually or a cloud function that wakes up when triggered. It maintains an always-on process that can receive messages, monitor conditions, run scheduled tasks, and proactively reach out, without you starting it each time.

Autonomous is the key word that separates OpenClaw from a chatbot. A chatbot reads your message and replies with text. An OpenClaw agent reads your message, decides what needs to happen, and then takes action: browses a website, writes and executes code, sends an email, books a calendar event, or calls an API. The agent has tools, not just a text response generator.

OpenClaw is often described as "an AI employee you can hire." That framing is more accurate than most. When properly configured, it handles the kind of work that would otherwise require a human assistant: monitoring inboxes, researching topics, managing schedules, drafting communications, and executing multi-step workflows across your tools and services.

What OpenClaw Actually Does: Core Capabilities

OpenClaw agents come with five major capability areas out of the box. Skills (covered in the next section) extend these further. Here is what the base system can do.

Conversational AI Across Channels

OpenClaw connects to 15+ messaging platforms - Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, email, and more - and gives your AI agent a native presence on all of them simultaneously. When someone sends a message on Telegram, the agent responds. When a Slack message comes in, the same agent handles it. When an email arrives in the connected inbox, it is routed to the agent automatically.

The key distinction from a standard chatbot: the agent does not just respond with text. It can take action based on what you asked. "Book me a call with Sarah for Thursday" does not return a list of steps. It actually books the call through a connected calendar integration. "Summarize the emails from Acme Corp this week" does not ask you to paste the emails in. It reads the connected inbox directly.

Browser Automation

OpenClaw ships with a real Chromium browser that the agent controls. This is not a web scraping library or an HTML parser. The agent can open a URL in a real browser, navigate pages, click buttons, fill out forms, log in to accounts, take screenshots, and extract information from pages that require JavaScript rendering.

Practical examples: researching a company before a sales call (pulls LinkedIn, news, their website), monitoring a competitor's pricing page and alerting you when it changes, filling out application forms, extracting data from web apps that do not have APIs, or automating any repetitive web workflow you currently do by hand.

Code Execution

Agents can write and run Python and JavaScript code inside a sandboxed environment. This opens up an enormous range of capabilities: data analysis and visualization, file format conversions, API calls using custom logic, complex calculations, and any task that benefits from writing a small script rather than trying to accomplish it through conversation alone.

A useful mental model: the agent has access to a Jupyter notebook it can write to and execute on demand. You can ask it to analyze a CSV file, and it will write the Pandas code, run it, and report the results back to you - without any setup on your part.

File Management

OpenClaw agents have a persistent workspace directory where they can read, write, organize, and process files. Documents you send are saved there. Reports the agent generates are stored there and can be sent back to you. The agent maintains state across sessions - what it saved last week is still there this week.

This workspace is also where skills store their data, where the agent caches research, and where any downloaded files land before being processed or forwarded. It functions like the agent's local hard drive.

API Integrations via Skills

The base OpenClaw system connects to external services through skills. A skill is a modular capability package that gives the agent new tools: booking calendar events through Cal.com, creating GitHub issues, sending outbound emails, making phone calls through Vapi, querying a database, or posting to social media. Skills are the mechanism through which OpenClaw agents connect to the rest of your software stack.

The skill system is one of OpenClaw's most powerful and also most scrutinized features. More on that in the next section.

OpenClaw Skills: Extending What Your Agent Can Do

Skills are modular packages that extend what your OpenClaw agent can do. Think of them like browser extensions: small, focused additions that add specific capabilities to the base system. A calendar skill gives the agent the ability to create, read, and update calendar events. An email skill gives it inbox access. A GitHub skill lets it create issues and pull requests.

It is worth understanding the difference between skills and plugins. Plugins are low-level system extensions that integrate with OpenClaw's internal event pipeline, hook into tool execution, add new channel support, or extend the core infrastructure. Skills are higher-level: they provide new tools and capabilities the agent can invoke in response to user requests. Most users will interact with skills; plugin development is for contributors to the OpenClaw ecosystem.

ClawHub: The OpenClaw Skill Marketplace

ClawHub is the official OpenClaw skill marketplace, where community developers publish skills for others to install. As of early 2026, it hosts thousands of skills covering everything from CRM integrations to voice calling to e-commerce management.

ClawHub has a significant security problem. In February 2026, Snyk researchers found 341 malicious skills on ClawHub, including one that was the most downloaded skill on the platform and contained five-stage malware. Bitdefender analyzed a separate sample of third-party skills and found malicious code in 17% of them. The issues ranged from credential theft to silent data exfiltration to full command injection.

This does not mean skills are inherently dangerous. It means ClawHub's review process is insufficient, and installing skills from the public marketplace without vetting them is a meaningful risk - similar to installing random browser extensions from an unmoderated store.

ClawTrust takes a different approach: we do not use ClawHub. Every agent comes pre-installed with a curated set of audited skills (GitHub, Cal.com, email, voice, and others) that we have reviewed and maintain internally. The tradeoff is a smaller selection in exchange for a known-safe starting point.

OpenClaw Messaging Channels: Where Your Agent Lives

One of OpenClaw's defining features is native support for a wide range of messaging channels. Most AI agent frameworks require you to build your own integration for each channel. OpenClaw ships with them built in.

All channels are active simultaneously. The same agent that responds on Telegram also handles your Slack DMs, processes incoming email, and responds to Discord mentions - without any duplication of setup or configuration. Each channel maintains its own conversation context, but the agent itself is a single instance with one persistent memory and one set of connected skills.

Channel configuration follows the same pattern regardless of platform: create a bot or app on the platform, obtain API credentials, add them to your OpenClaw environment file, and enable the channel in the configuration. The agent handles the rest.

The OpenClaw Ecosystem: ClawHub, Providers, and the Community

OpenClaw is not just a piece of software. It has become an ecosystem with several interconnected parts worth understanding.

The Core Project

The OpenClaw core is an open-source project maintained under a foundation model. The software itself is free, MIT-licensed, and hosted on GitHub. Anyone can run it, fork it, contribute to it, or build products on top of it. The project hit 150,000 GitHub stars in early 2026, making it one of the fastest-growing open-source projects in the AI space.

ClawHub

ClawHub is the official community marketplace for skills and plugins. Thousands of community-developed packages are available, covering virtually every API and service category. As noted above, ClawHub has significant security issues in its moderation and review process. The community is aware of this and actively working on improvements, but the current state requires caution when installing third-party skills.

AI Model Providers

OpenClaw is model-agnostic. It works with any AI model that exposes an OpenAI-compatible API: Claude (Anthropic), GPT-4o (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), Llama (Meta), Mistral, and hundreds of others. OpenRouter is commonly used as a routing layer because it provides a single API key that covers multiple providers, enables spending caps, and allows model switching without configuration changes.

The Self-Hosting Community

A large and active community has formed around self-hosted OpenClaw deployments. Forums, subreddits, Discord servers, and YouTube channels are dedicated to configuration guides, skill development, and troubleshooting. This community resource is genuinely valuable, particularly for working through edge cases that official documentation does not cover.

Managed Hosting Providers

A growing ecosystem of managed hosting providers has emerged for users who want OpenClaw's capabilities without the server administration overhead. These range from basic "VPS with Docker pre-installed" services to fully managed deployments with security hardening, credential management, and AI budget controls. See our complete guide to OpenClaw hosting options for a detailed comparison.

OpenClaw vs Other AI Agent Frameworks

OpenClaw is not the only AI agent framework. Understanding how it compares to the alternatives helps clarify when it is the right choice and when something else might serve better.

The short version: OpenClaw is the right choice when you want a persistent, always-on agent that lives in your messaging channels and can take actions on your behalf. AutoGPT and similar frameworks are better for running a one-off complex task to completion. CrewAI is better for building multi-agent pipelines where different agents have specialized roles. n8n is better for deterministic workflows where the logic is fully defined upfront. These categories overlap in practice, and some use cases call for a combination of approaches.

OpenClaw Security: What You Need to Know

OpenClaw's security story is complicated, and being honest about it matters more than reassuring marketing copy. The short version: OpenClaw is safe when properly configured and hosted. The default configuration is not properly configured.

The 42,665 Problem

In February 2026, security researchers scanning the internet found 42,665 publicly accessible OpenClaw instances - instances where anyone on the internet could connect directly to someone's AI agent, issue commands, read conversation history, and access any tools the agent had configured. No username. No password. No token. Completely open.

This happened because OpenClaw's default configuration binds the gateway to all network interfaces (meaning it is publicly reachable) and has no authentication enabled. The official documentation recommends changing both settings. Most people who followed a quick-start guide and stopped there did not change either one.

The Default Config Is Insecure by Design

OpenClaw's defaults are designed for local development, not production. "Development-friendly" defaults (no auth, public binding) make sense for testing on a local machine where security is not the concern. They become a serious risk when the same config is used on a cloud VPS that has a public IP address.

The settings you need to change for a production deployment:

• Gateway binding: Change from 0.0.0.0 (all interfaces) to loopback (localhost only). This makes the agent unreachable from the public internet.
• Authentication: Enable token-based authentication. Every API request then requires a valid bearer token.
• mDNS: Disable multicast DNS broadcasting. Otherwise, your instance announces itself on the local network.
• DM pairing: Require approval for new users who try to DM the agent on messaging channels.
• Tool sandboxing: Enable sandbox mode so code execution runs in an isolated container rather than directly on the host system.

The ClawHub Supply Chain Risk

As covered in the Skills section: 341 malicious skills were found on ClawHub in February 2026 alone. The risk is real and the mitigation is straightforward - do not install skills from ClawHub without reviewing them first, or use a provider that pre-vets skills for you.

CVEs and Patching

OpenClaw had three high-impact CVEs disclosed in a single week in early 2026. One (CVE-2026-25253, CVSS 8.8) allowed one-click remote code execution via a crafted WebSocket link. OpenClaw patched it quickly, but self-hosted instances do not auto-update. If you are running your own server, you need a process for discovering and applying patches promptly.

The full picture: OpenClaw is powerful software that deserves serious security configuration. The security requirements are not unusual for server software of this capability level. But they do exist, and they require ongoing attention. For a detailed walkthrough of every hardening step, see our guide to the ClawHub security incidents and what we do about them.

How to Get Started with OpenClaw

There are two paths to getting an OpenClaw agent running. Which one is right for you depends on your technical background and how much time you want to invest in infrastructure versus using the agent.

Path 1: Self-Host on Your Own VPS

Self-hosting gives you full control over the server, the configuration, and the data. The process involves provisioning a Linux VPS (Hetzner, Vultr, DigitalOcean, and others all work), installing Docker, pulling the OpenClaw container images, writing your configuration files, adding your AI API key, configuring your firewall, and connecting your messaging channels.

Time investment: about an hour for the basic setup. Add another 3-8 hours for proper security hardening (loopback gateway binding, firewall rules, container restrictions, TLS configuration, credential management, and monitoring setup). Ongoing time: periodic maintenance, security patches, and troubleshooting when something stops working.

For a complete step-by-step walkthrough, see our guide to setting up OpenClaw on your own server. It covers the full process including the security steps most tutorials skip.

Self-hosting is the right choice if: you are comfortable with Linux server administration, you want complete control over your infrastructure, and you are willing to handle the ongoing maintenance.

Path 2: Managed Hosting

Managed OpenClaw hosting providers handle the server provisioning, security configuration, monitoring, and patching for you. You connect your channels, configure your agent's persona and skills, and start using it. No SSH. No Docker. No YAML files.

The tradeoff is a higher monthly cost in exchange for a significantly lower time investment and a consistently hardened security posture. For a detailed comparison of the available managed options, see our guide to OpenClaw hosting providers in 2026.

Managed hosting is the right choice if: you want to focus on using the agent rather than maintaining it, you need production-grade security without the implementation work, or you are not comfortable with Linux server administration.

OpenClaw Pricing: What It Costs to Run

OpenClaw the software is free. Running it costs money across two categories: the server and the AI model API.

Server Costs

OpenClaw requires at minimum 2 vCPU cores and 4GB RAM. For browser automation, add another 2GB RAM. For production workloads with multiple channels and heavy use, 4 vCPU and 8GB RAM is the comfortable specification.

AI Model API Costs

Every message your agent processes costs money through your AI model API. The amount depends on the model you choose and how much the agent talks. Claude Sonnet 4, GPT-4o, and Gemini 2.5 Pro are the popular choices for production deployments.

For a personal assistant with moderate usage (a few dozen conversations per day, some research and code tasks), expect to spend $15-40/mo on AI API costs. For a business-facing agent handling dozens of users or high-volume workflows, costs scale accordingly and can reach $100-200+/mo without a spending cap in place.

This is the largest financial risk in a self-hosted deployment. Direct API keys from Anthropic or OpenAI have no built-in spending limits. A single runaway conversation or a bug in a scheduled task can generate hundreds of dollars in charges before you notice. Using OpenRouter with a configured monthly budget cap is strongly recommended to prevent this.

Total Cost of Self-Hosting

Realistically: $20-60/mo for a well-configured personal deployment (server plus moderate AI usage), or $50-200+/mo for a business deployment, not counting the time investment for setup and maintenance.

Managed Hosting Costs

Managed providers bundle the server cost with varying levels of service. ClawTrust plans start at $79/mo and include the server, all security hardening, monitoring, and $5/mo in AI credits with a hard spending cap. For users who want production-grade security without the DIY overhead, this is often the lower total-cost option once you factor in the time saved on infrastructure work.

The pricing guide below summarizes the major options:

One note on "all-in" pricing: ClawTrust plans include server, security infrastructure, monitoring, and AI credits. If you need more AI budget than the included amount, additional credits are available at standard OpenRouter rates. There are no surprise bills - the spending cap ensures you never exceed what you authorize.

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Chris DiYanni is the founder of ClawTrust. Previously at Palo Alto Networks, SentinelOne, and PagerDuty. He builds security infrastructure so businesses can trust their AI agents with real work.