Why OpenClaw FKA Clawdbot Matters

If you’ve been online in the past few days, you’ve likely been bombarded with words like “Moltbook,” “OpenClaw” and “Clawdbot.” We’re here to break down what it means and how it’s giving us a peek into how AI might evolve.

OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent released late last year that can write code, edit files and surf the web to complete tasks on behalf of users. (The agent was originally named Clawdbot but was renamed to Moltbot and then OpenClaw after legal threats from Anthropic, which has an AI model and chatbot called Claude.)

Users interact with OpenClaw through one of several well-known messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, instead of a dedicated app like Anthropic’s Claude. OpenClaw’s software stays on a user’s computer instead of in a company’s cloud servers, and users can power the agent using the AI models of their choice, including OpenAI’s or Google’s. OpenClaw can also access a user’s computer while other AI agents, like Anthropic’s Cowork, are limited to chosen folders in a computer, for now.

OpenClaw was already blowing up in tech circles, but it wasn’t until the creation of Moltbook, a social media site for AI agents, last week that it began entering the mainstream.