OpenClaw (Clawdbot / Moltbot)
Peter Steinberger releases an open-source, self-hosted personal agent (first Clawdbot, then Moltbot, then OpenClaw) driven from WhatsApp, Telegram and Discord.
A local agent with persistent memory and broad system access, controlled through chat apps; it went viral in late 2026-01 (100K+ GitHub stars) after Anthropic's trademark complaint led to the rename to Moltbot (2026-01-27) and OpenClaw (2026-01-30). The repository now shows about 391K stars.
- Date
- Monday, 24 November 2025
- Lab
- OpenClaw (Peter Steinberger)
- Kind
- product
- Access
- open weights
- Price
- Free (MIT licence)
Figures
| Measure | Value | Measured by |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ~391K (2026-10) 247K by early 2026-03; 82.3K forks | independent |
Release date 2025-11-24 from Wikipedia. Access is 'open weights' only because that is the schema's nearest category. OpenClaw is MIT-licensed open-source software and ships no model weights. Fortune misstates the final name's launch month. Security concerns include access to private data, untrusted content and outbound messaging.
Sources
- github.com/openclaw/openclaw
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenClaw
- fortune.com/2026/02/15/openai-openclaw-ai-agent-developer-peter-steinberg-moltbot-clawdbot
This record was checked against its sources on 6 October 2026. How we check