Launched in November 2025 Open Claw was more familiar in tech circles but like a pandemic outbreak it has spread all over the world in every sector and chances are you have heard of it by now, so we are here to explain to you what it is it. Open claw is a self hosted AI assistant you run on your own machine or VPS powered by AI models like AI or anthropic using API keys. The reason Open Claw has been trending is because of its use for day to day tasks like replying your WhatsApp messages, emails, social media and basically everything in your devices while you do nothing, i know it sounds simple yet potentially a security risk so let me show you how it really works and how it’s different to mainstream AI models like Chat gpt and more.
What really is open claw?
Like we have mentioned earlier, Open claw is a self hosted AI assistant you run on your own machine or VPS powered by AI models like AI or anthropic using API keys. Open Claw is an AI agent so let me highlight the difference with AI models like Chat GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Claude and more, so Open Claw can do tasks for you like summarizing and replying to your emails, WhatsApp, also manage social media handles, well basically handling your whole digital life without you prompting it.
So here is what i mean, for Chat Gpt or any other model to do something for you , you can prompt the model then it executes a task and the back and forth interaction requires you to prompt and ask but with Open Claw it’s a different story.
For example using cron jobs (more on that later) you can set open Open Claw to do certain tasks everyday like summarizing your emails everyday and replying to them in real time and in most cases the pattern is always the same skill and you create a scheduled job for your assistant to perform then open claw assistant performs the job and delivers you the result.
For example let’s say I connect my Gmail account to open claw by using a Google workspace skill then I create this job ping me on telegram when the specific client emails include a one sentence summary and a suggested reply now instead of digging my email inbox and potentially missing an email from a Client I just get the summarized message.
Another scenario is my assistant I GitHub skilled to then I create the job every morning at 10 AM. Here is how it would look like, send me the top three things in my repositories that need attention and tell me what I should do first now I start the day with a clear list instead of opening GitHub and trying to figure out where to begin.
The last example you connect a social media skill, we will use usex as an example then I create a job every morning check the top trending keywords in my niche the most relevant ones and send me three content ideas now if you’re a content creator, you can use that info from your assistant to spot a new topics and viral video ideas early if you’re a marker now you can easily track trending keywords for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and ads or if you’re just someone who’s into Tech or news, it keeps you up-to-date without having to scroll on social media all day now you’ve seen a few real examples.
Here’s the simple way to think about it.
You can connect open claw to the apps you are use like Gmail Slack so you already use Gmail, Slack, Telegram, GitHub or Discord, for example, skills and schedule jobs to solve real problems you deal with every day you let your assistant handle the repeat work in the background all on its own. This is where it starts to feel different than using the ChatGPT or Claude apps as an assistant, instead of juggling multiple conversations within their apps and constantly prompting the Chatbot to do everything.
With claw you have a one assistant that stays online 24 seven that can act on its own and gets more useful overtime because you host it yourself you control what it connects to what it can access and what you want it doing on a day-to-day basis so now the real question is, how do you set up claw you can set up claw on pretty much any machine you own a spare laptop, a desktop PC and right now Mac mini‘s are super popular for this but for beginners those options could be a bit inconvenient usually dealing with things like keeping the machine on 24 seven port forwarding and making sure you’re set up stay stable and they could be unreliable because the moment your computer sleeps or restarts or your Internet goes down, your assistant goes off-line too.
So the technicals?
The main requirement is simple simple wherever open claw is running it needs to stay online 24 seven and that’s why most people end up using a VPS instead, a VPS or virtual private server is basically a computer in the cloud that stays online 24 seven so your assistant is always there when you need it. Once you have that deployment it’s pretty straightforward, deploy claw using docker which is just a way to install and run it without manually setting up everything from scratch.
You can use Open Claw like Telegram instead of skills like Google workspace so it could begin integrating with your workflow and start assisting you with your daily tasks and the nice part is you don’t have to figure all of this out on your own. Once open claw is running, you can literally ask you to help you connect things and walk you through the next steps.
Open Claw is the GitHub skill directory, which is basically a big list of skills you can browse Reese that’s where people publish and discover new skills for open claw , second is the GitHub skilled directory, which is basically a big list of skills you could browse research and install.
Be careful of what skills you install even if they’re from claw hub or the GitHub directory people are currently publishing skills with malicious intent hidden inside them you could accidentally installed skill designed to steal your information, scrape data from your VPS or in general do things you definitely don’t want happening in the background so do your research and make sure you always understand what you’re installing.
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How do you install skills?
Installing a skill is usually pretty simple most of the time you just copy the GitHub link to the skill you want and message your assistant something like install the skill and then paste the link and Open Claw will try to install it and if anything breaks or goes wrong, you can ask your assistant to help troubleshoot it and get it working properly. Once you’ve got a few skills installed, the next step is telling your assistant how to use them and that’s what jobs are for.
Jobs are scheduled tasks so open claw can run something automatically on a schedule without you having to message it first the most common way to do.
This is with an open claw and by using something called cron jobs, which is just a simple task scheduler, it’s located in the dashboard a great first job to set up is a daily summary for example.
Have a check your Gmail in Google calendar once a day and send you a quick update on what’s new from there the best way to improve your set up is to keep it small anytime you notice yourself doing the same thing over and over that’s a good opportunity to create a new job for your assistant in overtime once it’s configured to your workflow.
So what could be wrong with Open Claw?
Open claw starts to feel less like a tool and more like something that’s actively helping you stay on top of things it’s worth mentioning that one of the biggest concerns right now regarding open claw is the security aspect of it claw is autonomous and that’s what makes it different but it also means you need to take Security very seriously if you connected to things like your personal email calendar contacts or files it has a real access if someone gets your API keys are tokens.
They could take over your entire set up run actions you didn’t approve and cost you a lot of time stress and potentially money. Start small be smart.
Do your research and only connect and install what you actually need and most importantly keep your keys and tokens a 100% secure, take your time as you learn and increase security as you go.
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