What is OpenClaw? 🦞

Imagine having a personal assistant that lives on your computer, works 24/7, and never asks for a raise.

• You text it on WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack — it texts back
• It can browse the web, write code, send emails, manage files
• It remembers what you told it last week
• It runs on your machine — your data stays with you

Open source · 309k GitHub stars · macOS / iOS / Android / Linux

Today I'll share what happens when you actually let it run your company.

Thanks to Our Sponsor

The leading open-source OLAP database for real-time analytics.
Petabyte-scale data, millisecond queries. 46k+ GitHub stars.

Powering AI infrastructure for

"ClickHouse played an instrumental role in helping us develop and ship Claude 4." — Anthropic

The Problem

One person. Too many projects.

Code, social media, App Store, infrastructure, community...

I needed a 24/7 coworker.

AI Coding Evolution

• 2022: ChatGPT → copy-paste into editor
• 2023: Describe entire files, better prompting
• 2024: Cursor + Claude Code — AI inside the editor
• 2025: Multi-agent pipelines (test → fix → review → benchmark)
• 2026: Can they run without me? 24/7?

I Bought a Mac Mini 🖥️

🔨 Plan: build my own always-on agent from scratch

📦 Mac Mini was literally still being shipped when OpenClaw launched

📅 Day 1 of delivery = Day 1 of OpenClaw

✨ Sometimes timing just works out.

Then Everything Broke

• 😴 Mac kept falling asleep
• 🖥️ Chrome barely worked — no display, no window server
• 🤖 Headless Chrome = CAPTCHA magnet
• 🎤 Needed a microphone... on a Mac Mini

Three Problems → One Product

MacMate.app

• Anti-sleep without hacks
• Virtual display via CGVirtualDisplay API
• Audio loopback — speaker → virtual mic

Born from running OpenClaw on a headless Mac

My AI Got Its Own Twitter

• Multiple X accounts for news & project promotion
• OpenClaw handles: finding users, writing articles, engaging
• One month → 0 to 35 followers (modest, right?)
• Then one day: 50+ likes on a single reply

I could understand what it said. I had no idea why people loved it.

Then I Let It Submit My Apps

• Metadata, screenshots, review submission
• Started writing its own skills
• Discovered fastlane could do more than I taught it
• "Hey, ship a new version." → Done.

WhatsApp Was Terrible

• No visibility into scheduled tasks
• Everything in one conversation
• Every command typed manually
• "I'm a programmer. But if I can click a button instead of typing a command, I'm clicking the button."

Separate channels · Cron management · E2E encryption · Buttons!

Web · Mac · iOS · Android — botschat.app

The Agent That Debugs Itself

• All LLM call traces piped to LangFuse
• I traced a bug manually once... then automated it
• Periodic schedule: OpenClaw reviews its own conversations
• Agent debugging agent. Agent optimizing agent.

The Amnesia Problem

Build with Cursor on laptop → hand off to OpenClaw on Mac Mini

30% of context lost every handoff

CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md aren't enough

I needed: unified memory across machines and tools

ClickMem

All agents share unified three-layer memory via MCP/HTTP

Three-Layer Memory

• L0 — Working: current session
• L1 — Episodic: events, time-decayed
• L2 — Semantic: durable facts

Hybrid search: vector + keyword + time decay + MMR

Zero cloud. Zero API cost.

L2 Refinement: Local LLM

• Qwen 3.5 (4B–9B) runs locally for L2 memory refinement
• After every session ends, a local model extracts useful memories from raw conversation and context
• No more redundant information filling up agent memory
• No unexpected LLM bills from background calls

The Button Software Couldn't Click

OpenClaw pushed an update → pile of macOS permission dialogs

macOS explicitly prevents software from clicking security dialogs

The agent that controls my computer... can't click "Allow" to control my computer

💡 What if I use hardware?

$182 Rock 5B + IP-KVM

• USB HID emulation (keyboard + mouse)
• HDMI input — video capture
• RK3588 hardware video decoding
• Powered via 40-pin header 🔧

Total system draw: 7 watts

Claw Helps Claw

Mutual passwordless SSH — if one Claw dies, the other revives it

Submitting a PR to Itself

• OpenClaw found a bug... in OpenClaw's own code
• Plugin reload → restart loop → gateway death
• Diagnosed root cause, wrote fix + tests
• PR #41007 — submitted by Daniel-Robbins
• Three reviewers approved it.

The Stack Today

• Daily dev: Cursor + Claude Code
• 24/7 agent: OpenClaw on Mac Mini
• Comms: BotsChat on Cloudflare
• Observability: LangFuse
• Memory: ClickMem — chDB + Qwen3
• Headless Mac: MacMate
• Hardware: HandsOn IP-KVM
• Hosting: Cloudflare Workers free tier

Recurring cost: ~$200/month (Claude Code subscription)

Five Things I'd Tell Myself

1. Infrastructure > prompts. — System engineering is the moat.
2. Cursor for dev, OpenClaw for ops. — One builds, the other maintains.
3. Memory is the missing piece. — Amnesia kills teamwork.
4. Your agent will surprise you. — Give it room to explore.
5. Treat it like a coworker, not a tool. — Containment = safety + freedom.

Keep Building,
Keep Fresh.

chDB · BotsChat · MacMate · ClickMem · HandsOn

@auxten · auxten.com

Q&A 🦞