Meet OpenClaw - A Revolution in AI Workflow Automation

You might have recently heard about Clawbot. Or maybe you’ve read something about Moltbot. You could have also seen mentions of OpenClaw. While different, all of these refer to the same thing - a new kind of open-source AI that has taken up the tech world by storm. In spite of the name changes, the now dubbed OpenClaw, has lit a fire online, sparking vast interest in developer communities and social feeds across different branches worldwide.

But what makes OpenClaw different from other automation AI agents and chat bots? The answer is simple - its ability to make decisions on your behalf using reason when it comes to executing tasks. It achieves this by utilizing a combination of AI intelligence systems and messaging-first interactions. And the best part? You can send instructions through the apps that you already use on a regular basis like Telegram, Discord, Signal, WhatApp and the agent can set up everything on your behalf like scheduling meetings and sending out emails.

But while powerful, OpenClaw does raise quite a few security questions as well as additional concerns. Let’s take a deeper look at the state of OpenClaw, how it compares to other AI agents and some use case examples where it's applicable.

OpenClaw’s Aims & History

As we already mentioned, OpenClaw is an AI agent that aims to do tasks instead of you, making it sort of a personal AI assistant. Its main advantage is that it doesn’t just execute simple workflows that you set, but it is capable of understanding and interpreting your instructions, doing so through multiple different platforms and channels that you regularly use.

Unlike other automation platforms like n8n and Zapier, OpenClaw takes into account additional factors like context and task priority, and then makes decisions based on them. This allows it to always be ready for anything you throw at it. This versatility means that it can combine multiple different actions or tasks into one flow that it can execute and learn from should it fail. This, ultimately, means that complex multi-staged tasks like research, writing, editing, notification, delegation and everything that a single process can be boiled down to, can all be done with a single command, which helps bring automation to many different workplaces.

Starting out in late 2025, a small developer team led by Peter Steinberger began research in order to create an AI agent that is much more than a simple chatbot. The initial idea - create a system that can understand user input and perform actions across multiple platforms. This led to the creation of Clawdbot, which started gaining popularity across dev communities with incredible speed. Clawdbot had to later be rebranded to Moltbot due to some trademarking disputes, but the devs finally landed on OpenClaw due to its openness and agility.

Due to its open-source nature, it was swiftly embraced by the community and contributions started to come very fast. Plugins were developed, behaviour was refined and integrations were expanded all in the matter of a few months. This led to OpenClaw’s GitHub repository gaining huge traction and viral momentum, which sparked a revolution when it comes to accessing the power of AI - that it is no longer just a passive workflow follower, but an active part of automation.

What Problems Does OpenClaw Solve?

Due to its nature, OpenClaw can easily find applications to many different businesses and personal projects because of the vast array of problems that it automatically solves, which are most commonly connected to productivity, speed and management.

Fragmented Automation Across Apps

Instead of having to rely on multiple tools for different things like a messaging platform, a calendar or meeting scheduler, an email client and other tools that people use on a daily basis, you can simply utilize OpenClaw and get a single place from which you can operate everything. This centralization of access not only makes it easier to manage everything from calls to messages, but also helps boost productivity without having the need to switch between multiple contexts.

Rigid, Manually Built Workflows

Unlike traditional automation platforms like n8n that require a pre-defined workflow in order to operate, OpenClaw utilizes natural language to perform tasks. This makes it much easier to not only get started, but to also operate the agent as you won’t need to spend time setting up workflows, conditions and actions.

Lack of Proactivity

A lot of automation tools are only designed to run when certain events are triggered. OpenClaw does more than that, it can send you reminders, suggest improvements and even follow up on already started tasks, taking a proactive approach rather than simply waiting.

Data Privacy and Local Control

OpenClaw is designed to be self-hosted in order for data to remain on your infrastructure, which is why local machines and cloud hosting like privacy-friendly VPS servers are fantastic environments for the agent to run on as data will be processed and stored securely.

OpenClaw vs Other Automation and AI Tools

OpenClaw solves a lot of problems, opening the door to new and exciting opportunities, but how does it compare to other automation tools? Here’s a detailed comparison between some of the most popular ones.

Security Concerns

While powerful, OpenClaw’s ability to access and operate with data across multiple platforms does raise some security concerns.

Potential Data Leaks

In order for OpenClaw to operate to the fullest, it needs to have broad access to systems that you utilize. Due to its nature, this requirement seems extremely obvious, but if misconfigured, this might result in giving authorized users access to sensitive data, private tools or potentially personal information. This could then ultimately result in data leaks or breaches.

Obvious Attack Target

While powerful, OpenClaw’s nature makes it a very obvious target for attackers and malicious actors. This, consequently, means that if you are going to be using the agent, you need to ensure that security is tight, passwords are strong and no endpoints are exposed for all channels that OpenClaw will be using.

Unwanted Actions & Data Confusion

Another important concern that has been raised is that potentially misinterpreted data could trick the agent into doing actions that it’s not supposed to do. This involves potential simple actions such as deleting files, running unauthorized scripts and even exposing information that OpenClaw shouldn’t have access to.

Cascading Risks

Due to OpenClaw’s ability to chain multiple tasks across different applications and mediums means that a potential vulnerability or liability in one channel can result in a cascade of risks down the line, totally changing the outcome.

Self-Hosting Responsibility

If you are going to be utilizing OpenClaw on your own local machine, then you have to take into consideration all of the additional security requirements that you need to ensure are in place so that data doesn’t leak. This includes network configuration, firewall setup, sandboxing and different multi-factor authentications.

Insider and Operational Risks

While this mainly refers to companies and organizations, it is important to limit access to OpenClaw for people that don’t need to use it. This means setting up access controls, audit logs and establishing clear usage policies.

Plugin Vulnerabilities

Another thing that might be a potential liability is third-party plugins. While incredibly powerful, third-party plugins are often a cause of different attacks as they serve as an easy entry point to system resources and data, which is similar to how WordPress plugins have always been a target.

AI-Specific Risks

Of course, we then get to one of the most hotly-debated security concerns not just for OpenClaw, but about AI in general - unpredictability. Even without all of the aforementioned factors, the agent can still do something that it’s not supposed to and with this advanced way of taking action, it might even disregard the guidelines and continue with the action. This can then lead to simple problems like data loss or workflow disruptions to even more substantial security issues like data breach.

Network Exposure

Finally, if OpenClaw is going to be exposed to the public internet, make sure that all security measures are in place. This involves using VPNs, restricting access and establishing firewall rules.

Why OpenClaw Is Designed to Be Self-Hosted

As we covered, OpenClaw’s strength is that it was developed to be self-hosted and you can’t really stray away from that fact given all of the access that it needs alongside the data that it is going to be exposed to. Because of this, you generally have two different options - to either host it on your own local machine or to trust a privacy-friendly, secure and fully transparent cloud hosting provider like VPSBG that you know will ensure your data security. But what are the other benefits of self-hosting OpenClaw?

Data Privacy & Ownership

Hosting your own instance of OpenClaw ensures that all information will remain on your machine or server, ensuring that no data leaks occur. It's actually even better to host this on a cloud VPS as the agent won't have access to any of your personal information on your local machine, keeping the scope very limited.

Control Over AI Models

OpenClaw generally allows users to swap the AI backend between popular ones like Claude or GPT to local language models (LLMs), giving more control over cost and features.

Avoiding Vendor Lock-In

With cloud-based AI platforms, users are tied to pricing and policies that they might not like. When it comes to OpenClaw, running it onto your machine or a pre-defined VPS hosting plan allows you to scale and modify your agent on demand.

Cost Transparency

When self-hosting OpenClaw, users can also take a much better and predictable approach on how they utilize the agent and how much it is going to cost them.

Uptime

If you are going to be running OpenClaw locally, then you don’t need to depend on others like your hosting provider, meaning that sudden downtime or service disruptions won’t affect your installation. This, while good, can also sometimes backfire as your local machine might not always be at a 100% uptime, which is where a cloud hosting self-hosted alternative would fit.

Real-World Use Cases

Now that we’ve covered the idea behind OpenClaw and it’s security concerns, what are some use cases that it would slot right in?

Personal AI Assistant

Going by everything we’ve said so far, its best implementation is definitely as a personal assistant. Given that it can do anything from booking meetings, research and sending reminders to writing emails and sending messages, it is definitely a go-to choice for those looking to centralize their work to one single hub.

Developer & DevOps Workflows

While it can do simple tasks like the ones we mentioned, it can also do much more complex things like running scripts, monitoring logs, deploying updates and much more. This makes the agent extremely powerful for developers, allowing them to be more productive while alleviating them from tedious maintenance tasks.

Customer Support Automation

Since it uses popular messaging platforms, OpenClaw is a great solution for those users that need to provide context-aware responses to customer queries. This not only helps reduce the load on support teams, but keeps the whole conversation going, without the team needing to spend time answering common questions.

Home Automation

OpenClaw can easily be integrated with smart home devices, allowing users to basically control appliances, lights and temperature settings with a simple command.

In general, OpenClaw is very well suited for developers, technical users, freelancers, business users and teams that want to experiment with introducing AI into their workflows. The learning curve and the self-hosting need for people that are just starting out and don’t have much technical experience is what usually makes it not suitable for everyone, but this doesn’t mean that people can’t start using the agent, they will just need some extra time to set things up correctly. Here's a direct comparison between the setup complexity and the capability depth for OpenClaw and some of the most popular agents.

Here, setup complexity reflects the actual effor that is required to install and configure the agent while capability depth shows how autonomous and adaptive each tool can be in terms of flexibility.

Is the hype worth it?

Overall, OpenClaw is a statement to how people are starting to perceive AI. It’s much more than a simple chatbot or automation agent, it has the power to boost productivity and solve tedious everyday tasks in a procedural, outcome-based manner. This multi-platform accessibility proves that AI continues to evolve and integrate with other systems.

But while powerful, it does come with its own share of security and privacy concerns that need to be addressed and handled in order for everything to work smoothly and without problems so users that do want to utilize the agent have to take these extra precautions to ensure data security.

Ultimately, even though some might still perceive OpenClaw as just temporary hype, it’s much more than that. It serves as the stepping stone to the next stage of the evolution and adaptation of AI, helping developers, power users and businesses boost productivity and efficiency.