Index / OpenClaw · updated Sep 3, 2026
OpenClaw
openclaw/openclaw · healthy · rank 1 of 43 by stars
The canonical personal AI assistant gateway: runs on your own devices and meets you in the chat channels you already use. Massive community momentum (387k stars) with extremely active development focused on UI performance, reliability, and multi-channel integrations.
Facts
Repository
Runtime
Posture
Community
Security breakdown
Composite 72 / 100 · how these are scored
higher is safer
higher is safer
higher is safer
higher is safer
higher is riskier
Model access
Read from the repository, not written by a model · 284 files examined
10 providers · runs locally · gateway support
Pinned models
gpt-5.6-sol released 2026-07-09 — 2 months old (from the public model catalogue)
Pin last edited 2 months ago
Evidence
Baseline project
OpenClaw is the reference point for every alternative on this site.
Use OpenClaw as the baseline when you want maximum ecosystem breadth, then compare it against narrower tools that optimize for security, local-first operation, team workflows, or ultra-lightweight deployment.
Star activity
388,734 stars today
Overview
OpenClaw is the canonical open-source personal AI assistant gateway, written in TypeScript and designed for a single operator. It runs on your own devices (macOS, Linux, Windows) and connects models, tools, messaging channels (Discord, Telegram, and more), and optional companion apps through one central Gateway, with a web-based Control UI dashboard for management.
Architecturally it is a Node.js daemon (Node 22.22.3+/24.15+/25.9+) installed via curl/PowerShell installers or npm, with onboarding that verifies model access, provisions a workspace, and configures the Gateway. The ecosystem includes ClawHub, a public skill and plugin registry with thousands of community skills, plus companion projects and third-party harnesses that integrate with or import from OpenClaw.
Recent development is heavily focused on polish and performance: the latest commits consolidate the Control UI boot chunk graph (cutting chat interactivity from ~1600ms to ~575ms at 50ms RTT), fix lazy-loading replay loops, and harden CI and dependency contracts. Compared to lightweight clones (e.g., Go-based PicoClaw), OpenClaw trades a heavier runtime footprint for the most complete feature set, largest community, and richest skill ecosystem in the space.