What is OpenClaw?
A complete guide to the open-source personal AI assistant framework.
Overview
OpenClaw is a self-hosted gateway that connects your favorite chat apps — WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Signal, iMessage, and 10+ more — to AI coding agents. You run a single Gateway process on your own machine (or a server), and it becomes the bridge between your messaging apps and an always-available AI assistant.
With 120,000+ GitHub stars and an active community, OpenClaw is the most popular open-source personal AI assistant framework. It's MIT licensed and fully self-hosted — your data never leaves your machine.
Who is it for?
Developers and power users who want a personal AI assistant they can message from anywhere — without giving up control of their data or relying on a hosted service.
Key Features
Multi-Channel Inbox
One Gateway serves WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Signal, iMessage, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, Matrix, IRC, Feishu, LINE, Nostr, Twitch, Zalo, and WebChat simultaneously.
Agent-Native Architecture
Built for AI coding agents with tool use, sessions, memory, multi-agent routing, and streaming support. Uses Pi agent runtime in RPC mode.
5,700+ Skills on ClawHub
Extend your agent with community-built skills following the AgentSkills convention. Install with clawhub install <skill>.
Voice Wake + Talk Mode
Always-on speech recognition on macOS, iOS, and Android with ElevenLabs TTS. Talk to your agent hands-free.
Live Canvas & Browser Control
Agent-driven visual workspace with A2UI. Full browser automation with CDP control for web tasks.
Companion Apps
macOS menu bar app, iOS node, and Android node with Canvas, camera, screen recording, and location support.
Architecture
The Gateway is the single control plane for sessions, routing, and channel connections:
WhatsApp / Telegram / Slack / Discord / Signal / iMessage / ...
│
▼
┌───────────────────────────────┐
│ Gateway │
│ (control plane) │
│ ws://127.0.0.1:18789 │
└──────────────┬────────────────┘
│
├─ Pi agent (RPC)
├─ CLI (openclaw …)
├─ WebChat UI
├─ macOS app
└─ iOS / Android nodes Supported Models
While any model is supported, Anthropic Pro/Max with Claude Opus 4.6 is strongly recommended for long-context strength and better prompt-injection resistance. OpenAI ChatGPT/Codex subscriptions are also supported via OAuth.