In simple English
This tool puts a helpful artificial intelligence assistant directly onto your personal computer. It connects to chat apps you already use, such as Telegram, WhatsApp, and Discord. Your chat history, passwords, and private files stay right on your machine. You choose which model provider supplies the intelligence behind the scenes. It is free to download and run, though you pay external model providers for the messages you send.
What it is
OpenClaw is a self-hosted (running on your own hardware rather than someone else's cloud server) personal assistant gateway built in TypeScript (a programming language that adds safety rules to JavaScript). It connects messaging apps to language models and desktop actions through a local control plane.
What it is good for
Solo builders who want a custom artificial intelligence assistant that can read files, execute tasks, and chat across multiple messaging platforms without sending private data to a commercial service.
- Runs entirely on your own hardware to keep your personal data private.
- Connects to more than twenty different chat platforms out of the box.
- Permits swapping between different model providers without losing your setup.
- Requires Node.js (a system for running JavaScript outside a web browser) version 24 or newer installed on your machine.
- Running tools directly on your host machine creates potential security risks if misconfigured.
- Initial setup involves navigating multiple configuration files and pairing steps.
commercial hosted artificial intelligence chat interfaces
Claude or local language models
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Serves text, vision, speech, image and video models from one self-hosted service that imitates the paid interfaces.
curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash openclaw onboard --install-daemon