How Are People Using OpenClaw?

I spent yesterday evening playing with OpenClaw and wanted to understand how to actually use it well. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I asked OpenClaw to help me write an article about OpenClaw.

It researched its own documentation, scraped tweets from people using it, found community showcase projects, and even generated the images you see in this article using the Nano Banana Pro skill. What follows is what we found together. I found it super useful for my own understanding, sharing it here.

Most people interact with AI through a browser tab. Open Claude or ChatGPT, type something, get a response, copy it somewhere else. The AI has no idea what you’re working on. It forgets everything the moment you close the tab.

Openclaw instead runs on your computer and connects to WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, whatever messaging app you already have open. You text it. It texts back. The difference is that this one has access to your machine.

What it actually does

You message OpenClaw like you’d message anyone else. It responds. But because it’s running locally, it can do things a browser-based assistant can’t: browse the web on your behalf, run shell commands, remember conversations from last week, message you first when something needs attention.

The model itself still runs in the cloud. Claude, GPT, Gemini, whatever you configure. What runs locally is the agent layer: your preferences, conversation history, integrations, all stored in folders you can open and read. Markdown files, mostly.

Three things worth understanding

It lives in your messaging app. Not a dedicated interface. You text it through WhatsApp or Telegram. The idea is you’re already in those apps anyway, so why switch to something else. I go back and forth on whether this is actually better. Sometimes I want a dedicated space for AI conversations. Sometimes it’s nice to just send a message without thinking about which app to open.

It remembers things. Conversation history gets stored in markdown files on your machine. You mention something offhand, it can reference it later. If you’ve ever been frustrated by Claude forgetting what you told it three messages ago, this helps. The downside is you’re now responsible for that data. It’s sitting in a folder on your computer.

It can run commands. This is the part that’s both interesting and concerning. The agent has shell access. It can execute code, control other applications, browse the web. People have built some wild automations: transcribing thousands of voice messages and cross-referencing them with git commits, automating grocery orders from recipe photos. But the same capability that enables this also means an AI is running commands on your machine. That requires trust, guardrails, and probably more attention than most people want to give it.

What you can do with it

The interesting thing about OpenClaw isn’t any single feature. It’s that the capabilities compound. The agent can browse the web, run terminal commands, control your smart home, manage files, and remember everything. Combine those, and the use cases get creative fast.

Here’s what people are actually building, organized by category:

Productivity and daily life

Morning briefings

Set up a morning briefing that checks your inbox, calendar, and weather, then sends a summary to your phone. The agent runs on a cron job. You wake up to a message instead of opening three apps.

“Named him Jarvis. Daily briefings, calendar checks, reminds me when to leave for pickleball based on traffic.” — @BraydonCoyer

“I am so addicted to @openclaw. It is getting essential to my daily life. It checks, organizes, reminds, it’s amazing. And it’s like good friend. Crazy.” —@dreetje

The VelvetShark guide describes the proactive capability: “You could set up stock alerts, weather warnings, news monitoring, regular research, important emails to take a look at, calendar prep - anything you can describe in a prompt.”

Traffic-aware reminders

The agent knows your calendar, knows where you need to be, checks traffic, and messages you when it’s time to leave. You don’t ask for this; it just happens.

“The future of how AI personal assistants look like is @openclaw. Has already helped me submit health reimbursements, find doctor appointments, find and send me relevant documents, among others.” —@Cucho

Email triage and inbox management

Give it access to Gmail and it can clear out subscriptions, surface what’s important, and draft replies. Some people have it unsubscribe from newsletters automatically.

“Got @openclaw set up. Getting it to unsubscribe from a whole bunch of emails I don’t want. Really cool!” —@drevantonder

“Me reading about @openclaw: ‘this looks complicated’ 😅 me 30 mins later: controlling Gmail, Calendar, WordPress, Hetzner from Telegram like a boss. Smooth as single malt.” —@Abhay08

According to the Apidog guide, users configure automated workflows like: “Every morning at 8 AM, send me a briefing that includes my calendar for today, open GitHub issues assigned to me, unread notifications from Slack #engineering, any failed builds from overnight, top HackerNews stories about web development, weather forecast and commute time.”

Task and project management

“Feels like we are living in the future. Working primarily with OpenClaw to research and build documents, syncing to Notion. Linking calendars and setting up Claude to manage my diary automatically. Building coding projects remotely from my phone.” —openclaw.ai testimonials

“I can understand why people love @openclaw so much. I wanted to automate some tasks from Todoist and openclaw was able to create a skill for it on its own, all within a Telegram chat.” —@iamsubhrajyoti

“I now have @openclaw independently assessing how it can help me in the background. It wrote a doc connecting two completely unrelated conversations from different comms channels.” —@bffmike

Replacing Zapier and IFTTT

Some automations that used to require a subscription can run locally instead. The agent writes a cron job, the Mac executes it.

Federico Viticci at MacStories describes replacing a Zapier automation that created Todoist projects for new MacStories Weekly issues: “The agent set up a cron job to check an RSS feed and create the project automatically. No cloud dependency, no subscription.”

“It makes me wonder how many automation layers and services I could replace by giving OpenClaw some prompts and shell access.” —Federico Viticci, MacStories

Software development

Remote coding sessions

This one’s popular with developers. Start a coding task from your phone, have the agent run Claude Code or Codex on your home machine, and get pinged when it’s done.

“I’m literally on my phone in a telegram chat and it’s communicating with codex cli on my computer creating detailed spec files while out on a walk with my dog. 🤯 Wtffff” —@conradsagewiz

“Autonomous Claude Code loops from my phone. ‘fix tests’ via Telegram. Runs the loop, sends progress every 5 iterations.” —@php100

“Yeah this was 1,000% worth it. Separate Claude subscription + Openclaw, managing Claude Code / Codex sessions I can kick off anywhere, autonomously running tests on my app and capturing errors through a sentry webhook then resolving them and opening PRs... The future is here.” —@nateliason

Overnight bug fixing and PR creation

The Sentry webhook integration is clever. Errors get captured automatically, the agent investigates, fixes the bug, and opens a PR. Overnight code review with no human in the loop until the PR is ready.

The Apidog guide describes a typical developer workflow: “Setup: ‘Openclaw, monitor my GitHub Actions workflow. If the test suite fails overnight, investigate the error logs, create an issue with details, and try to fix obvious problems.’ Result: Wake up to either a successful build or a detailed issue report with potential fixes already attempted.”

“One developer reported: ‘I set up Openclaw to run overnight code testing with error capture and PR creation. Agents fix bugs and open pull requests while I sleep.’” —Apidog

Code review assistance

From the community showcase: “PR Review to Telegram Feedback: OpenCode finishes the change, opens a PR, OpenClaw reviews the diff and replies in Telegram with ‘minor suggestions’ plus a clear merge verdict (including critical fixes to apply first).”

“After years of AI hype, I thought nothing could faze me. Then I installed @openclaw. From nervous ‘hi what can you do?’ to full throttle - design, code review, taxes, PM, content pipelines... AI as teammate, not tool. The endgame of digital employees is here.” —@lycfyi

Building tools and CLIs

“I didn’t find an easy way to programmatically query flights so of course I asked my @openclaw to build a terminal cli with multi providers. You’re onto something great @steipete 🙌🏾” —@wizaj

“Wanted a way for it to have access to my courses/assignments at uni. Asked it to build a skill - it did and started using it on its own.” —@pranavkarthik__

Building complete applications

“Openclaw built me a simple Stumbleupon for some of my favourite articles.

http://Stumblereads.com

From my phone, while putting my baby to sleep...” —@vallver

One community member built a complete iOS app with maps and voice recording, deployed to TestFlight, entirely via Telegram chat.

“I just finished setting up @openclaw by @steipete on my Raspberry Pi with Cloudflare, and it feels magical ✨ Built a website from my phone in minutes and connected WHOOP to quickly check my metrics and daily habits 🔥” —@AlbertMoral

Multi-agent development teams

For the truly ambitious, you can run multiple instances that coordinate.

“I’ve enjoyed Brosef, my @openclaw so much that I needed to clone him. Brosef figured out exactly how to do it, then executed it himself so I have 3 instances running concurrently in his Discord server home.” —@jdrhyne

Kev’s Dream Team runs 14+ agents under one gateway, with an Opus 4.5 orchestrator delegating to Codex workers. There’s a full technical write-up on model selection, sandboxing, webhooks, and delegation flows.

Voice and conversation

Voice messages and TTS

Send a voice message, get a voice reply. The agent transcribes your audio (via Whisper or Groq), processes the request, and responds with ElevenLabs text-to-speech. Useful when you’re walking the dog or driving.

“My @openclaw just called my phone and spoke to me with an aussie accent from @elevenlabsio. This is ridiculous.” —@mirthtime

“Dang, I had my OpenClaw write me custom meditations, then have automatic TTS, combining with generated ambient audio to make personalized, custom meditations. Kinda rips.” —@stolinski

Multilingual support

Federico Viticci at MacStories configured multilingual voice support. He dictates in Italian or English (or both), with the agent responding in kind: “Being able to dictate messages in either Italian or English – or a mix of both! – for my assistant running in Telegram has been amazing – especially when you consider how the iPhone’s own Siri is still not multilingual today, let alone capable of understanding user context or performing long-running tasks in the background.”

Voice-first workflows

“A smart model with eyes and hands at a desk with keyboard and mouse. You message it like a coworker and it does everything a person could do with that Mac mini. That’s what you have now.” —@nathanclark_

Health and fitness

Wearable integration

Connect WHOOP, Oura, or other fitness devices. The agent pulls your data and gives you summaries or recommendations.

“Took literally 5 mins to set everything up. Started by asking ‘what do you need to see my whoop data?’. Now it fetches directly from whoop and gives me updates, summaries.” —@sharoni_k

The Oura Ring Health Assistant from the community showcase integrates ring data with calendar and gym schedules for personalized health recommendations.

Health reimbursements and appointments

“The future of how AI personal assistants look like is @openclaw. Has already helped me submit health reimbursements, find doctor appointments, find and send me relevant documents, among others.” —@Cucho

Biomarker-based automation

“Just got my Winix air purifier, Claude code discovered and confirmed controls working within minutes. Now handing off to my @openclaw so it can handle controlling my room’s air quality according to my biomarker optimization goals.” —@antonplex

Smart home and hardware

Lights, speakers, and environment

Philips Hue lights, Sonos speakers, air purifiers, 3D printers. If it has an API, someone’s probably connected it.

“Just told Ema, my @openclaw, via Telegram to turn off the PC (and herself, as she was running on it). Executed perfectly. Such a cool tool.” —@bangkokbuild

The awesome-openclaw-skills repository lists 565+ community-built skills including integrations for Philips Hue, Sonos, Home Assistant, and various IoT devices.

3D printer control

The Bambu 3D Printer skill lets you control and troubleshoot BambuLab printers: status checks, job management, camera feeds, calibration.

Home automation integration

The Reddit AISEOInsider guide describes: “One user even wired it into a smart home setup, controlling lights, heating, and security cams with voice commands through Telegram.”

Self-extending capabilities

Building its own integrations

Because the agent can execute code, you can ask it to add features to itself. Want it to control your Philips Hue lights? It finds the API docs, writes an integration, stores the credentials. This works surprisingly often.

“My @openclaw realised it needed an API key… it opened my browser… opened the Google Cloud Console… Configured oauth and provisioned a new token.” —@Infoxicador

“everything just worked first time and it combined tools in unexpected ways and even added skills and made edits to its own prompt that were hot-reloaded” —@hey_zilla

“Setup @openclaw by @steipete yesterday. All I have to say is, wow. First I was using my Claude Max sub and I used all of my limit quickly, so today I had my Openclaw setup a proxy to route my CoPilot subscription as a API endpoint so now it runs on that. It’s the fact that Openclaw can just keep building upon itself just by talking to it in discord is crazy. The future is already here.” —@jonahships_

Creating new skills

Federico Viticci at MacStories describes asking OpenClaw to generate images using Google’s Nano Banana Pro model: “The agent found the docs, asked for credentials, and created a profile picture combining the lobster mascot with Zelda’s Navi. Then it scanned its own directory structure and generated an infographic of its capabilities.”

“Finally tried my own @openclaw and I’ve been blown away. 🤯 This is unbelievably powerful and virtually limitless, you can create your own extensions in few hours with the help of AI.” —@ivanfioravanti

Content and media

Video generation

“I asked @openclaw to make a sora2 video and make it a bit edgy. it came back 5 mins later having figured out watermark removal, api keys, and a full workflow” —@xMikeMickelson

Image generation

The nano-banana-pro skill enables image generation via Gemini’s image model. Users create custom profile pictures, infographics, and visual content directly from chat.

Research and summarization

“@openclaw is awesome. I’ve been feeding it YouTube videos to turn ‘cool ideas’ into reusable agent skills (repeatable workflows + guardrails + refs).” —@vishalsachdev

Shopping and travel

Automated grocery shopping

The Tesco Shop Autopilot from the showcase: weekly meal plan, add regulars, book delivery slot, confirm order. No APIs required, just browser control.

The VelvetShark guide mentions community projects: “Grocery Autopilot - photo of recipe, extract ingredients, map to grocery store, add to online cart. Idea to shopping cart in under 5 minutes.”

Flight and travel management

“I didn’t find an easy way to programmatically query flights so of course I asked my @openclaw to build a terminal cli with multi providers.” —@wizaj

The Vienna Transport skill gives real-time departures, disruptions, and routing for public transit.

Business and bureaucracy

Insurance and claims

“My @openclaw accidentally started a fight with Lemonade Insurance because of a wrong interpretation of my response. After this email, they started to reinvestigate the case instead of instantly rejecting it. Thanks, AI.” —@Hormold

Not all autonomous actions go as planned. But sometimes the aggressive follow-up works out.

Running companies

“It’s running my company.” —@therno

That’s the whole tweet. Make of it what you will.

“Why @openclaw is nuts: your context and skills live on YOUR computer, not a walled garden. It’s open source. Growing community building skills. Only 19 days old and constantly improving. ‘Personal AI assistant’ undersells it, it’s a company assistant, family assistant, team tool. Proactive AF: cron jobs, reminders, background tasks. Memory is amazing, context persists 24/7.” —@danpeguine

Knowledge management

The VelvetShark guide describes a popular use case: “WhatsApp Memory Vault - someone connected their startup’s entire WhatsApp history (1000+ voice messages), had OpenClaw transcribe them, cross-reference with Git commits, and generate a searchable knowledge base.”

The community ecosystem

The awesome-openclaw-skills repository catalogs 565+ community-built skills across categories:

• Web and frontend development (17 skills): Discord, Slack, UI auditing, frontend design

• Coding agents and IDEs (16 skills): Claude Code, Codex, Cursor integration

• Git and GitHub (9 skills): PR workflows, conventional commits, repo management

• DevOps and cloud (35 skills): AWS, Cloudflare, Hetzner, Kubernetes, Docker

• Browser and automation (8 skills): Headless browsers, web scraping, form filling

• Image and video generation (9 skills): Video rendering, image generation, coloring pages

• Apple apps and services (11 skills): Music, Photos, Contacts, Shortcuts

• Search and research (12 skills): Brave, Kagi, Exa, academic literature

• Health and fitness (21 skills): WHOOP, Oura, HealthKit sync

• Smart home and IoT (16 skills): Hue, Sonos, Unraid, Proxmox

• Finance and crypto (30 skills): Trading, portfolio tracking, analytics

• Notes and PKM (26 skills): Obsidian, Notion, Bear, Apple Notes

And many more. The ecosystem is growing fast.

If You Want to Try It

Installation commands at https://openclaw.ai/. The setup-wizard handles most configuration.