4 ms·

OpenClaw was an inevitability. An obvious idea that predates LLMs. It took this long for models and pricing to catch up. As much as I dislike this term, if ther

OpenClaw was an inevitability. An obvious idea that predates LLMs. It took this long for models and pricing to catch up. As much as I dislike this term, if there's one clear example of "Product Model Fit", it's OpenClaw - well, except that arguably what made it truly possible was subscription pricing introduced with Claude Code; before, people were extremely conservative with tokens. But the point is, OpenClaw is just the first that lucked and got viral. If not for it, something equivalent would. Much like LangChain in the early LLM days.

marssaxman 6mo ago
Would you mind explaining what that idea actually is? I don't understand what people are trying to do with this thing, or why they would think that would be a good thing to do, and some of the stories about it sound basically insane, so I must not be grasping the core idea.
- bravura 6mo ago
  It's a handful of useful features that together feel qualitatively different, like you're talking to a real person.
  - Planktonne 6mo ago
    Such things always feel qualitatively different to the people captured by the craze; it doesn't mean there actually is a difference.
- neutronicus 6mo ago
  It seems like the most fully reified attempt at allowing a person to delegate _all_ of their responsibilities to the Slop Machine. Which has of course always been the true allure of AI. Do nothing and pretend you did something, when pretending is something you can be bothered to do.
- radlad 6mo ago
  Plain English automation, including control of external systems. Even better that it exhibits some forms of decision-making autonomy for edge cases.
- tguedes 6mo ago
  To me it seems like an LLM-based implementation of automation software like Zapier. The problem with Zapier is you need services to provide APIs and Zapier needs to support those APIs to implement it in the automation workflow. But because OpenClaw can just use a web browser like a normal user, you don't need all these APIs and there's no theoretical limitations on the services that can be integrated and automated. Right now there's a lot of issues/bugs. People have more trust in a deterministic solution like Zapier. But maybe the LLMs and OpenClaw will get there eventually, and if it does, I can see how that's a better solution than a deterministic system.
mikeocool 6mo ago
> if there's one clear example of "Product Model Fit", it's OpenClaw You think so? OpenClaw certainly owned the hype cycle for a while. There was a thread on HN last week where someone asked who was actually using it, and the comments were overwhelmingly "tried it, it was janky and I didn't have a good use case for it, so I turned it off." With a handful of people who seemed to have committed to it and had compelling use cases. Obviously anecdotal, but that has been the trend I've seen on conversations around it lately. Also, the fact that the most starred repo on GitHub in a matter of a few months raises a few questions for me about what is actually driving that hype cycle. Seems hard to believe that is strictly organic.
- arrowsmith 6mo ago
  This thread? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783940
- smrtinsert 6mo ago
  pi.dev I'm much more interested in. Closer to the bone, or maybe better said, pi.dev is more like a lego and OpenClaw seems like a big Ninjago set. I was shocked when I saw the guy behind libgdx was also behind pi.dev. Random tech worlds colliding.

marssaxman 6mo ago

Would you mind explaining what that idea actually is? I don't understand what people are trying to do with this thing, or why they would think that would be a good thing to do, and some of the stories about it sound basically insane, so I must not be grasping the core idea.

bravura 6mo ago
It's a handful of useful features that together feel qualitatively different, like you're talking to a real person.
- Planktonne 6mo ago
  Such things always feel qualitatively different to the people captured by the craze; it doesn't mean there actually is a difference.
neutronicus 6mo ago
It seems like the most fully reified attempt at allowing a person to delegate _all_ of their responsibilities to the Slop Machine. Which has of course always been the true allure of AI. Do nothing and pretend you did something, when pretending is something you can be bothered to do.
radlad 6mo ago
Plain English automation, including control of external systems. Even better that it exhibits some forms of decision-making autonomy for edge cases.
tguedes 6mo ago
To me it seems like an LLM-based implementation of automation software like Zapier. The problem with Zapier is you need services to provide APIs and Zapier needs to support those APIs to implement it in the automation workflow. But because OpenClaw can just use a web browser like a normal user, you don't need all these APIs and there's no theoretical limitations on the services that can be integrated and automated. Right now there's a lot of issues/bugs. People have more trust in a deterministic solution like Zapier. But maybe the LLMs and OpenClaw will get there eventually, and if it does, I can see how that's a better solution than a deterministic system.

mikeocool 6mo ago

> if there's one clear example of "Product Model Fit", it's OpenClaw You think so? OpenClaw certainly owned the hype cycle for a while. There was a thread on HN last week where someone asked who was actually using it, and the comments were overwhelmingly "tried it, it was janky and I didn't have a good use case for it, so I turned it off." With a handful of people who seemed to have committed to it and had compelling use cases. Obviously anecdotal, but that has been the trend I've seen on conversations around it lately. Also, the fact that the most starred repo on GitHub in a matter of a few months raises a few questions for me about what is actually driving that hype cycle. Seems hard to believe that is strictly organic.

arrowsmith 6mo ago
This thread? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783940
smrtinsert 6mo ago
pi.dev I'm much more interested in. Closer to the bone, or maybe better said, pi.dev is more like a lego and OpenClaw seems like a big Ninjago set. I was shocked when I saw the guy behind libgdx was also behind pi.dev. Random tech worlds colliding.