Hacker ApprovedDepartments

Moltbot

Ranked 8 of 26 AI agents by recommenders

Free open-source AI assistant that people find useful and easy to set up; critics agree its broad data access creates serious security risks.

Free open-source AI assistant that people find useful and easy to set up; critics agree its broad data access creates serious security risks.

60 people gave an opinion

recommend it
25
criticize it
35
approval share
42%
Each figure is one person. RecommendsCriticizes

Recommended in 2 of 13 months

  1. November 2025: not recommended
  2. December 2025: not recommended
  3. January 2026: recommended
  4. February 2026: recommended
  5. March 2026: not recommended
  6. April 2026: not recommended
  7. May 2026: not recommended
  8. June 2026: not recommended
  9. July 2026: not recommended
  10. August 2026: not recommended
  11. September 2026: not recommended
  12. October 2026: not recommended
  13. November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)

Why it doesn’t carry the badge

  • 25 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
  • 0.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
  • Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.

The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works

What people say about it

The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.

Why people recommend it

Each mark is one comment

  • Useful for real tasks

    “It came back though and stayed in the conversation. Definitely imperfect, for sure. But it did the thing.”

    Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it”

    “It crawls the web with a sandboxed subagent to find me interesting stuff to read in French and Japanese.”

    Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “1-Click RCE to steal your Moltbot data and keys”

    “It's still surprisingly useful even though it doesn't have access to anything that I value.”

    Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “1-Click RCE to steal your Moltbot data and keys”
  • Open-source, can self-host

    “the most promising open-source personal AI assistant I've found”

    Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “MoltBot Guide – Open-source AI assistant I'm betting on”

    “Opensource AI will win at the end - just look at moltbot”

    Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “China's genius plan to win the AI race is paying off”

    “Hosting Moltbot on your own hardware reigns supreme.”

    Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Run Clawdbot/Moltbot on Cloudflare with Moltworker”

What people warn about

Each mark is one comment

  • Security risks from broad access

    “The security nightmare happening here might end up being more persistant then we realize.”

    Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Hacking Moltbook: The AI Social Network Any Human Can Control”

    “We just saw last week people are setting up moltbots with virtually no knowledge of what it has and doesn't have access.”

    Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “GLM5 Released on Z.ai Platform”

    “Moltbot is a security nightmare, especially it's premise (tap into all your data sources)”

    Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “1-Click RCE to steal your Moltbot data and keys”
  • Unsafe install and default settings

    “Still not saying it's entirely wise to deploy a moltbot like this. After all, it starts with a curl | sh.”

    Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “The Scott Shambaugh Situation Clarifies How Dumb We Are Acting”

    “safe enough if you harden it and unsafe if you treat it like a normal app”

    Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Is Moltbot (clawd bot) safe? security review”

    “the official install is now installing a squatted package they don't control”

    Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot”
  • Rough quality, not plug-and-play

    “Overall, it's a good idea but incredibly rough due to what I assume is heavy vibe coding.”

    Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Hacking Moltbook: The AI Social Network Any Human Can Control”

    “The experience of running Moltbot(Clawdbot) today is far from plug-and-play”

    Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Try Clawdbot Online”
  • Hype and high token use

    “it burns tokens like a mofo so I turned it off”

    Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot”

    “seems like a psyop by these companies to get token consumption back to levels that justify the investments they need”

    Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “The Codex App”

    “Hype created by bots on twitter for marketing $CLAWD token, which is probably a pump and dump”

    Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot”

Other AI agents people recommend

The four most recommended other AI agents, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.

Moltbot compared with 4 alternatives
ProductRecommendCriticizeApprovalMonthsOwnedBadge
OpenClaw77697544%101 mo49 owners—
Muse by Meta14723239%61 mo4 owners—
Hermes Agent by Nous Research842875%91 mo8 ownersApproved
Clawdbot699941%31 mo7 owners—
MoltbotThis page253542%2——
See all 26 AI agents, ranked

What people said

40 of the 64 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.

“Moltbot already has real incidents, and they map to the exact mistakes most people make.”

CriticizesComment from 5 Mar 2026 on Hacker News

“Still not saying it's entirely wise to deploy a moltbot like this. After all, it starts with a curl | sh.”

MixedComment from 14 Feb 2026 in “The Scott Shambaugh Situation Clarifies How Dumb We Are Acting”

“It came back though and stayed in the conversation. Definitely imperfect, for sure. But it did the thing.”

MixedComment from 12 Feb 2026 in “AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it”

“We just saw last week people are setting up moltbots with virtually no knowledge of what it has and doesn't have access.”

CriticizesComment from 11 Feb 2026 in “GLM5 Released on Z.ai Platform”

“If my Moltbot knows me well enough from working with me every day”

RecommendsComment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: MoltVote – AI agents vote on polls, as themselves or as their humans”

“Would you hire it as a personal secretary and entrust all your personal data to it?”

CriticizesComment from 5 Feb 2026 in “GPT-5.3-Codex”

“has the shape of the future but doesn't feel like it to me”

MixedComment from 5 Feb 2026 in “Nanobot: Ultra-Lightweight Alternative to OpenClaw”

“That's why the Moltbots were panicking earlier.”

MixedComment from 5 Feb 2026 in “Top downloaded skill in ClawHub contains malware”

“it just completely bricked itself because it tried to install a plugin”

CriticizesComment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Hacking Moltbook: The AI Social Network Any Human Can Control”

“Overall, it's a good idea but incredibly rough due to what I assume is heavy vibe coding.”

MixedComment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Hacking Moltbook: The AI Social Network Any Human Can Control”

“there's a fine line between cutting edge and irresponsible & making excuses.”

MixedComment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Hacking Moltbook: The AI Social Network Any Human Can Control”

“seems like a psyop by these companies to get token consumption back to levels that justify the investments they need”

CriticizesComment from 3 Feb 2026 in “The Codex App”

“The security nightmare happening here might end up being more persistant then we realize.”

MixedComment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Hacking Moltbook: The AI Social Network Any Human Can Control”

“we've designed a fully exploitable agent and we can't wait to share it with the world”

CriticizesComment from 1 Feb 2026 in “1-Click RCE to steal your Moltbot data and keys”

“now people finally have a Siri that actually works”

RecommendsComment from 1 Feb 2026 in “1-Click RCE to steal your Moltbot data and keys”

“"documented" isn’t really a mitigation... most people are gonna run defaults”

CriticizesComment from 1 Feb 2026 in “1-Click RCE to steal your Moltbot data and keys”

“It's still surprisingly useful even though it doesn't have access to anything that I value.”

MixedComment from 1 Feb 2026 in “1-Click RCE to steal your Moltbot data and keys”

“It crawls the web with a sandboxed subagent to find me interesting stuff to read in French and Japanese.”

RecommendsComment from 1 Feb 2026 in “1-Click RCE to steal your Moltbot data and keys”

“Moltbot is a security nightmare, especially it's premise (tap into all your data sources)”

CriticizesComment from 1 Feb 2026 in “1-Click RCE to steal your Moltbot data and keys”

“Opensource AI will win at the end - just look at moltbot”

RecommendsComment from 1 Feb 2026 in “China's genius plan to win the AI race is paying off”

“so we had clawdbot -> moltbot -> openClaw”

MixedComment from 31 Jan 2026 in “OpenClaw – Moltbot Renamed Again”

“Easy install, discord/whatsapp/tg out of the box.”

RecommendsComment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Run Clawdbot/Moltbot on Cloudflare with Moltworker”

“safe enough if you harden it and unsafe if you treat it like a normal app”

MixedComment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Is Moltbot (clawd bot) safe? security review”

“These moltbots / clawdbots / openclawbots are mostly toys.”

MixedComment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Moltbook”

“connected to your systems and data with real potential for loss or damage to others”

CriticizesComment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Moltbook is the most interesting place on the internet”

“I love the concept of Moltbot, Moltbook”

RecommendsComment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Moltbook”

“the most promising open-source personal AI assistant I've found”

RecommendsComment from 30 Jan 2026 in “MoltBot Guide – Open-source AI assistant I'm betting on”

“if you care about privacy and security, you wouldn't run moltbot in the first place”

CriticizesComment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Run Clawdbot/Moltbot on Cloudflare with Moltworker”

“Hosting Moltbot on your own hardware reigns supreme.”

RecommendsComment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Run Clawdbot/Moltbot on Cloudflare with Moltworker”

“I'm glad that claude code and moltbot are killing this whole genre of Software”

RecommendsComment from 29 Jan 2026 in “LM Studio 0.4.0”

“Boring tech is why they went viral.”

RecommendsComment from 28 Jan 2026 on Hacker News

“it was a package name they have not obtained, and a different non-clawdbot 'moltbot' package is there”

CriticizesComment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot”

“I can realistically use my apple watch as a standalone device to do pretty much everything I need”

RecommendsComment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot”

“it burns tokens like a mofo so I turned it off”

MixedComment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot”

“Hype created by bots on twitter for marketing $CLAWD token, which is probably a pump and dump”

CriticizesComment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot”

“the official install is now installing a squatted package they don't control”

CriticizesComment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot”

“The experience of running Moltbot(Clawdbot) today is far from plug-and-play”

CriticizesComment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Try Clawdbot Online”

“I suspect it would be trivial to introduce a backdoor the way this project is managed.”

CriticizesComment from 27 Jan 2026 in “The age of Pump and Dump software”

“is the legit one and can be verified on the official github repo”

RecommendsComment from 27 Jan 2026 in “The age of Pump and Dump software”

“this is a very new project with a lot of momentum”

RecommendsComment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Anthropic raised trademark concerns, so Clawdbot ended up renaming”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.