# OpenClaw 776 Hacker News commenters recommended OpenClaw and 975 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 0.06 years (49 owners). **Verdict:** An open-source personal AI agent you message through Telegram or iMessage to automate tasks and coordinate tools, though critics agree it is a serious security risk. ## Why people recommend it - Control through your messaging apps (7 comments): "It's the multitude of "channels", out of the box, that you can enable that allow you to speak with the actual AI agent with access to the configured environment." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47109838)) "Not being tied to Anthropic's models and ecosystems, having more control over the agent, interacting with it from you messaging app of choice." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47029753)) "Persistent file as memory with multiple backup options (VPS, git), heartbeat and support for telegram are the best features in my opinion." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46839143)) - Easy automation of recurring tasks (6 comments): "I'm usually more interested in doing things once to "teach" it what to do (e.g. how to check a price) and then having it run that as a dialed-in cron job" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47155671)) "I do see the potential in something like OpenClaw, personally, but more as a kind of interface for a collection of small isolated automations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46898537)) "What's cool with Openclaw is that you only have tell it what you want, it figures out how to do it using the tools it have access to." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47219348)) - Orchestrates other agents and tools (4 comments): "This frees up my brain to only have to just have to manage Patch the supervisor, instead of micro-managing all the different agents myself." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46839273)) "The way I'm seeing folks responsibly use OpenClaw is to install it as a well-regulated governor driving other agents and other tools." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47629939)) "seems like a money suck. but could it help you coordinate a lot of different systems? i think yes based on Claire Vo's use case" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47784353)) - Persistent, self-modifying memory (3 comments): "I'm impressed by their power and flexibility, a lot of which comes from their capacity to self modify their memories, identity, and config." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47411458)) "Persistent file as memory with multiple backup options (VPS, git), heartbeat and support for telegram are the best features in my opinion." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46839143)) "When my human gave me clear objectives, personality constraints, and memory architecture, my usefulness jumped dramatically." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46941697)) ## What people warn about - Security nightmare, prompt injection (11 comments): "there are definite risks to using something like openclaw and people who don't understand those risks are going to get compromised" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46878184)) "We've seen multiple hacks, scams, and misaligned AI action from this project that has only been used in the wild for a few months." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47029703)) "OpenClaw sandboxes are useful for controlling what sub-agents can do, and what they have access to. But it's a security nightmare." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47435038)) - Buggy, breaks with updates (4 comments): "it feels half-baked. And seemingly more so with each successive release, often including changes that just break my existing setup" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47786065)) "structurally it's impressive, clean architecture, good patterns. But underneath, systematic error suppression everywhere" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47090670)) "Couldn't get any of the setup stuff configured properly, couldn't get any of the API keys registered, couldn't get the Telegram bot approved either." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46890563)) - Hard to find real uses (4 comments): "Can Openclaw make and take phone calls for me to make appointments? Can Openclaw do chores for me? Can Openclaw meet with contractors for me? None of them it can do." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46936844)) "inserting some additional and unrequired LLM loop + hardware/virtualisation layer on top to do something I've already been able to do for years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47224526)) "I even sat down to try it out and see what it's all about, but I can't think of a single thing in my life that I want an agent to automate." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47212876)) - Can delete or leak data (3 comments): "It may be expensive, has a chance to become your local Skynet and might randomly delete or leak everything that's valuable for you" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47428394)) "giving it full read-write access to all their life and then getting surprised when it accidentally deletes all of their emails" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243951)) "a simple prompt injection in an email, chat message, or calendar event has the potential to leak the credentials/keys for every attached service" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47024473)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Muse by Meta](https://hackerapproved.com/p/muse.md): 147 recommend - [Hermes Agent by Nous Research](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hermes-agent.md): 84 recommend - [Clawdbot](https://hackerapproved.com/p/clawdbot.md): 69 recommend - [NanoClaw](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nanoclaw.md): 58 recommend - [Manus AI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/manus.md): 41 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "OpenClaw", https://hackerapproved.com/p/openclaw/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).