The hottest AI tool on the market today isn’t a powerful frontier model from the likes of OpenAI or Anthropic.

Rather, it’s a kludgey, wildly complex, open-source platform that’s already provoked a trademark dispute, multiple corporate bans—and fawning praise from developers around the world.

It’s OpenClaw, and it’s specifically designed to build AI agents.

I set it up, built an agent of my own, and promptly trained it to do my job for me. Here’s what happened.

Beware the Claw

For more than a year now, Big AI companies have promised us an “agentic AI” future. AI wouldn’t simply answer our queries or help us shop for a toaster, companies like OpenAI and Anthropic assured us—it would actually do useful things.

Turns out, the AI giants are generally too squeamish and cost-sensitive to actually release such a tool. Because AI agents can take actions on behalf of a user, they can easily cause harm or make mistakes at scale. 

© Fast Company