OpenClaw

OpenClaw is a self-hosted AI assistant that runs on your own computer and answers you inside the chat apps you already use: WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, iMessage, Signal, Teams and more than 20 others. A single local Gateway manages sessions, tools and channel connections, and the same setup works as a personal assistant on a laptop or as a shared assistant for a team.

It is a good fit for developers and technically comfortable users who want an always-available assistant without handing their data to a hosted service. State, memory and credentials stay on your hardware, and the model layer is pluggable, so you can use Claude, Codex or local models. Typical setups include messaging your assistant from your phone while away from your desk, running one shared assistant in a team Slack or Discord, and extending it with community skills and plugins from ClawHub.

Getting started: the official installer (a shell script for macOS, Linux and WSL2, or a PowerShell script on Windows) provisions Node.js and launches an onboarding wizard that checks model access, creates the workspace and configures the Gateway. If you already manage Node.js 24.16 or newer, you can install the npm package and run `openclaw onboard --install-daemon` instead. `openclaw dashboard` then opens the Control UI, where you can send a first test message.