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Comment by PurpleRamen | Hacker News Reader

Yet, people are still asking for the usability of OpenClaw outside of marketing. It's a bit unclear how much of a "killer app" it really is, and how much is just burning money for the lulz and Bot RP. I personally also got the impression many people had their first AI-gateway experience with OpenClaw, and don't understand that those abilities have been around for a while now, but is located in the expensive LLMs which OpenClaw is using, not in OpenClaw itself. I've seen people thinking that OpenClaw is actually the AI.

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> don't understand that those abilities have been around for a while now

Hugely underestimated comment. That's pretty much the entire point here. Many people didn't know something with these capabilities was already possible. Or some - like me - knew of the potential, but couldn't be bothered/didn't have the time to put the bits together in a satisfactory flow (I'm currently exploring and building on nanobot[0], which is directly inspired by OpenClaw; didn't touch OC because it's in JS and I'm a Python person). Everything came together really well, which is why it's a "killer app". And now the dam has burst there will be customized takes on the concept all over the place (I'm also aware of a Rust "port", Moltis[1]), taking the idea to next levels.

[0] https://github.com/HKUDS/nanobot [1] https://github.com/moltis-org/moltis

People weren't underestimating it and it's not that they "couldn't be bothered". They either understood the gaping security/safety holes it creates, or were guarded against their own stupidity.

Doesn't really matter. As always it's integration that makes a product.

Talking to bots on Telegram isn't new.

Running agentic loops isn't new.

Giving AI credentials and having it interface with APIs isn't new.

Triggering AI jobs from external event queues isn't new.

Parking state between AI jobs in temp files isn't new.

Putting all together in one product and marketing it to the right audience? New.

But novelty doesn't make a killer app. When outside of marketing and gateway-experience, there are still that many open questions, then maybe it's a valid claim to call it perception instead of substance.

At the end, only time will tell how much there really is to this.

>But novelty doesn't make a killer app.

It often does, if killer app means popular app.

There is a difference between popular and (in)famous. OpenClaw is famous, has popularity at the moment, but is it sustainable? Will OpenClaw (or some kind of successor) still have a relevant usage (outside of fan circles) next year? Or in 5 years?

And I'm not talking about just any kind of assistant, because those are already existing for decades now with various degrees of competence and all kind of flavours.

> Will OpenClaw (or some kind of successor) still have a relevant usage (outside of fan circles) next year?

I have a feeling OpenClaw et al. will only still exist if somehow all of the gaping security holes are ever able to be closed and through some sort of magic, less than 5% of the users get hacked within the next year, but I'm not sure it's even possible to close those holes, since the entire point and usefulness of such tools is to give them root access and set them completely free.

Seems exactly like that whole “Dropbox vs setting up an FTP server” thing again.

Oh otsit's a Killer app alright. One that might kill you personally. And me. And everyone.

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