OpenClaw stats don't add up | Hacker News Reader

OpenClaw stats don't add up

16 pointsiliaov6 comments

I was setting up OpenClaw and went looking for best skills and hosting - and I'm really puzzled.

On one hand I see runaway popularity - 247K GitHub stars. 13,700 community skills. - I read about Chinese cloud provider forks. Stock market rally. Hosting providers offering managed OpenClaw hosting, same tier as WordPress.

But when I look at OpenClaw hub - the most-downloaded skill has 35K installs - Highest-rated skill: 132 stars

247K stars vs 35K installs looks like huge gap for me.

Other observations - Popular skills are pedestrian connectors (Gmail, search, Obsidian, Home Assistant) — things a dozen other tools already do - a lot of stock/trade skills, many in Chinese - I get charged per API call (I use Claude) on top of my monthly subscription

I read news about - "lobster trade", where stock rallies on OpenClaw-related announcements - Government subsidy: Shenzhen offering up to $1.4M grants for OpenClaw-based one-person companies, Wuxi $730K - company stock rallying in China when a company announces OpenClaw

I wanted to use OpenClaw in conjunciton with my robotics startup PMF search. I checked OpenClawRobotics - a community site for applying OpenClaw to robotics - and it appears to be abandoned. The signup form doesn't work.

Claude tells me - managed OpenClaw hosting now available is the telling signal. Infrastructure providers commoditize projects when novelty has passed and recurring revenue becomes the play. Late-cycle behavior, not early-cycle. - "Lobster trade" is a stock market phenomenon, not product adoption.

Don't get me wrong, I love the OpenClaw project. But I can't help noticing this and scratching my head.

What do you think?

> Hosting providers offering managed OpenClaw hosting, same tier as WordPress.

Almost no-one is making money out of OpenClaw other than the hosting providers.

That is why the OpenClaw hype is dying. It's just a way for people to throw their money away on tokens and the model providers extracting money from that.

There is no use case for it other than wasting tokens.

That and Claude/Codex are setting up their own equivalents. The hosting companies and AI wrapper companies are rolling out their own built up clawdbots.

So I think there's multiple layers of this:

- at the first layer, people (even mainstream folks) hear about openclaw and what it "can" do, gives them amazement and think they want to try (somewhat like chatgpt itself did a few years ago). the github stars on the main repo can come from that. people think of the potentials, want to do something with it

- most people who actually set up an openclaw, don't actually have legitimate and substantial use cases of it. I'd wager >90% of them end up setting up something basic. the gmail/search/etc "pedestrian connectors" you mentioned is a good indicator that people are doing pretty basic stuff they could've used other tools for. they use openclaw for it for a variety of reasons, maybe they haven't heard of the other tools, or they think openclaw is novelty tech, etc.

- the skills has way fewer installs and stars than the main repo because setting up an openclaw by itself is hard enough and most people probably don't understand why they need skills or what they use it for. I actually barely understand it myself either.

- also, the high number of stars indicate most people see it and think it's cool and want to try it out, but never end up doing it. as an example, in a tech co of 200~ people, maybe 10 people will have tried actually installing openclaw and using it. most will have heard of it and maybe starred it but never had time or bothered trying.

- most people try openclaw for a bit and realize actually how expensive it is to run. to do some basic cron job you're easily using a few dollars a day in API costs. $3/day doesn't sound like a lot and sounds like coffee money but you soon realize that's equal to a $100/mo subscription (assuming you're using raw API per token pricing and not some flat monthly plan). it really isn't a toy but most people who try it treat it like a toy and it's way too expensive for that. properly set up, it really should be a virtual assistant for a busy business owner. you have to get enough value out of it to be worth its price in tokens.

all in all, at this point in its ease of use, it really is niche tech, that somehow made it into mainstream consciousness, but mainstream is realizing it's not for them, after trying it.

You’ve made some great points. It’s odd that OpenClaw has 247K GitHub stars but only 35K installs on the most popular skill. The basic skills like Gmail and Obsidian seem to be drawing the most attention, but they feel more like short term solutions. The managed hosting and the stock rally suggest that it's becoming more about the infrastructure and recurring revenue, rather than true product adoption. I’m with you there’s potential here, but it’s tough to say where it’s really headed.

Free trials generate the stars, but charging both monthly and per-call fees filters for experimenters over builders. People explore but don't commit to production. Prob why most installs end up abandoned or as toy connectors nobody ships.

I mean n=1 but I starred, pulled, messed with using and extending it for a week, then dumped it and went back to my DIYclaw because it seems to spend fewer tokens and get more consistent results.

None of these projects are very good, but infra providers are happy to sell shovels to the hype rush.

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