One Week with OpenClaw — A Claude Code User's Perspective

I hesitate writing about AI tools. The space moves so fast that anything I publish will probably be outdated in a week or two. But here we go anyway.

Why I Was Skeptical

A week ago, I couldn't figure out why OpenClaw was getting so much attention. It's a service that runs on your computer and acts as a bridge between you and your favorite AI model. What's the big deal?

As a heavy Claude Code user, I couldn't understand why I'd leave Claude Code and add a middle-man. It made no sense.

The main selling point was that it has a larger memory and remembers everything. OK, but can't that be solved with a well-maintained CLAUDE.md file?

The only way to find out was to install it and try it.

One Week Later, I Get It

After just one week, I can see the benefits. Here are some things I've used OpenClaw for that I couldn't easily do with Claude Code alone. (Some of these are possible with Claude Code and some workarounds, but OpenClaw makes them seamless.)

1. Telegram Bot — AI From Anywhere

At first, the Telegram integration was just annoying. The lag drove me crazy. Why not just use my CLI like I do with Claude Code?

But over time, this proved to be incredibly useful.

AI in the truck. I had to pick up my son from a friend's house — 50 minutes on country roads. I used Telegram to have conversations with my AI and had it build programmatic SEO pages and deploy them while I drove. When I got home, everything was live and ready for me to review. I've always wanted to chat with AI in the car, but none of them have CarPlay apps. Telegram does. So I can use it just like I do with Messages.

Ideas wherever they strike. When an idea pops into my head, I can throw it out there wherever I am — in the waiting room at the doctor's office, sitting on the couch, wherever.

Multi-device troubleshooting. I was trying to sync an app on my phone with my computer. I could send screenshots right from my phone through Telegram and work back and forth in the same session across multiple devices.

2. Always On

OpenClaw runs as a daemon — it's always there, with full control of everything. Maybe you don't want this. Maybe you don't trust this. That's fair.

I put OpenClaw on my home server that runs about 80 Docker containers. Immediately it told me about performance issues and asked if I wanted it to clean them up. It did. Then it pointed out a service I wasn't using that was taking up a lot of resources.

Here's my favorite example: I have a Minecraft server running on that machine. My son asked if I could whitelist his friend's username so he could join the server. I don't remember how I set all that up. So I asked OpenClaw to do it. Done. Fast. No problem. Now when I have an issue on that server, I don't have to log in and spin up Claude Code — I just send a message to Telegram and it gets done.

3. Health Coach

My blood pressure is chronically high and I want to lose some weight. I worked with OpenClaw to set some goals. It helped me set up an automated system to sync Apple Health data to my server on a regular basis, then it built out a nice dashboard with my relevant health data that I can view any time — and the bot can view anytime to help coach and motivate me.

I had it build a proper webhook endpoint to receive Apple Health data and use SSE (Server-Sent Events) to keep the dashboard updated in real-time. I can put on my Omron blood pressure cuff, take a measurement, manually sync (it's also automated every 6 hours), and watch the dashboard update in real-time. It's just cool.

4. Cron Jobs

I've given my OpenClaw a one-month goal. I've asked it to evaluate the state of things every morning at 4 AM and send me the list of things it will work on that day to move closer to that goal. I can then approve — or tweak things and add additional tasks.

It's a nice daily reminder to stay focused on a goal.

5. Agents

Claude has agents, and OpenClaw is just using those agents, but I find myself requesting them more. When I need OpenClaw to stay responsive to me, I'll ask it to spawn agents to do work while we continue to chat. It's kind of like having a team helping you out.

Recently, I was trying to make a big decision with one of my products. I asked OpenClaw to spin up three agents: one in favor, one opposed, and a mediator to have them discuss all the pros and cons. From that, the mediator gave me a recommendation. The answer was interesting: "Not now — but plan for it." Then it broke it down into three phases. It helped a lot.

What I'd Tell My Skeptical Self

If you're a Claude Code user wondering if OpenClaw is worth the setup, here's what I'd say: Claude Code is a fantastic coding tool. OpenClaw turns it into something closer to a personal AI assistant that happens to also be great at coding.

The memory and context management is nice, but that's not the real win. The real win is that it's always available, it can take action on your behalf, and it can juggle multiple tasks simultaneously.

Is it perfect? No. It's still early. But after one week, I can't imagine going back to only using Claude Code.

OpenClaw is open source and free to use with your own API keys or Claude Max subscription. Check out the docs or the Discord community if you're curious.

And in case you're wondering — yes, OpenClaw was my editor on this post and published it for me. All through Telegram.