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EastSmith 6 hours ago

With OpenClaw we are seeing how the app layer becomes as important as the model layer.

You can switch models multiple times (online/proprietary, open weight, local), but you have one UI : OpenClaw.

Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You can switch models multiple times (online/proprietary, open weight, local), but you have one UI : OpenClaw.

It’s only been a couple months. I guarantee people will be switching apps as others become the new hot thing.

We saw the same claims when Cursor was popular. Same claims when Claude Code was the current topic. Users are changing their app layer all the time and trying new things.

ryanmcgarvey 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Memory. I have built up so many scripts and crons and integrated little programs and memories with open claw it would be difficult to migrate to some other system.

System of record and all.

blackoil 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Considering you have built them all in last few weeks, it should not be that difficult and no reason other systems won't reuse same.

dtauzell 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How hard do you think it would be for ai to generate all those for some alternative?

ryanmcgarvey an hour ago | parent [-]

AI didn't do the work, I did. Building up context is the part we actually have to put work into. I'm not saying it would be impossible, but boy would it be annoying to have to constantly reach a new assistant about your whole life.

softwaredoug 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Indeed, coding agents took off because of a lot of ongoing trial and error on how to build the harness as much as model quality.

czhu12 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s only 2 months and there are already a rush of viable alternatives, from smaller, lightweight versions, to hosted, managed SaaS alternatives.

I’d suspect the moat here will be just as fragile as every other layer

pyuser583 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is the sort of thing employers are failing on. They sign contracts that assume employees are going to be logging in and asking questions directly.

But if I don’t have a url for my IDE (or whatever) to call, it isn’t useful.

So I use Ollama. It’s less helpful, but ensure confidentiality and compliance.

bhadass 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

openclaw is just one of many now, there are new ones weekly.

mcapodici 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Plus you can get the model to write you a bespoke one that suits your needs.

theturtletalks 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I've been digging into how Heartbeat works in Openclaw to bring directly into Vibetunnel, another of Peter's projects

canadiantim 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There’s actually many UI’s now? See moltis, rowboat, and various others that are popping up daily

AlexCoventry 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Are there any with a credible approach to security, privacy and prompt injections?

5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]
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madeofpalk 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

? We saw this years/months ago with Claude Code and Cursor.

miki_oomiri 3 hours ago | parent [-]

But it just codes. And are console / ide tools.

Openclaw is so so so much more.

3 hours ago | parent | next [-]
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Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s missing the point. OpenClaw is just one of many apps in its class. It, too, will fall out of favor as the next big thing arrives.

baxtr 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Seems like models become commoditized?

verdverm 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Same for OpenClaw, it will be commodity soon if you don't think it is already

elxr 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's definitely not right now. What else has the feature list and docs even resembling it?

Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

OpenClaw has only been in the news for a few weeks. Why would you assume it’s going to be the only game in town?

Early adopters are some of the least sticky users. As soon as something new arrives with claims of better features, better security, or better architecture then the next new thing will become the popular topic.

verdverm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

OpenClaw has mediocre docs, from my perspective on some average over many years using 100s of open source projects.

I think Anthropic's docs are better. Best to keep sampling from the buffet than to pick a main course yet, imo.

There's also a ton of real experiences being conveyed on social that never make it to docs. I've gotten as much value and insights from those as any documentation site.

baxtr 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not sure. I mean the tech yes definitely.

But the community not.

verdverm 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The community is tiny by any measure (beyond the niche), market penetration is still very very early

Anthropic's community, I assume, is much bigger. How hard it is for them to offer something close enough for their users?

filoleg 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> Anthropic's community, I assume, is much bigger. How hard it is for them to offer something close enough for their users?

Not gonna lie, that’s exactly the potential scenario I am personally excited for. Not due to any particular love for Anthropic, but because I expect this type of a tight competition to be very good for trying a lot of fresh new things and the subsequent discovery process of new ideas and what works.

verdverm 3 hours ago | parent [-]

My main gripe is that it feels more like land grabbing than discovery

Stories like this reinforce my bias

lez 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It has already been so with ppq.ai (pay per query dot AI)

cyanydeez 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Things that arn't happening any time soon but need to for actual product success built on top:

1. Stable models

2. Stable pre- and post- context management.

As long as they keep mothballing old models and their interderminant-indeterminancy changes, whatever you try to build on them today will be rugpulled tomorrow.

This is all before even enshittification can happen.

altcunn 3 hours ago | parent [-]

This is the underrated risk that nobody talks about enough. We've already seen it play out with the Codex deprecation, the GPT-4 behavior drift saga, and every time Anthropic bumps a model version.

The practical workaround most teams land on is treating the model as a swappable component behind a thick abstraction layer. Pin to a specific model version, run evals on every new release, and only upgrade when your test suite passes. But that's expensive engineering overhead that shouldn't be necessary.

What's missing is something like semantic versioning for model behavior. If a provider could guarantee "this model will produce outputs within X similarity threshold of the previous version for your use case," you could actually build with confidence. Instead we get "we improved the model" and your carefully tuned prompts break in ways you discover from user complaints three days later.