"build a hugely popular tool"

Define hugely popular relative to the scale of users of OAI... personally this thread is the first time Ive heard of openclaw.

▲

xmprt 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To give you an idea of the scale, OpenClaw is probably one of the biggest developments in open source AI tools in the last couple of months. And given the pace of AI, that's a big deal.

▲

F7F7F7 2 hours ago | parent [-]

In what context are you using the word "development?"

Letta (MemGPT) has been around for years and frameworks like Mastra have been getting serious Enterprise attention for most of 2025. Memory + Tasks is not novel or new.

Is it out of the box nature that's the 'biggest' development? Am I missing something else?

	▲	alephnerd 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not OP, but it was revolutionary in the same way that ChatGPT and Deepseek the app+webapp was because it packaged capabilities in a fairly easy-to-use manner that could be used by both technical and non-technical decisionmakers. If you can provide any sort of tool that can reduce mundane work for a decisionmaker with a title of Director and above, it can be extremely powerful.
	▲	SilverElfin an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yep it isn’t actually that interesting. He just rushed out something that has none of the essentials figured out. Like security

▲

Rapzid 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Last week it was renamed from "Clawd" and this week the creator is abandoning it. Everything is moving fast.

▲

whattheheckheck 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

190k stars on github

▲

alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The tech industry is broad, and if you are using OpenAI in a consumer and personal manner you weren't the primary persona amongst whom the conversation around OpenClaw occurred.

Additionally, much of the conversation I've seen was amongst practitioners and Mid/Upper Level Management who are already heavy users of AI/ML and heavy users of Executive Assistants.

There is a reason why if you aren't in a Tier 1 tech hub like SV, NYC, Beijing, Hangzhou, TLV, Bangalore, and Hyderabad you are increasingly out of the loop for a number of changes that are happening within the industry.

If you are using HN as your source of truth, you are going to be increasingly behind on shifts that are happening - I've noticed that anti-AI Ludditism is extremely strong on HN when it overlaps with EU or East Coast hours (4am-11am PT and 9pm-12am PT), and West Coast+Asia hours increasingly don't overlap as much.

I feel this is also a reflection of the fact that most Bay Area and Asia HNers are most in-person or hybrid now, thus most conversations that would have happened on HN are now occurring on private slacks, discords, or at a bar or gym.

▲

rdfc-xn-uuid a minute ago | parent | next [-]

> There is a reason why if you aren't in a Tier 1 tech hub like SV, NYC, Beijing, Hangzhou, TLV, Bangalore, and Hyderabad you are increasingly out of the loop for a number of changes that are happening within the industry.

I am in one of these tech hubs (Bangalore) and I have never seen any such practitioner pervasively using these "AI executive assistants". People use chatgpt and sometimes the AI extensions like copilot. Do I need to be in HSR layout to see these "number of changes"?

▲

F7F7F7 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I saw the hype around OpenClaw on the likes of X. I'm a Mid/Upper Level manager and would sooner have my team roll our own solution on top of Letta or Mastra before I trusted OpenClaw. Also, I'm frequently in many of those cities you mentioned but don't live in one. Aside from 'networking' and funding there's not much that anyones missing.

Participation in the Zeitgeist hasn't been regional in a decade.

	▲	alephnerd 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> would sooner have my team roll our own solution on top of Letta or Mastra before I trusted OpenClaw A lot of teams explicitly did that for OpenClaw as well. Letta and Mastra are similar but didn't have the right kind of packaging (targeted at Engineers - not decisionmakers who are not coding on a daily basis). > Participation in the Zeitgeist hasn't been regional in a decade I strongly disagree - there is a lot of stuff happening in stealth or under NDA, and as such a large number of practitioners on HN cannot announce what they are doing. The only way to get a pulse of what is happening requires being in person constantly with other similar decisionmakers or founders. A lot of this only happens through impromptu conversations in person, and requires you to constantly be in that group. This info eventually disperses, but often takes weeks to months in other hubs.

▲

Karrot_Kream an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

FWIW I also just don't think there's a point to discussing AI/ML usage here. The community is too crabby and cynical, looking too hard at how to tear people and things down, trying to react with the most negative thing they can. Every discussion on AI here eventually devolves into "AI can turn water to gold!" "no you idiot, AI uses so much water we won't have enough water left oh and AI is what ICE and Palantir use"

As the (dubiously attributed) Picasso quote goes: "When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine." Most of HN is the former, constantly theorizing, philosophizing, often (but not always) in a negative and cynical way. This isn't conducive to discussion of methods of art. Sadly I just speak with friends working on other AI things instead.

Someone like simonw can probably get better reactions from this community but I don't bother.

▲

NickNaraghi 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

you living under a rock