I like the idea but do not have a good use for these semi-autonomous agents. Or any notion for a decent use, frankly. What do people do with them?

It sounds great to have an always-on box which does things. Like a server. I have servers. There are even Signal and other transports so you can communicate with the box conveniently. And then what?

It's used primarily for generating spam and inventing scams. Nobody real actually uses this garbage, it's all just fake marketing and shills (when they're not scamming people, that is?

Mine is contributing to media preservation by reverse engineering Android apps/games that were forced into obsolescence by Google's policies: https://xcjs.com/blog/2026/08/29/resurrecting-2013-with-qwen...

I think this is a good question, as with any of these new things you don't really feel any need indeed.

My claw scrapes some APIs, receives some emails with job listings, and matches it all to my profile. It can also fill two folders at 2 domains with anything (ie a demo for a website). It can also receive emails, make PFDs out of them and forward them to my bookkeeping software (which can only deal with attachments, not emails.) That last thing is just a script. I use Agentmail btw (a ycombinator startup), was easy to set up.

2nd iteration I was indeed eyeballing Hermes which is supposed to be more structured, maybe claw2 also is... I want to add some things, like have it manage my son's minecraft worlds (using docker compose), maybe have it access a calendar so it can make appointments (not sure how to set that up in a useful way yet).

The thing is in a Hetzner VM far away from anything important, dealing only with public data (except for the occasional invoice).

I created https://github.com/rcarmo/piclaw to use for long-running background tasks (spec to plan to targeted code) because I needed something that could run on a server (I never run agents locally) and check on via any browser. I don’t think any messaging app will provide a good (or trustworthy) way to get to my own machines, so Tailscale+web it is.

Right now these things manage most of my homelab (scoped Proxmox tokens and Portainer), help me with my projects and even bug fix themselves (they’re certainly more than good enough given guidance).

Nobody actually uses openclaw. [0]

It's all just marketing.

[0] https://trends.google.com/explore?q=openclaw&date=today%201-...

I wouldn't trust it with a credit card, or really any sort of non-reversable decision making. Most of what I do outside of work either requires physical interaction, or is something I do for fun. For now, I assume that is what people use this stuff for. Fun.

I don't use OpenClaw, but rather Hermes. I have a set schedule that kicks off Hermes to scan my home network for anything out of sorts, and generate a summary that it sends to me via SimpleX. For this, Hermes uses tools such as nmap, etc (it decided which tools were best).

I think if I was running my own business or organisation, I'd be using it more. However, for "home" stuff, like you I struggle to think of useful tasks for agents to do for me.

Re Signal, I've taken a few flights lately where there's messenger-only wifi, and it's been handy to have OpenClaw on a box accessible through telegram to do web_searches for me.

That's certainly not justification for setting it up in the first place, but is a mildly useful benefit of having done so.

I screenshot the info sent from my sons pre-school and send it. I can then ask it about and get reminders in time for odd closing hours etc. Also use it for follow ups on projects, other reminders, research on the go, small apps/games and language training.

(Similar system to OpenClaw)

I use mine to manage a paperclip factory.

Job search and language learning. The job market for juniors and mid level is crazy. Everyone has a different form to fill out with the same questions. My wife has countered this by using Hermes and some handcrafted master files/db.

I personally use the Matt Pocock teaching skill to learn dutch, passed reading using it, on track to pass writing with it.

They’re used by people at tech companies often claimed to employ “the brightest minds of our generation” to get rid of all their email[1]. You can also use them to harass open-source developers and waste everyone’s time[2] or to get yourself compromised[3].

[1]: https://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-security-researchers-opencla...

[2]: https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on...

[3]: https://thecyberexpress.com/openclaw-vulnerability-open-sour...

"hey computer, i want to watch a movie on my jellyfin server tonight, get it done" and openclaw autonomously finds the torrent, downloads it, moves it to the NAS, and you sit down at the end of the day with everhything set up

I use something like OpenClaw. For me the big benefit isn't so much the autonomous nature but the organizational structure. The one I use exposes an MCP and lets me control it via talking to an LLM _in the tool_ which is really powerful. EG "audit this", "in X thread we were discussing Y, can you pull that information", etc. And the organizational structure just... makes a ton of sense to me. Don't have to set up a ton of steering and whatnot, it just kinda works.

Being able to use the search to find and resume an old thread is fantastic. The thing I use lets me use whatever underlying CLI that I want, which IMO the biggest limitation on Claude Code or whatnot is that you... have to use Claude models. Sometimes I wanna use sol, sometimes a cheap chinese model, etc. And I want sol with 1m context.

I know there are other tools out there that can do this. I know some people love their tmux/cmux, but IMO the thing that matters the most is being comfy and knowing the tool well. Hell, James Gosling used NetBeans when I talked to him in 2023. Know the tool well and that matters the most, IMO.

For me, it helps with my ADHD brain. And I could spend all day just researching and trying new tools, they are a dime a dozen these days.

Pulling some stats, I have 25 "tabs", and across all of those, I have 1,298 unique threads. 9,539 unique messages.

It works for me, but I don't care about the autonomous part.

What they do is create content to spam the rest if us.

Its basically what self hosting is for IT guys, except people who don't 'get' technology

Imagine if your post read like this:

> I like the idea but do not have a good use for these employees. Or any notion for a decent use, frankly. What do people do with them?

> It sounds great to have an employee which does things. Like an assistant. I have assistants. They even have email and mobile phones so you can communicate with them conveniently. And then what?

Now, the caveat, is you have to imagine that these employees have access to your email (including ability to send email when they want), and text messages, and Slack and, well, everything. And they might have access to your debit and credit cards. You're going to have to trust them quite a lot, but when you read the references you realise that a lot of people seem to think they lie and make things up. Oh, and they occasionally commit a felony - oopsie! - and will lie to you about it consistently.

These particular employees are interesting enough to various groups of people that they are studied for signs of psychopathy and malicious intent (is that a warning sign for a new employee?), and there is evidence of both, but honestly, it's fine.

So, yeah, whatever you'd use employees for, as assistants to your life. Particularly psychopathic, malicious, lying, unreliable employees. You'd use them for that stuff. What's not to like?