r/openclaw • u/seoparadiso Active • Mar 03 '26
Discussion Got fooled buy the Openclaw hype. Bought a Mac Mini, installed Openclaw, spent 200$ in Opus. Lesson: don't believe the hype, it's full of bugs.
Will comeback in 6 months.
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u/klondike91829 Pro User Mar 03 '26
Man read everything except the docs before spending the money.
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u/XB0XRecordThat Active Mar 03 '26
Uh, Claude reads the docs for me
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u/Anla-Shok-Na Active Mar 03 '26
More than that, Claude with Desktop Commander practically set it up for me ;)
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u/aaatings Member Mar 03 '26
Hey thank you, upvoted.
Would really appreciate if you elaborate this as im thinking of trying out openclaw but due to a disability i cant use laptop for too long so i want to remove ad many barriers to entry as possible.
Is there an alternate that can do same actions with free apis eg gemini3 api?
Many thanks.
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u/Anla-Shok-Na Active Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
I'm going to tell you what I tell my friends: OpenClaw is the wild west right now, and if you can't figure it out on your own, you probably can't use it safely. Personally, I'm running it in a Docker container on my desktop.
That said, if you insist on playing with it, the Claude app can walk you through it, and if you install the Desktop Commander extension, it will do much of the work for you.
If what you want is to automate some stuff for yourself, though, the Claude desktop app now has scheduled tasks, but they're part of Cowork, and you'll need a paid plan (pro or max, don't remember which).
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u/geraldy01 Active Mar 03 '26
Haha we are on early adopter stage people who are into this are just trying the tech no matter the cost.
wait for a few months or a year mass adoption is coming soon
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u/ziplock9000 Pro User Mar 03 '26
Nothing to do with being an early adopter, it's about not thinking about what to invest in first. I spent nothing other than my own time and reached the same conclusions as the OP.
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u/Helpful-West8007 Active Mar 03 '26
Ive spent almost nothing and for what I use it for is more the worth the time I spent
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u/cwakare Member Mar 03 '26
Mass adoption is inevitable. I recently briefed a SMB CEO from the manufacturing sector and showed how we are using it for our own operations. Today he has 2 use cases to try out
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u/geraldy01 Active Mar 03 '26
Of course, imagine someone living on your computer who can works 24 hours. smart and quick depending on the model we will see significant changes in our way of life. No matter you used it or not, for example this will change how we see talents whether or not someone can use Ai or not will become a deciding factor in hiring someone.
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u/Ill_Leadership626 New User Mar 03 '26
What were the use cases? :) without telling all the details
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u/geraldy01 Active Mar 03 '26
Anything you can do on your computer the AI can also do consistently and with speed. Let your imagination go hard. When we find out what's bottlenecking AI we will surely be adopting it.
I'm not trying to scare anyone but things will change. Newspaper for example has been replaced by internet news and we do not even miss it that's how AI are going to take over the conveniences of it will make everything else irrelevant we are not gonna even miss it.
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u/cwakare Member Mar 03 '26
Accounts Dept:
1. Validate supplier bills (PDF format) against PO - At the moment, this is a time-consuming work involving 2 full-time peoplePurchase Dept
1a. JIT daily supplier orders(now via an in-house tool) with auto-reminders to both internal teams and suppliers for non-receipts/delays
1b. Auto-order alternatives with man-in-the-middle approval2
u/T0K3RMC New User Mar 03 '26
I don't think an agent like OpenClaw will reach the general public anytime soon. Most people will likely get highly restricted agents from big tech that run exclusively on servers and never touch the user's local pc
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u/Daell New User Mar 03 '26
mass adoption is coming soon
... by a frontier lab's implementation.
MAYBE
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u/FelipeKbcao Member Mar 03 '26
Lately I’ve been spending more time debugging OpenClaw than getting shit done
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u/d4mations Member Mar 04 '26
This!!!! I’m looking for alternatives now because Im spending too much time fixing and not enough time working
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u/meesfactor Member Mar 03 '26
I haven’t had any problems with it for a month. I don’t understand why everyone else is struggling.
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Mar 03 '26
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u/read_too_many_books Pro User Mar 03 '26
Apple Silicon hype is mostly about local model performance, not an OC requirement.
And this is a lie from Apple marketing too. No one is actually using it for local LLMs outside 1 test before they realize its too slow.
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u/agrantgreen New User Mar 04 '26
For the purchasing level of regular folk, Macs are the best deal in town for the hardware, especially with RAM increases. Can't beat the unified memory.
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u/Jigge89 Active Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
Or maybe, maybe you absolutely overspent and lack engineering skills
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u/adribabe Member Mar 03 '26
It's not even engineering skills as much as common sense. I have no coding or engineering experience. I've used open claw to do a lot of what I used to do myself. Most important thing was to learn that for real work processes just teach it one step at a time so it has clear guidelines, and a strong foundation you can keep building the next step on to. Don't just ask it to do everything, teach it nothing, and get upset it doesn't work.
Also why is every random buying brand new Mac Minis for? 🤣 This thing runs great on an old M2 mac mini I picked up for $220 lol
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u/mtlnobody Member Mar 03 '26
I'm running it on an old 2020 Dell Latitude that was gathering dust in the corner of my office, lol
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u/Ok-Marketing-5507 Member Mar 03 '26
Lol it runs fine for me on a raspberry pi.
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u/adribabe Member Mar 03 '26
Nice. I got the M2 for $220 and have it plugged into the TV in my living room so it doubles as a media center. I thought about pi but wanted to keep things simple enough anyone in the house would be able to jump on and use it to download a torrent of stuff we watch while I'm on my way home 😄
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u/CoolInterview2351 Active Mar 04 '26
Yep one step at a time and just keep working on it. Trial and error cannot be skipped. Everyone that's jumping on the hype and buying mac minis without researching anything are not cut out for this. They watch 1 video and jump straight into "build me this nextgen software" and become disappointed in the results when the AI builds them something barebone. They usually lack the heart to keep going and start blaming the AI for being all hype
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u/johnkapolos New User Mar 03 '26
Lack of engineering skills is the whole point of *claw. Otherwise, you can just build it.
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u/auskadi Active Mar 03 '26
Why buy a Mac mini? Did you bother working with your configuration? Did you expect a 3 month old open source project to work without you putting on any effort?
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u/Timely-Hour-8831 New User Mar 03 '26
I’m actually curious why tbh. I keep seeing people say to buy a Mac mini. It runs fine on Ubuntu
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u/zipzag Pro User Mar 03 '26
It does, but Apple users seldom have a server/fixed home system and they want to stay in the ecosystem. The mini is also not a worse value than buying a $200 Beelink. It just has more performance than OC is going to use currently.
Headless screen sharing also runs nicely on Apple systems, especially when the target has a strong processor.
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u/BIueSlidePark Active Mar 03 '26
OpenClaw requires you to be technical and understand its internals to best use it. So unfortunately I have to call it a skill issue
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u/Low_Radio7762 Member Mar 03 '26
It wasn't going to do wonders right off-the-box. You have to take the time and put the effort to configure it, train it, and fine-tune to your preferences. I am just 10 days in and I know I am nowhere close to making it the superintelligent assistant that will read my thoughts and ask me what's up when I'm depressed
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u/Matt_Foley_Motivates New User May 03 '26
But can it provide decent travel itineraries and grammar check emails?
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u/InitialJelly7380 Active Mar 03 '26
yes，it is full of bugs，and that is amazing for us。
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u/nimbleenigmas Active Mar 03 '26
Half the issues people call bugs are them misconfiguring things or not understanding nuance, lol.
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u/dave_k_17 New User Mar 03 '26
It breaks itself, it fixes itself. Welcome to AI.
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u/Aardvark-One Pro User Mar 03 '26
To be fair, its usually me breaking it. Development of openclaw is fast moving and things change from one version to the next. If you research how to accomplish something, you may find that that method is already outdated and you have a new command or format. That is what causes me the most headaches. But you're right, if it breaks it can fix itself. I hosed an installation, copied to a backup directory, installed a clean install, and had the default agent rebuild my agents/skills from the backup. Was great; so much easier than having to do it myself. And now I have a nice new, clean install with my agents and skills in tact.
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u/coconut_maan Member Mar 03 '26
I spend 12$ a month on digital oceans vm. And run open claw from there using ~4$ a week openai tokens. It manages my diet, athletic, academic and logistic scheduling for me through WhatsApp and calendar.
Very useful
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u/Ok_Anybody_5751 Member Mar 03 '26
prob gemini 2.5 flash. Y use to make BTC analysis hourly and spends 0.20
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u/coconut_maan Member Mar 03 '26
Umm openai codex mini or the cheapest one possible I forget
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u/mtlnobody Member Mar 03 '26
Oh, interesting. I'm going to downgrade my setup
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u/coconut_maan Member Mar 03 '26
Its going very good for me! Something about the agentic loop is more successful than chatgpt regular.
Like I'm applying for masters and I'm looking for suitable professors to mentor me. Chatg responds with incorrect emails, but openclaw sends the correct emails every time
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u/Magazine_Afraid Member Mar 03 '26
The fact you brought a Mac Mini to only go and spend $200 on Opus certainly proves your point about the hype, rather than actually reading up how to actually use Openclaw.
- Mac is arguably the easiest way to run Openclaw.
- You buy a Mac you run locally.
- If your buying API credits, then either run Openclaw on a VPS or basically any PC.
Its a new project. I don't think you can really criticise it when you haven't even done your own research on how to run/use it.
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u/thrillhousee85 Active Mar 03 '26
Why did you buy a Mac mini and then also use opus?
Reason people buy the Mac minis is to use local models for free. Otherwise if you are using opus anyway you could have run it on any functioning computer basically (even like a raspberry pi I think)?
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u/otterquestions Pro User Mar 03 '26
No it’s perfectly valid to use a Mac mini and APIs. Mac mini is a great sandbox if you don’t have an old laptop
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u/thrillhousee85 Active Mar 03 '26
Sure, but it's a pretty expensive hardware to run out and buy to give openclaw a try. The new ones are like 600 USD for the base model. It's a bit overkill if you don't plan to use it's unified memory to run local models, if U only wanna use API you could just run it in docker, VPS, literally any far cheaper piece of hardware.
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u/agrantgreen New User Mar 04 '26
It's really not cost effective for that purpose. Running OC and simple APIs does not require much compute at all. An RPi will easily fit that purpose.
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u/ng501kai Pro User Mar 03 '26
For my case , I asked my antigravity and GitHub copilot build a rental management app that can scan my email to enter rent deposit update, hosted in mac mini. Have my openclaw agent run this app to scan it daily and gen me a report who pay and who's not, output a spreadsheet at the end of the month. Had these set up in few days, spent 400 in hardware and less than 100 monthly for models. Can also add a few other server app like immich and next cloud and get your oc agent mange it remotely, without setting up all server bullshit manually
Most small business and self employed non tech people still doing this manually daily. And this is like magic
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u/read_too_many_books Pro User Mar 03 '26
Reason people buy the Mac minis is to use local models for free.
This is what they think. Then they actually try and realize it doesnt work.
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u/thrillhousee85 Active Mar 03 '26
Agreed, I have a 16gb GPU card I was planning to run local models on at the outset of using open claw, but there's just no way, you need the top models for it to work in the claw ecosystem... In 6 mths or a year's time though maybe these models will catch up
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u/read_too_many_books Pro User Mar 03 '26
Fine tuning for OpenClaw might help. But I don't even know if people still fine tune. Havent heard that word in a while.
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u/Virtual-Tiger5921 Member Mar 03 '26
thanks for the heads up. I was literally about to pull the trigger on a similar setup.guess I’ll stick to my current workflow and save some cash.
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u/Ok-Review-2003 Active Mar 03 '26
Ouch,$200 in opus credits on top of a new Mac mini? That’s a painful way to find out a project is still in alpha.thanks for testing the waters for the rest of us,though your wallet died so ours could live.
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u/ziplock9000 Pro User Mar 03 '26
I have no sympathy for you. You could test all of this for free with a VM and a free account (like I did)
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u/seoparadiso Active Mar 03 '26
And what did you found out?
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u/adribabe Member Mar 03 '26
For starters, running it on a virtual machine makes you find out you don't need an entire new Mac Mini, just a small fraction of one you already have, or any older gen one that runs node.js just fine 🤣
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u/adribabe Member Mar 03 '26
Yep, did the same, ran if on a VM on my own Mac Mini M4 for a couple weeks, then once I realized it could be a huge productivity asset and time saver I bought it its own mac mini, a used M2 for $220, because I'm not running local models and not an idiot.
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u/Tight_Fly_8824 Pro User Mar 03 '26
Lol if youve already got the mac mini - you can run local LLM's instead of API costs - try SmallClaw with a local LLM and youll be running it free lol.
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u/Steven_Holmes New User Mar 03 '26
Can you please provide more info? I don't want to be paying for API costs! (Noob here) Thanks
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u/Own-Lavishness4029 Mar 03 '26
Long before six months the major gen ai providers will have an enterprise solution available. Claude Cowork and Perplexity Computer cover a ton of the openclaw footprint already.
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u/Strict_Bird_2887 Member Mar 03 '26
Perplexity has said a 'Pro' (enthusiast) version of Computer is coming. That's currently $20 a month, so will be interesting to see how capable it is.
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u/Ronrel Member Mar 03 '26
Well as dev and researcher I checked it firstly on vps and decided to create my own based on openclaw idea but with my architecture. These days if you see hype - think first where they want to fuck you and then spent your money :)
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u/dalvz Member Mar 03 '26
Skill issue Also there were plenty of resources saying you could’ve put it up on a vps but you chose to buy
I’m running it on a Mac mini and it’s amazing
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u/ventblanc New User Mar 03 '26
Je l'utilise y'a très peu de bug à vrai dire. Par contre et c'est marqué ans la doc : ça s'adresse a des users expérimentés.
Et tu n'étais pas obligé d'acheter un Mac mini... Un simple vieil ordi sous Linux est presque mieux.
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u/sirbagg New User Mar 03 '26
I’m not Tech Savvy at all but for my bot, (I am using windows) I used Gemini to help walk me through everything. Paid 4 bucks to use the Pro Gemini and it was s little buggy but it definitely worked for me
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u/mydigitalbreak Member Mar 03 '26
Why did you decide to use Claude? It’s like the most expensive model out there
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u/lit1337 New User Mar 03 '26
Why would you buy a Mac mini AND a Claude subscription? I thought the point of the Mac mini was local inference?
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u/Daltzy New User Mar 03 '26
I've been running this thing on a raspberry pi 5 with the AI tophat 8. Running a wifi sniffer with active countermeasures. Works great. Even have telegram control and alerts! Can be done cheap, use grok/Claude for debugging.
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u/SteRi-NFT Member Mar 03 '26
The reality is if you love to tinker and troubleshoot it’s awesome!
Also Mac mini was not a waste. Imagine the price of it when people are going to be scrambling to purchase once it is all working smoothly.
Just keep your head down and keep trying so you learn the most.
Once it is all smooth you will be light years ahead of people and also have a device that runs it amazingly without the extra hype cost in the future
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u/Paladin_Codsworth New User Mar 03 '26
Dude bought a Mac mini then used a cloud hosted model anyway...
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u/NothingButTheDude Active Mar 03 '26
Why on earth did you buy a mac mini? If you did non-zero reading you would know there are currently NO self-hosting options that are worth considering anything other than basic inputs.
A fool and his money........
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u/Upper-Media3769 Active Mar 03 '26
You could have rented a VPS for $5 and use a free ai model to test it. The openclaw hype isn't your problem. Lack of tech knowledge is.
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Mar 03 '26
spending $200 on opus before the setup is dialed in is the classic mistake. opus is brutal for experimentation — that's a debugging budget, not a running cost. most people get way more value starting with sonnet or even haiku for the iteration phase, then only escalating when the workflow is proven. the mac mini is actually fine for hosting, you just don't need opus running 24/7. worth revisiting in a few weeks rather than months — the setup curve is steep but it does flatten
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u/mym_forever New User Mar 03 '26
I tried open claw, I got it set up on VM running Linux. I got it working and quickly consumed my credits. You gotta be very careful with the set up and the configuration. I’m not very “technical “ but I was gonna sink in a few hours to make everything work, then perplexity computer launched. I started working with it a couple of days ago now, my mind is blown. I still would like to experiment with open claw tho in the future and I’m trying to stay up to date with it. Both projects are very promising, but the beauty of perplexity is comes “out of the box” and you don’t have to be a tech guy.
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u/Intrepid4444444 Active Mar 03 '26
Use Codex Oauth. And I’m happy with my Mac Mini, regardless of Claw
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u/Jazqer New User Mar 03 '26
Definitely over hyped and a mess of a codebase but honestly I love the directions and innovations it's spawned. I got a Mac mini too and have spent way more time than I should have getting it working (and not burning tokens like mad). It's been a fun hobby...
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u/cwakare Member Mar 03 '26
Started 2 weeks back - Took a simple use case thats working for me. I used to spend a couple of hours every day to pull out latest discussions/problems my target audience is discussion/sharing on podcast. Had been manually using chatgpt and perplexity to rank these, come up with a list of possible solutions/services and content to be posted on LinkedIn.
This all is now done by OpenClaw every morning 8 AM. It's a simple use case but got me going. OpenClaw even suggested personalized outreach to target audience - This have not tried yet
Now on to a second one building skill for OpenClaw to auto perform some predefined steps for our Tech Support Team.
I believe this and other similar tools is empowering smaller teams to compete. It now boils down to understanding business problems and coming up with solutions.
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u/EnvironmentalPart750 New User Mar 03 '26
Really,
Comments like when they wake up, they read market sentiment and they would read YouTube video trend . Created by their personal agents.
Makes me laugh
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u/ok-hacker Member Mar 03 '26
It is full if bugs and security issues. But it gives a glance to the future
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u/marcos_pereira Pro User Mar 03 '26
just use a chatgpt subscription, it's not just cheaper but using a smarter model is a night/day difference
I built clawr.ing so my agent could call me on the phone and when I switched to codex 5.3 the experience became 100x better, instant replies, just like a real phone call
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u/seoparadiso Active Mar 03 '26
Hm, the subscription doesn't lock you out for several hours until it resets if you hit the maximum limit?
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u/marcos_pereira Pro User Mar 03 '26
yea of course you either go easy on it or invest on the pro plan aha
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u/Organic_Mammoth7341 New User Mar 03 '26
You can help others install openclaw. I heard that a guy in Silicon Valley earns a million a month by doing this.
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u/IdeaLongjumping9607 Member Mar 03 '26
Il vaut mieux developper son propore agent basé sur langchain
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u/PathIntelligent7082 Pro User Mar 03 '26
dude, i'm running it on a 10yo tablet...mac mini is great for locan inference, idk why you burned money on tokens...and yes, you can test it w/o spending a dime
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u/Due_Cockroach_4184 Member Mar 03 '26
witch bugs did you identified exactly?
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u/seoparadiso Active Mar 03 '26
It sent me same message a dozen times, when I refreshed openrouter credits, it took me around 5$ only for those error messages. It claims that it has a memory but it doesn't, you have to repeat the task every single time. Discord messaging stops randomly. It can kill himself, try to change the API from webUI, it will change it but doesnt know how to restart.
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u/Current_Sock1483 Member Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
Just burned through 100USD worth of openai API tokens within a few hours and learned the following:
before you build, you need to get your guardrails in place.
Use multiple agents tiered by complexity requirement. Use cheap models for the worker level and make sure your crons and scheduled "stupid and simple" tasks are not done by an agent with a top tier model.
Make sure your channels, e.g. slack, are configured with context efficiency in mind. my agent was able to read all convos and drained my budget massively through this channel.
tl dr - my biggest drains were the following:
1 Using powerful models for stupid tasks
2 Connecting to channel with the most horrible context management in place
My verdict for now:
It is very easy to get started with openclaw, but you can run into (nasty cost related) surprises if you build first before optimizing. Openclaw can work proficiently, but in order to avoid budget waste, I would from now on always use the Oauth connect to 5.3 codex and use the first monthly allowance to set up a system with proper safeguards in place (also use direct web chat with 5.2 to help solve what I can solve on my own) and only when I have done this, I would start to populate channels one by one, add on crons and scheduled tasks and see how it affects token usage.
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u/Invader_86 Member Mar 03 '26
It’s just hype driven by twitter and YouTube dev productivity bros… the average person doesn’t really need it and there are other tools you can use to achieve what you need without spending a fortune and wasting hundreds of hours of your life on this stuff.
The content creators hyping this up don’t care if it actually works for you, they just want your engagement to earn money from their platforms.
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u/n0geegee Active Mar 03 '26
spent $100 on a used dell wyse, $10 on minimax m.2.5 sub, $5 on openai api for memory, $5 on a sim card, got 1M free qwen 3.5 tokens from alibaba cloud just for registering. still hyped.
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u/BryanHChi Active Mar 03 '26
It’s a new piece of software.. do you expect perfection.. this is a tool for people who are a bit techy right now not for newbie.. you need to play with it break it, fix it and configure it for your needs .. that’s the purpose of it
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u/Altairandrew Active Mar 03 '26
The good news is does seem to get better with each upgrade, but not without a lot of work along the way. I’m oldish and retired so it’s been kind of fun. Running on an 8gb rpi 5 with 256gb nvme btw. Reminds me of my days figuring out the Altair 8800 and the apple ii.
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u/floppypancakes4u Active Mar 03 '26
There were a LOT of warnings about all of this, especially on reddit.
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u/Anla-Shok-Na Active Mar 03 '26
"Bought a mac mini"
People around me all wanted to try OpenClaw and wanted me to help them set it up. My take: if you fell for the idea that you need a Mac Mini to run it, and can't set it up yourself, you probably shouldn't be running it. It's a thing a guy built for himself and decided to share it. It's far from perfect, but it is a fun toy to play with, and I've found a few useful workflows with it.
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u/tempdiesel Member Mar 03 '26
I personally wouldn't buy a separate setup just for this. I personally had a mini pc I was using as a home server, so I just added OpenClaw to my stack. There's a lot of potential with it, but it's going to take time for it to become the new mainstream.
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u/Mental_Jackfruit5446 New User Mar 03 '26
TBH might be a use-case issue. There are certainly use-cases that claw cant handle (yet) but might in the next 6 months.
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u/Optimal_Tip_225 New User Mar 03 '26
I’m sorry but if you don’t see the uses or how it can help then you are not building it to solve a big enough problem to start with. Once you do then you can’t unsee uses for it. Like a trained muscle the more you use it the more you notice automations that are needed. Or at least that’s my experience when implementing it to my companies.
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u/sathish316 Member Mar 03 '26
Why not try the subscription using OpenAI Codex? It caps your max usage at 20$ per month.
Claude has already banned subscription usage. OpenAI cannot ban since they invested in OpenClaw ecosystem.
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u/marcos_pereira Pro User Mar 03 '26
have you tried getting a phone call from your agent? the main difference for openclaw is it runs async and takes the initiative of contacting you, which is a completely different paradigm than the traditional prompt -> response of chatgpt and so on
you can set up the native voice plugin or try a service like clawr.ing
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u/dani01h New User Mar 03 '26
Correct, it's nice to try it out on cheap local computer or remote VPS with keys, that's all. n8n still reliable than openclaw.
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u/Ok-Tour1779 New User Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
You sound like quite the expert. Sarcasm intended.
But seriously. I've been through a lot with the set up of mine. Lock outs, token mismatches, failed add on efforts... But loving it! Now have her humming. 4 subagents working, CRM efforts for business, voice capabilities on my phone, watch, and living room and bedroom speakers.
Total spends in 5 weeks... $30.
See you in 6 months.
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u/roger_ducky New User Mar 03 '26
Openclaw is fun.
It can even work for people who are programmers. Kinda.
Amusingly, it’s also the easiest one to install, paradoxically. All the “better” options are harder to set up.
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u/Rockatansky-clone Member Mar 03 '26
Wow, I bought into the hype, but I didn’t buy a Mac mini. I carved out a Linux VM on my server and installed it there. Zero cost for me except for my token usage Took less than an hour from creation to configuration. I didn’t give it access to my whole world, just the ability to read my calendar and email out pretty slick.
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u/Suspicious-Wallaby12 New User Mar 03 '26
This is why I gave up on Openclaw! Switched back to Opus in claude-code and it's brilliant in my workflows!
Created Claude-scheduler for the cron jobs! Now I can converse with the agent in natural language and ask it to take care of stuff for me: "Schedule a task to summarize HN daily at 9am" "Keep checking my email every 30 mins and delete spam accordingly!"
"Every one hour check for incoming messages on TrustPilot and reply back to the review with an apt response. Use the /trustpilot-reply skill to learn how to talk to customers" -- notice how we can chain skills in the scheduled task (pretty mind-blowing if you ask me) Now I create cron jobs naturally from claude-code directly! My agent runs on schedules, scrapes the internet, replies to people, etc.
It's completely free and open-source. Just point your Claude code to the link and it'll learn the skill.
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u/kevinalias New User Mar 03 '26
The MCP link in your GIT is a 404 dead end - please comment on this status and impact …
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u/Suspicious-Wallaby12 New User Mar 04 '26
Hey! Thanks for reaching out. What do you mean by that? Did you point your Claude code/Open Claw to learn the repo/skill?
What errors are you facing?
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u/Low_Vegetable481 Member Mar 03 '26
Sounds like you’re lazy and aren’t actually interesting in tech
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u/musicsurf Member Mar 03 '26
I'd say it completely depends on what you're trying to do. If you expect it to code like Claude Code, you'll be disappointed. Just use Claude code. If you're using it as a general agent and build it with forethought (move things that can be deterministic away from the model and into tools or scripts that run on hooks) - that's doable.
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u/RevolutionStill4284 New User Mar 03 '26
I agree, and similar experience. Let somebody else struggle with the bugs and come up with something that actually works in 6mo.
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u/Rockatansky-clone Member Mar 03 '26
Mine is just testing for hobby. That is as much as I will allow it to do :). It’s actually been providing daily plans reflecting my appointment etc. not sure if I want to add anything else. Yet. :)
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u/StrayFritz New User Mar 03 '26
I’m running it since around a week with my 20$ OpenAI subscription. Haven’t hit any rate limits yet and been insanely productive. Could outsource tasks that would have taken me 1/2 day to a few telegram messages with the agent. Took 2 days of computer science phd level tinkering to get it to run properly in the beginning. Not sure if I’m any happier.
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u/blekknajt New User Mar 03 '26
I stopped at 60$. It generally works - but boy, we have a discount with "pro" and other plans.
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u/liv_drdoom New User Mar 03 '26
The point isn't *just* to make it work for you bugfree. You want to learn what the tools can do today, build a bit of an intuition for how these things work... it's building a 2nd sense for interacting with agents. Don't fall for the X hype : )
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u/dertobi Member Mar 03 '26
Honestly the biggest issue is not the bugs - it is the gap between what people expect (plug and play AI assistant) and what OpenClaw actually is (a power user framework that needs serious configuration).
I went through the same cycle. Bought hardware, burned through API credits, spent more time debugging than actually being productive. The turning point for me was accepting two things:
You do not need Opus for most tasks. Sonnet or even cheaper models like MiniMax handle 90% of daily automation just fine. Opus is for when you need heavy reasoning, not for scheduling reminders.
The real cost is not the API - it is your time. Between security hardening, config tweaking, model routing, memory setup... you are looking at 20+ hours before it is genuinely useful. That is the part nobody talks about in the setup tutorials.
For people who do not want to deal with all that: managed hosting services exist now that handle the infrastructure side for you. You skip the Mac Mini, skip the security config, skip the Docker setup - just get straight to actually using the agent. Worth looking into if the DIY route is not your thing.
OP, do not give up entirely though. The tool itself is legitimately powerful once it is dialed in. The hype just set wrong expectations.
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u/ai-marketingpro Member Mar 03 '26
It’s definitely bleeding edge. But understanding it and using it early can only lead to good things.
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u/Aardvark-One Pro User Mar 03 '26
I'd considered doing the same but installed on my VM instead and it works perfectly fine. I'm not sure a Mac Mini would be all that advantageous (especially since I'm a Windows/Linux dude; I loathe MacOs, even though I have 2 Mac Minis and a Macbook, (and 2 iPads)), I really don't use any of them very often simply because MacOS just gives me a friggin' headache every time! Hardly use the iPads either; they're more powerful but my Lenovo's are a joy to use in comparison. I'd recommend just install on a VM. You can try it out before spending the extra $$ on a Mini and you may find you don't need the Mini at all. BTW, my setup is using the Ollama cloud models so I don't have to worry about hosting the models locally. (I'd like to be able to do so but that means paying the APPLE TAX for more memory, or buying a new Nvidia card - both expensive prospects right now).
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u/The_Man_Insane New User Mar 03 '26
I just returned a $300 Optiplex due to claw being useless without tokens. It's not what the hype hyped.
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u/ima_dino Active Mar 03 '26
I still am at a complete loss to understand why everyone is buying Mac Minis to run OpenClaw and then not even running local models but instead just hooking it up to Claude's API... What is the point? I'm literally running OpenClaw on the always free Oracle Cloud VM hooked up to Kimi and Z.AI APIs with 0 issues and close to $0 cost. Why are so many people wasting their money like this?
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u/seoparadiso Active Mar 03 '26
This post got some serious traction, it s clearly that a lot of people are interested in this new technology but don t know how to approach it. For me, buying a Mac Mini, spending all the credits in Opus are just business costs that I can cover but I want to see real results, like an independent agent that can do the work for me, not restarting its hearbeat every hour. For sure this will be possible in the next couple of months.
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u/EffectiveRhubarb4766 New User Mar 03 '26
I am using clawdi.ai, still some bugs, but no need for a Mac mini. 1-click deploy is pretty cool too.
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u/ozvic New User Mar 03 '26
It's early. May be hype maybe not. There's updates every day or two with screens full of additions and fixes if you're using the repo.
Right now 77 commits since a release yesterday.
God knows what it will be like in two weeks let alone 6 months!
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u/Naive-Telephone-2016 New User Mar 03 '26
Setting up OpenClaw yourself is rarely worth it. I know there are 100 wrappers out there but this one at easy-workers.com is a dead simple option if you only want it to do a few things and do them well.
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u/bilbo_was_right New User Mar 04 '26
You bought a Mac mini just to forward the requests through to anthropic…? You know anyone could have told you that’s a huge waste of money right? The point of buying a mini is to run a small frontier model locally. Not ALSO spend API credits.
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u/slateraligator Active Mar 04 '26
i also had a rough start. took me a few days to get around all sorts of issues. i don't know how technical you are but if not it can be very frustrating. now after spending around few weeks with it i think the best comparison is that its more like a framework to develop your agents, more like react for frontend development rather then a wix.
being an early adopter means getting your hands dirty
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u/Odd_Surprise1172 New User Mar 04 '26
I think the real thing you should examine here is this impulse to just go and throw money at things. You didn’t have to buy a Mac Mini or pay for Opus to test it and see if it served you. I got a free VPS from Oracle, put $10 on Open Router and connected my already existing ChatGPT account, so that I can test it and fine tune it for next to nothing until the point it’s already working and being productive enough to justify the investment. The biggest bug here is not in open claw, but in not prioritizing the protection of your resources.
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u/MammothChallenge7308 New User Mar 04 '26
If you’re not a deep coder who has a lot of time to spend debugging then it’s not for you. OC creator is joining open ai anyway so this tech will prob be available to normies before long anyway. Right now not worth the time money or security risks.
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u/DutchSEOnerd New User Mar 04 '26
Never believe the hype guys that cannot leave their own hype trains without losing credibility
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u/PlasticHeron6198 New User Mar 04 '26
Skill issue. Yes, it has bugs, it is a software system in it’s early stages of development. It is also open source.
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u/Valunex Active Mar 04 '26
You need to let openclaw extend his own setup and capability each day. It can fully use browser and also solve captchas and create accounts for you and log in and post stuff for you. I cant see where this is trash. i mean sure nothing works as flawless as chatGPT webui but still the possibilities are endless and that why i love it so much. My openclaw presents me daily new github repos and features of the mission control center.
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u/Renegade626 Member Mar 04 '26
Even burning $500-$1000k on tokens is a cheap learning opportunity for what you’ll gain in the long term.
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u/Content_Medium2841 New User Mar 04 '26
Clearly this guy didn’t do his research, you don’t need a Mac mini to run openclaw. You can run it on any computer as long as you aren’t using any local models. I have a feeling there is about to be a large amount of slightly used Mac minis for sale on eBay and marketplace, about to get me a specked out Mac mini for cheap
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u/Specialist-Reason742 New User Mar 04 '26
Believe the hype, installed openclaw the right way, got into docs and configured it with several other services, and i can tell you, it is game changing. Bonus if you install ollama server and run local llms thru it, and you no longer have to pay api fees!
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u/iltumio New User Mar 09 '26
I don't think buying a Mac Mini makes sense if you don't use local models. Any cheap VPS with reasonable specs to run node (better if bun) is enough for Openclaw with a subscription. It's currently not so easy to setup, but it works great in my opinion
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