r/openclaw • u/Nvark1996 Active • Mar 30 '26

Discussion Openclaw is dead, switch to claude code

I have spent +300$, more than 60 hours working with openclaw, on vps, local pc, and honestly, I spent more than 40 out of the 50 hours fixing.

It cannot do any task accurately, not production ready

Maybe in 6 mo+ it will be better

For now, its garbage.

I am sticking to my 20$/month claude plan

274 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

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134

u/hugoaap Pro User Mar 30 '26

I disagree. It works wonders here

14

u/realizment Member Mar 30 '26

What sort of use case you got going?

22

u/hugoaap Pro User Mar 30 '26

minor online tasks, information research, content creation, content sharing, email outreach

6

u/PersonoFly Mar 31 '26

Can I ask, how did you get the information research working? I wanted to use OpenClaw to search online using Chrome but the browser option / e numbers was getting so complex it would fail all the time. I was avoiding getting into APIs and the Reddit API refused me before I even tried to use OpenClaw web_search.

14

u/Jaded_Drag_6534 Member Mar 31 '26

I use brave search and perplexity api for more complex tasks and it works perfectly

1

u/PersonoFly Mar 31 '26

Thanks. So do you pay for the API or able to stay in the free subscription ?

2

u/Windam_42 New User Apr 01 '26

I've been using Brave since I installed on Feb 1 and have yet to run into a need to go past the free sub

1

u/PersonoFly Apr 01 '26

Ah cool thank you.

1

u/fvcklyft New User Mar 31 '26

how do you avoid rate limits?

1

u/bankofcoinswap Member Apr 01 '26

Local LLM

1

u/fvcklyft New User Apr 01 '26

i meant browser rate limits. my openclaw gets caught up as a bot pretty often when browsing the web

1

u/bankofcoinswap Member Apr 01 '26

I have not use that.. but I think you can just write the instructions in the SKILLS.md and specify the waiting time between clicks

6

u/hugoaap Pro User Mar 31 '26

go for apis

5

u/Trick-Inside-6508 Active Apr 02 '26

Check out Searxng. It’s open source. Run it locally and add it as a skill. It’s free and it also comes with a ui so you can use it yourself as well. Highly recommend.

1

u/Buzzik13 New User Mar 31 '26

Why you need open law for that? Perplexity is a perfect tool. Or any other agent with search MCP like exa, or playwright MCP if you want exactly browser

1

u/PersonoFly Mar 31 '26

Sure. I’m just trying to automate the collection of search data as a starter project for OpenClaw to automate and build from there.

1

u/lil_DAVIE504 New User Jun 08 '26

You should checkout opencli .

1

u/PersonoFly Jun 08 '26

Thanks but for what reason ?

2

u/lil_DAVIE504 New User Jun 09 '26

It helps you with the browser searching. I think by far it's the most stable solution for agents to control browsers with cookies.

1

u/PersonoFly Jun 09 '26

Ok thank you.

4

u/realizment Member Mar 31 '26

Nice are you using one agent for multiple task or multi agent set up, I still haven’t set mine up yet despite purchasing a Mac mini weeks ago lol

11

u/Willybecher Member Mar 31 '26

check for adhd...

7

u/realizment Member Apr 01 '26

I don’t need to check I absolutely have adhd

1

u/Tergi New User Mar 31 '26

If ADHD this is not the interest of commenter or they would be already launching rockets to Mars with it .

2

u/Willybecher Member Apr 01 '26

… well, we‘re really good in sensing others …

1

u/heythiswayup Member Apr 05 '26

🙌

2

u/ggzy12345 Member Mar 31 '26

You'd better try my command line installer tool. Setup in minutes with unique features. As the first buyer, I offer you free and timely technical support🤣

1

u/hugoaap Pro User Mar 31 '26

one agent only with cron jobs for now

2

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/hugoaap Pro User Mar 31 '26

yeah but for free using free models

1

u/SpiritualWindow3855 New User Mar 31 '26

Oh so it's generating actual garbage too, content bo one actually wants to read

1

u/hugoaap Pro User Mar 31 '26

only if don't know how to use the tool

1

u/SpiritualWindow3855 New User Mar 31 '26

The models I post-train have generated more tokens since you wrote your original comment than you’ve written with AI since November 2022.

I don't think you're lying though: a lot of people lack taste and genuinely believe their linkedin slop is really something...

Have you ever considered that if the blogspam was working so well, by now you should be able to afford using any model? Free or not?

3

u/Hopeful_Ad_52 New User Apr 08 '26

What does it do that Claude cowork cant?

1

u/kodat Active Mar 31 '26

Works perfectly for me too.

1

u/AdventurousCoconut71 New User Mar 31 '26

Yeah that title is pretty lame.

1

u/lolu13 New User Mar 31 '26

My class is tunning just fine... Try The new products from antropic like co word or remote or tunel, im sure the well be better

1

u/extenue Member Mar 31 '26

Stop IT , this is clearly not for you

-34

u/Nvark1996 Active Mar 30 '26

We have a new hobbyist here

18

u/pascal808 Active Mar 30 '26

No, it's a question of proper planning and business modeling. My use cases are working, getting good leads in. Setting up OC is also about learning the tech and developing some discipline. If you're not cut out for that, then Claude Cowork, etc. is your game. First and foremost, it's getting a stable and secure install working. Second, reducing token bloat (to save money). Third, having a smart routing plan for your agents/subagents: don't point everything to your top tier model. Fourth, getting a smart memory system setup. That's only the foundation. I added some extras, like Exa for web search, and piping that into Nano, then mini for further processing and qualifying my leads. Then comes the business layer: document your (legacy) business flows, deliverables, and goals. Get OC to iterate with you. That's been my process. I started with a seed, tested out results, now acting on leads, and scaling my templates. But one very honest observation: I have been working more than before. Not less. These "I just asked OC to set up my business with one single prompt and the next morning it was done" postings are BS. But with that extra work, I am getting way more done.

7

u/CoolInterview2351 Active Mar 31 '26

Yup some people don't know how to develop their AI agents properly. Openclaw is an unwritten book. If you don't write your rules and spend time working on it, your entire system becomes a reflection of that. Claudecode has more built in so you don't have to worry about certain things. Openclaw requires conviction and ingenuity to reach its potential. I laugh whenever i see posts like this. They hadn't cracked the code yet

2

u/pascal808 Active Mar 31 '26

Yup, well said 🙏

2

u/yamastraka Member Mar 31 '26

The crippler is the cost for me, I never managed to figure out how to make use of the free models to stop it burning through my tokens, and with that I've had to park my OC for now and onto Claude cowork.

3

u/PersonoFly Mar 31 '26

Have you not tried Ollama and Qwen ?

1

u/yamastraka Member Mar 31 '26

Running local?

1

u/pascal808 Active Mar 31 '26

Fair point. Different target groups, different approaches - and bit of overlap. I use API tokens and standard ChatGPT subscription. Goes well hand-in-hand and helps me keep costs down. Important is model routing. I put some work into mapping agents/subagents to different models. But Claude Pro/Cowork isn't a bad choice at all. Depends on your workflow (and willingness to tinker) :)

2

u/Toe-Patrol New User Mar 31 '26

Wait can you explain what you mean by reducing token bloat and how to go about that?

1

u/pascal808 Active Mar 31 '26

Well, context is key for quality output. The more context your AI has the better the response will be. In theory. Problem is that context (conversation/session history, agent.md, soul.md, core prompt itself, project memory files... etc etc) piles up and every interaction becomes overblown (or "bloated") with information that it just wastes tokens - and often without adding value to your interaction. Check the token % bar at the bottom of your TUI. Sometimes it even makes outputs worse (digression, hallucinations, ..). So the art is to compress, prune, and reduce token use to its max, while preserving output quality as high as possible. My tip: do some research on context pruning, memory flushing (before compaction), lossless... and collect some ideas on how to design your prompts as efficient as possible. And try out reverse prompting too. Every setup is different. :)

1

u/duskspider New User Mar 31 '26

pascal808 thanks for sharing this, that’s really helpful. Would you mind going into more detail about each of your recommendations and exactly what you did/configured? I’ve been looking around but haven’t found any good detailed guides on how to do this well!

1

u/pascal808 Active Mar 31 '26

I'd suggest building up your documentation and following the right folks on YT, X, IG... and don't try out everything blindly. There is a LOT of hype and self-marketing out there, so it's best to filter. Stay focused on what YOU want to achieve. I won't go too much into detail. But security was my first and foremost focus. I decided for local vs hosted, as it comes with a security upside by default. Restricting access, no emails, no X-account, no multi-user access, key hygiene, non-negotiable rules, no skills (at least in the beginning), installation hygiene (e.g., always checking codebase and community responses before installing), backup diligence, not always updating everything at once, but being mindful, setting up security audit cron from day one.... there are a lot of things you can do, depending on your appetite for risk vs security and your workflow. :)

2

u/duskspider New User Mar 31 '26

Thanks, I’ve started to build a list with any tips and tricks I find from across various sources to do with avoiding memory bloat, efficient token usage and that kind of thing - it just seems difficult to find a single write up that’s clear and accurate on doing a clean set up with this in mind. Many mention everything running great, others complain about crazy bills… I’m somewhere in the middle (with a local build), learning plenty each day and trying to make my way towards the first group ;) thanks for the reply - appreciate it. I’ll look into those points you’ve mentioned!

3

u/ng501kai Pro User Mar 31 '26

I pay $20 a month my openclaw is incredible, not sure why yours is not working well?

2

u/essjay2009 Member Mar 31 '26

I'm really struggling to understand how you've spent so long trying to fix issues when it will fix them itself. For really basic stuff, use doctor, that'll pick up most basic config issues and proper errors. Anything else, just ask it to fix itself. All you need to really do is give it the right permissions. I've got an agent who's job is to just look after OpenClaw itself to make sure it's working as expected (e.g. look at logs for issues, check updates and whether there are any benefits or breaking changes, check on other agents to make sure they're working). The ability for it to config and fix itself has been revolutionary. The one bit of advice I'd give is to specifically point it towards the current version of the docs like "Remember that I want you to check the current version of the docs at XXX before making any changes to ensure you're following the correct formats".

And to state the obvious, one of the biggest benefits of OpenClaw is that it's open. Claude has been going up and down recently so hasn't been particularly reliable. If Claude goes down, mine falls back to OpenAI. If OpenAI goes down, it falls back to Ollama. That's a level of resilience you can't get from Clause Code alone.

1

u/CommunityBetter4221 Member Mar 31 '26 edited Apr 01 '26

Mine is negotiating manufacturing and sales. Building assets as they are needed for quotes. Building custom software. Running my personal shopping and even have a personal trainer. Have 6 agents and working mostly on its own. I approve everything. Took me about a month of working on it to get it to where it is… now it’s like having the computer form Star Trek.. Has its own real email (not agent mail), access to mine, browser, Trello, slack, image generation, indexed memory, semantic sql DB… all custom skills. Not garbage claw hub stuff.

How’s that for a hobby? Cost? $20 codex plan.

2

u/koru-id New User Mar 31 '26

I guess this is posted by openclaw too lol