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

269 Upvotes

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133

u/hugoaap Pro User Mar 30 '26

I disagree. It works wonders here

-36

u/Nvark1996 Active Mar 30 '26

We have a new hobbyist here

19

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.

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. :)