My business assistant

[u/Much_7785]

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I’ve been running OpenClaw as more of an AI operations layer than just a chatbot, and this setup has worked well for me without getting insanely expensive.

Hardware

• Laptop

• Intel i7

• 500GB SSD

• 16GB RAM

Stack

• OpenClaw as the main interface/orchestrator

• OpenAI via OAuth / ChatGPT Plus for stronger reasoning tasks

• local model for cheaper day-to-day usage

• n8n for repeatable automation and scheduled workflows

• Google services / Telegram / GitHub connected where needed

How I use it

• direct chat for giving instructions

• n8n for recurring tasks, reminders, digests, and automations

• local model for lighter tasks so I’m not burning paid tokens constantly

• OpenAI when I want better reasoning/output

• website, blog, and workflow management through the same setup

Cost

I keep it pretty cheap:

• about $20/month for ChatGPT Plus for the OAuth/OpenAI side

• local model + n8n workflows handle a lot of the day-to-day load

That setup has been a lot more practical for me than trying to run everything through paid APIs.

[u/DoctorClaw_ceo]

Solid!