Recently, the highly anticipated open-source personal AI assistant project completed its third rebranding. From its initial name, Clawd, to the brief Moltbot, it has now become OpenClaw. The project officially announced: "The lobster has finally evolved into its final form," marking the platform's entry into a stable development phase.

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The Project's Origin and the Complex Naming Journey  

The project was initially named Clawd (a play on Claude and the image of a lobster's claw), but had to be renamed due to trademark issues and a friendly request from Anthropic. It then briefly used Moltbot (symbolizing the lobster's shedding and growth), representing the project's iteration and evolution, but faced criticism from the community for being unclear and hard to remember. After multiple rounds of trademark checks, domain purchases, and code migration, the team finally chose the name OpenClaw:

- Open: emphasizes full openness, community-driven development, and self-hosted features

- Claw: retains the iconic lobster mascot and continues the "lobster heritage"

The official statement said that this rebranding was carefully considered, "this name will stay."

Explosive Growth with Outstanding Data  

In a short time, the OpenClaw GitHub repository has exceeded 100,000 stars, and website traffic surpassed 2 million within a week. The project is hailed as "a real working AI." Users can directly call the locally running AI assistant through daily chat applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Google Chat, and Teams, achieving practical functions like clearing inboxes, sending emails, managing calendars, and checking in for flights. All data remains on the user's own device or server, truly realizing "your assistant, your machine, your rules."

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Core Features and Latest Updates  

OpenClaw is positioned as an open AI agent platform that runs locally and supports multi-platform (any OS, device) and multi-model access. Recent key updates include:

- New support for Twitch and Google Chat plugins

- Integration of models such as KIMI K2.5 and Xiaomi MiMo-V2-Flash

- Web chat interface adds the ability to send images

- Continuous submission of 34 security-related improvements, release of machine-readable security models, and ongoing refinement of security best practices (despite prompt injection still being an industry challenge)

The team is actively introducing more maintainers, establishing PR/Issue handling processes, and exploring mechanisms for full-time maintainer compensation to ensure the sustainability of the community.

Community Response and Future Outlook  

Since its inception, despite challenges such as naming controversies, account hijacking, and counterfeit cryptocurrency scams, the practicality and privacy protection philosophy of the core software have always won the favor of developers and users. The lobster mascot remains "sacred and inviolable," becoming the most recognizable cultural symbol of the project.

The official blog emphasized that OpenClaw is not just a personal assistant, but can also be expanded into a tool for families, teams, or even companies. Future priorities include further strengthening security, improving gateway stability, integrating more models/providers, and expanding the maintenance team.

Project Address: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw  

Official Website: https://openclaw.ai