The viral personal AI assistant formerly known as Clawdbot has a new name once more. After a legal challenge from Claude’s maker, Anthropic, it briefly rebranded as Moltbot but has now settled on OpenClaw as its permanent name. This latest change was not prompted by Anthropic, which declined to comment. This time, the project’s original creator, Peter Steinberger, took proactive steps to avoid copyright issues. The Austrian developer stated that he had someone research trademarks for OpenClaw and also asked OpenAI for permission to be certain.
In a blog post, Steinberger wrote that the lobster has molted into its final form. Molting, the process through which lobsters grow, had also inspired the previous name, but Steinberger confessed that the short-lived Moltbot moniker never grew on him, and others agreed. This rapid name change underscores the project’s youth, even as it has attracted over 100,000 GitHub stars in just two months. According to Steinberger, the new name OpenClaw is a nod to its roots and community, noting that the project has grown far beyond what he could maintain alone.
The OpenClaw community has already spawned creative offshoots, including Moltbook, a social network where AI assistants can interact with each other. The platform has attracted significant attention from AI researchers and developers. Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s former AI director, called the phenomenon genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing he has seen recently, noting that people’s AI assistants are self-organizing on a Reddit-like site, discussing various topics. British programmer Simon Willison described Moltbook as the most interesting place on the internet right now. On the platform, AI agents share information on topics ranging from automating Android phones to analyzing webcam streams through a skill system of downloadable instruction files. Willison noted that agents post to forums and have a built-in mechanism to check for updates, though he cautioned this approach carries inherent security risks.
Steinberger had taken a break after exiting his former company but came back from retirement to work on AI. Clawdbot stemmed from his personal projects, but OpenClaw is no longer a solo endeavor. He added quite a few people from the open source community to the list of maintainers recently.
That additional support will be key for OpenClaw to reach its full potential. Its ambition is to let users have an AI assistant that runs on their own computer and works from the chat apps they already use. However, until it ramps up its security, it is still inadvisable to run it outside of a controlled environment or give it access to main Slack or WhatsApp accounts. Steinberger is aware of these concerns and thanked security experts for helping harden the project. He stated that security remains the top priority and noted the latest version includes some improvements.
Even with external help, there are industry-wide problems too big for OpenClaw to solve alone, such as prompt injection, where a malicious message could trick AI models. Steinberger reminded users that prompt injection is still an unsolved problem and directed them to security best practices. These practices require significant technical expertise, reinforcing that OpenClaw is currently best suited for early tinkerers, not mainstream users. As hype has grown, the team has become increasingly vocal with warnings. A top maintainer stated that if you cannot understand how to run a command line, this project is far too dangerous to use safely and is not a tool for the general public at this time.
Truly going mainstream will take time and money, and OpenClaw has now started to accept sponsors, with lobster-themed tiers. Its sponsorship page clarifies that Steinberger does not keep the funds but is figuring out how to pay maintainers properly, full-time if possible. Likely helped by Steinberger’s pedigree and vision, OpenClaw’s sponsors include software engineers and entrepreneurs who have founded other well-known projects. One sponsor, who now describes himself as a tinkerer and investor, sees value in putting AI’s potential in people’s hands and believes in backing people who are building open source tools anyone can pick up and use.