Author: Miles Deutscher, Crypto KOL
Translated by: Felix, PANews
OpenClaw (formerly known as Clawdbot) is an open-source autonomous AI agent tool proposed by developer Peter Steinberger. In early 2026, especially after the name was finalized, it quickly blew up and became one of the hottest projects in the global AI community. Behind the hype, it’s worth thinking about whether OpenClaw is truly good and whether it’s suitable for most people. After using OpenClaw for a while, crypto KOL Miles Deutscher believes that OpenClaw is actually not suitable for most people and recommends that beginners start with other tools instead. The following are the details.
I know the title of this article is ironic, considering that most of my AI workflow is built using OpenClaw. I post about it every week. I even made a dedicated series of articles called “Day X of building my AI team.”
But I still have to tell you: most people shouldn’t use it.
Before you attack me, please let me finish. This is not an article against OpenClaw—it’s an article against hype. Too many content creators chase OpenClaw for views, but they don’t tell you the truth: for most people, there are better alternatives available right now.
And in the past week, the whole landscape has changed dramatically.
The inside story that hardly anyone talks about behind the promotion
Here is the real experience of 90% of people using OpenClaw:
You see those viral tweets. You buy a Mac Mini. You install OpenClaw. You spend a weekend setting up your agents. You feel like a genius—about two days later. Then you realize you don’t really know what you should be automating in the first place.
Your workflow gets interrupted. Your agent program throws errors. You spend more time debugging than actually doing real work. Now, you have a machine on your desk worth over $1,000, yet you can only do work that could be completed with a $20/month subscription service.
I’ve seen this play out dozens of times in DMs (and on my friends/employees). The issue isn’t the tool itself—it’s the approach.
But no one seems to notice this in the OpenClaw circle.
While they’re busy debugging their agent setups, Anthropic, Notion, and other companies released a series of announcements that completely changed the situation.
The latest announcements (and why they changed everything)
In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a series of announcements that genuinely changed how people judge whether OpenClaw is suitable for most people. I’ll go through them one by one below:
1. Claude Code – Remote Control (mobile version)
Anthropic launched the mobile version of Claude Code, called “Remote Control.” You just scan a QR code on your terminal to control Claude Code through an iPhone or Android device.
No Mac Mini needed, no VPS needed, no servers needed, and no need to open a terminal on your desktop. You just send tasks from your phone, and Claude automatically builds things in the background.
One of Openclaw’s biggest advantages is that it can be accessed through platforms like Telegram/WhatsApp/Discord—and the launch of Remote Control solves this problem for many users.
2. Claude Cowork business update
If Claude Code is for developers, then Cowork is for everyone. It’s a smart assistant based on a graphical user interface (GUI) that can handle real work: not only answering questions, but also executing multi-step tasks within your existing tools.
They recently added integrations with Slack, Figma, Canva, Box, and Clay. In addition, they also rolled out plugins for industries such as financial services, human resources, design, and private equity.
After Anthropic published a financial plugin, an industry software ETF dropped 6% in a single day. On February 20, after Claude Code Security was released, internet security stocks plunged that afternoon.
That’s enough to show how much the market values this product.
For the 80% of tasks that most people want to accomplish with OpenClaw (research, document management, content workflows, data analysis), Cowork already covers most of the needs.
3. Notion Agents
This feature has been underestimated before, but it shouldn’t be underestimated—especially for Notion users like me.
Notion has restructured its entire AI system into autonomous agents. These agents aren’t chatbots—they can autonomously execute multi-step workflows longer than 20 minutes, and they have memory. They can connect to Slack, Google Drive, and GitHub, and you can also set their execution time and trigger conditions.
For knowledge work—such as project management, meeting preparation, research, content planning, and database management—Notion Agents are already better than most people’s OpenClaw setups, and the onboarding barrier is almost zero.
If your main purpose for using OpenClaw is “to manage my business and automate my workflow,” then honestly, Notion Agents are a solid starting point.
4. Manus / n8n / Zapier
I won’t spend too much time on these tools (there will be more in-depth content later). But it’s obvious that for basic automation tasks—like email scraping, web searching, standard operating procedure (SOP) generation, and lead data enrichment—these tools can handle it just fine for now.
If you haven’t already maximized what these tools can do, then you probably really don’t need to buy a Mac Mini.
Scalability issues that no one mentions
The OpenClaw community also ignores a scalability issue.
Claude Code can scale infinitely in the cloud. More compute resources, more parallel tasks, stronger performance—it grows as your needs grow. But OpenClaw runs on your own hardware. When you hit your hardware performance bottleneck, your only option is to buy another Mac Mini.
And it’s not just a scalability issue. Claude Code integrates directly into GitHub, VS Code, and Xcode through MCP. They also recently released features like security scanning, lifecycle hooks, hot reloading, and device-to-device session switching. This ecosystem expands every week.
For most people, cloud-based tools are simply more practical.
OpenClaw’s advantages
But OpenClaw still has unbeatable advantages.
- Full local control. Your data never leaves your machine. For people handling sensitive business data, customer information, or proprietary workflows, this is crucial.
- Complex multi-agent orchestration. Running a dedicated agent program that coordinates five agents that communicate with each other, assigns tasks, and runs as a unified coordination system—cloud tools still can’t do this. This is exactly where OpenClaw truly leads all other tools (and also the main reason people still use it).
- Custom agent capabilities. SOUL files, detailed configurations, and agents that can truly understand your business context—this level of customization is still not achievable elsewhere.
- Autonomous operation 24/7. Once set up correctly, your agents can run around the clock without subscription fees that eat into your profits. In the long run, if you prepare properly upfront, OpenClaw’s economics are actually better.
- Real ownership. You own the entire tech stack—especially if you run local models.
If you’ve already invested time to build a suitable OpenClaw environment and you have real, proven use cases, then you’re still in a favorable position.
But given the various updates being rolled out across the industry right now, my view of OpenClaw as an individual is:
It’s a great tool, but it isn’t the only tool. I use Claude Code to build specific models/workflows. I use Notion Agents for business automation. I even use GPT to formulate strategies.
In my opinion, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The best approach is to use the right tool for the specific purpose. OpenClaw is especially useful to me for automating data scraping and autonomous product iteration. But that’s entirely a personal choice.
So what exactly should you do?
If you’re starting from zero, here are some sincere suggestions from me:
Step one: Start with Claude (choose Cowork or Code versions based on your technical level). Get familiar with what AI agents can do in your specific workflow. I personally think this is the best starting point for 99% of people.
Step two: Add Notion Agents and/or Manus/n8n to your knowledge work and basic automation. Test what’s worth automating and what isn’t. This is a low-risk way to test new workflows.
Step three: When you truly feel that these tools aren’t enough, that’s when OpenClaw comes in—because now you clearly know what you need it to do.
Most people start directly at step three, and then wonder why OpenClaw doesn’t work.
Conclusion
OpenClaw is great for some people. If you want to stay at the forefront of AI, it’s absolutely worth trying.
But hype makes people think that buying hardware and setting up agents is the path to using AI. That’s not true. The right path is to first understand which parts need to be automated, test with tools that are easy to get started with, and upgrade to OpenClaw only when it’s truly necessary.
I’m still using OpenClaw every day, and I still believe in it. But if you pretend it’s everyone’s starting point, that’s misleading.
Start with the tools above, build your workflow smoothly step by step, and then set up your machine.
That is the correct order. Most people have it backwards.
