Let's recap. OpenClaw is a self-hosted AI assistant built on 3 layers (Gateway, Channel, LLM) that gives an AI model "eyes and hands" through your messaging apps. Originally called Clawdbot, then briefly Moltbot, Peter Steinberger created it in November 2025, and it has grown to 171K+ GitHub stars.
You've seen what you can build: personal productivity, business automation, developer tools, smart home control. And you know the trade-offs: a real security surface, setup complexity, and \250−$750$/month in API costs. Next up, you'll set up your environment and get OpenClaw running.