Let me tell you what's under the hood. OpenClaw is 84% TypeScript by line count. The Gateway, Channel adapters, and LLM Layer all run on Node.js 22+. The mobile apps are native: Swift for iOS, Kotlin for Android.
The project uses PostgreSQL for persistent storage, Redis for session caching and the Lane Queue, and Docker for deployment. Don't let that list scare you. A basic setup only needs Node.js and a single Docker Compose file. I'll walk you through the full setup in the next section.