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Try using an alternative to openclaw, which they claim is cheaper to use
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My friend Shabeer Naha WhatsApped me this link today - https://youtube.com/shorts/HUueAGGKy9I?si=kJ-h7G6Y3sW0ql9h - and asked "Is this true?"
This was my first time I was hearing of picoclaw and I wasn't perturbed. Everyday something in the AI world is coming up and I can no longer keep track of these. I wanted to try openclaw but refrained when I read about agents performing actions automatically on your behalf. And people are reportedly buying multiple Mac Minis for this !?! But what I saw in the video about picoclaw was that it can run even on 10MB of RAM because it doesn't really run the agent on your local device. I mean ... the agent is on your local device but the LLM isn't.
So I decided to give this a shot on my Windows laptop - the expendable laptop.
The docs on the homepage (https://picoclaw.net/#install) says just this :
git clone https://github.com/sipeed/picoclaw.git
cd picoclaw && picoclaw onboard
picoclaw agent
# Or send a single message:
picoclaw agent -m "Hello, introduce yourself"
This is very misleading. Because you can't just cd into a just cloned directory and run a binary esp. if it doesn't exist. The directory in this GitHub has no executable - https://github.com/sipeed/picoclaw
First of all, you need to run this in a Linux environment so I used WSL2 on Windows which was already loaded with Ubuntu 22.04.
git clone https://github.com/sipeed/picoclaw.git
The folder seems to be go project so the project had to be built with the go compiler. Check for your go version - it requires almost the latest version - mine was very much outdated since I don't code in go yet.
go version
go version go1.18.1 linux/amd64
Update go.
sudo apt remove golang-go -y && sudo apt autoremove -y
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go
wget https://go.dev/dl/go1.25.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.25.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz
vi ~/.bashrc
Now add this line to the very bottom of ~/.bashrc
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
Then execute these :
source ~/.bashrc
go version
rm go1.25.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz
make deps
make build
cd build
./picoclaw onboard
You should see something like this on your WSL2 terminal :
anjanesh@ZEROBOOKULTRA:~/picoclaw/build$ ./picoclaw onboard
š¦ picoclaw is ready!
Next steps:
1. Add your API key to /home/anjanesh/.picoclaw/config.json
Get one at: https://openrouter.ai/keys
2. Chat: picoclaw agent -m "Hello!"
I signed up at openrouter.ai and got myself an API key.
vi /home/anjanesh/.picoclaw/config.json
Just edit it to enter the openrouter.ai key
"openrouter": {
"api_key": "enter-your-openrouter-API-key-here",
"api_base": ""
}
Also, you need to edit the default provider and model.
"agents": {
"defaults": {
"workspace": "~/.picoclaw/workspace",
"restrict_to_workspace": true,
"provider": "openrouter",
"model": "openai/gpt-5.2",
"max_tokens": 8192,
"temperature": 0.7,
"max_tool_iterations": 20
}
},
Now if you enter a prompt like this :
./picoclaw agent -m "What does the company Growthink do ?"
After a whole lot of info lines being printed for about 1-2 minutes, I get the answer as :
2026/02/19 18:00:54 [2026-02-19T12:30:54Z] [INFO] tool: Tool execution completed {tool=web_fetch, duration_ms=435, result_length=93}
2026/02/19 18:01:00 [2026-02-19T12:31:00Z] [INFO] agent: LLM response without tool calls (direct answer) {content_chars=748, agent_id=main, iteration=12}
2026/02/19 18:01:01 [2026-02-19T12:31:01Z] [INFO] agent: Response: Growthink is a business consulting firm (founded in 1999) that helps entrepreneurs and companies grow and raise capit... {agent_id=main, session_key=agent:main:main, iterations=12, final_length=748}
š¦ Growthink is a business consulting firm (founded in 1999) that helps entrepreneurs and companies grow and raise capital. In practice, they provide:
- **Business planning** (business plan writing/consulting and related strategy work)
- **Market research** (industry/market/competitive research to support decisions and fundraising)
- **Investment banking / capital raising support** (helping companies prepare investor materials, refine the investor story/financials, and run parts of the fundraising process)
Sources: Growthink āServicesā page (Business Planning, Market Research, Investment Banking) https://www.growthink.com/services and Growthink āAboutā pages https://www.growthink.com/about-us / https://www.growthink.com/about/.
Why does a CLI still take so much time that doesn't require compute power on your device (and I'm on a 200 Mbps line) is beyond me.
PS: I loaded $10 credits to my openrouter.ai account to try other models. Pricing (https://openrouter.ai/pricing) says 25+ free models and 4 free providers on the free tier.