Openclaw

OpenClaw in 2026: Security Reality Check and Where It Still Shines

OpenClaw (the project formerly known as Moltbot and Clawdbot) had a wild start to 2026: explosive growth, a rebrand after Anthropic’s trademark request, and adoption from Silicon Valley to major Chinese tech firms. By February it had sailed past 180,000 GitHub stars and drawn millions of visitors. Then the other shoe dropped. Security researchers disclosed critical issues—including CVE-2026-25253 and the ClawHavoc campaign, with hundreds of malicious skills and thousands of exposed instances. The gap between hype and reality became impossible to ignore.

OpenClaw for Teams That Gave Up on AI

Lots of teams have been here: you tried ChatGPT, Copilot, or a similar assistant. You used it for coding, planning, and support. After a few months, the verdict was “meh”—maybe a bit faster on small tasks, but no real step change, and enough wrong answers and extra verification that it didn’t feel worth the hype. So you dialed back, or gave up on “AI” as a productivity lever.

If that’s you, the next step isn’t to try harder with the same tools. It’s to try a different kind of tool: one built to do a few concrete jobs in your actual environment, with access to your systems and a clear way to see that it’s helping. OpenClaw (and tools like it) can be that next step—especially for teams that are struggling to see any performance benefits from AI in their software engineering workflows.

OpenClaw for Engineering Teams: Beyond Chatbots

I wrote recently about using OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot) as an automated SDR for sales outreach. That post focused on a business use case, but since then I’ve been exploring what OpenClaw can do for engineering teams specifically—and the results have been more interesting than I expected.

OpenClaw has evolved significantly since its early days. With 173,000+ GitHub stars and a rebrand from Moltbot in late January 2026, it’s moved from a novelty to a genuine platform for local-first AI agents. The key differentiator from tools like ChatGPT or Claude isn’t the AI model—it’s the deep access to your local systems and the skill-based architecture that lets you build custom workflows.