by davidm888 | 2026-01-26 02:24:07+00:00
I installed it a couple of days ago on a Proxmox VM on my home lab server to play with it. The key features are that it has local memory, generates cron jobs on its own and can be the one to initiate a conversation with you based on things that it does. Here are a few simple things I tried:

1. Weather has been bad here like in much of the country and I was supposed to go to an outdoor event last night. Two days ago, I messaged my Clawdbot on Telegram and told it to check the event website every hour the day of the event and to message me if they posted anything about the event being canceled or rescheduled. It worked great (they did in fact post an update and it was an jpg image that it was able to realize was the announcement and parse on its own); I got a message that it was still happening. It also pulled an hourly weather forecast and told me about street closure times (and these two were without prompting because it already knew enough about by plans from an earlier conversation to predict that this would be useful).

2. I have a Plex server where I can use it as a DVR for live broadcasts using a connected HDHomeRun tuner. I installed the Plex skill into Clawbot, but it didn't have the ability to schedule recordings. It tried researching the API and couldn't find anything published. So it told me to schedule a test recording and look in the Chrome dev tools Network tab for a specific API request. Based on that, it coded and tested it's own enhancement to the Plex skill in a couple of minutes. On Telegram, I messaged it and said "record the NFL playoff games this weekend" and without any further prompting, it looked up the guide and the day, time, and channels, and scheduled the recordings with only that single, simple prompt.

3. I set up the GA4 skill and asked it questions about my web traffic. I asked it to follow up in a couple of days and look for some specific patterns that I expect to change.

4. I installed the Resend skill so it could send email via their API. To test it, I sent it a message and said, "Find a PDF copy of Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena and email it to me", and less than a minute later, a had a full (public domain) copy of the book in my inbox. Notably, the free version of Resend limits sending to your own email address, which might be a feature not a flaw until when/if I grow to trust it.

So right now it's on a fairly locked down VM, and it doesn't have access to any of my personal or business accounts or computers, at least not anything more than read-only access on a couple of non-critical things. Mostly just for fun. But I could see many uses where you want have keep an eye on something and have it proactively reach out when a condition is met (or just with periodic updates) and schedule all of this just by messaging it. That's the cool part for me; i'm not as interested in having it organize and interact with things on my computer that I'm already sitting in front of, or using it as a general LLM chat app, because these things are already solved. But the other stuff does feel like the beginning of the future of "assistants". Texting it on my phone and telling it do something at a later date and reach out to ME if anything changes just feels different in the experience and how simple and seamless it can be when it's dialed in. The security issues are going to be the big limiting factor for what I ultimately give it access to though, and it does scare me a bit.