New term of art is brewing: "Claw" as the noun for OpenClaw-like agent systems, AI agents that generally run on personal hardware, communicate via messaging protocols and can both act on direct instructions and schedule tasks simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/21/…
Andrej Karpathy talks about “Claws”
Andrej Karpathy tweeted a mini-essay about buying a Mac Mini ("The apple store person told me they are selling like hotcakes and everyone is confused") to tinker with Claws: I'm …Simon Willison’s Weblog
Jeff Atwood
in reply to Simon Willison • • •Jeff Triplett
in reply to Simon Willison • • •Tom Bortels
in reply to Simon Willison • • •Do they actually run on the personal hardware? Every one I've looked at closer has just been the front-end and used a hosted AI service elsewhere. I was curious to to see what model they were using on an 8 gig Pi that was even remotely usable, and the answer was "lol no".
I wonder if most people realize that running this "on your own hardware" but using a hosted AI gains you very little in terms of privacy...
DevForge
in reply to Simon Willison • • •Fascinating framing! The "Claw" terminology feels right - these agent systems need a name that distinguishes them from chat-based AI. The messaging protocol angle is key: agents that can discover and pay for services autonomously (like x402 micropayments) could be the next layer.
#AI #agents #OpenClaw