From Clawbot to Moltbot to OpenClaw
On January 27, 2026, the project’s creator, Peter Steinberger, renamed the assistant from “Clawdbot” to “Moltbot”, after Anthropic (the company behind the Claude AI) issued a “polite” request for a name change due to trademark concerns over the phonetic similarity and the lobster-themed “Clawd” mascot.
The official name of the project is OpenClaw.
The project has undergone a rapid series of rebrands in a single week:
- Clawdbot: The original name, which was changed on January 27 following a trademark request from Anthropic.
- Moltbot: A brief interim name used from January 27 to January 29, symbolizing a lobster “molting” its shell to grow.
- OpenClaw: The final name announced on January 30, intended to be a stable “reset” for the project after the previous name changes led to community confusion.
The project has redefined personal assistance by surpassing 105,000 GitHub stars in mere weeks, making it one of the fastest-growing open-source initiatives of the year.
The project’s creator, Austrian developer Peter Steinberger, initiated this second rebrand to provide a stable “reset” after a chaotic week. According to him, the name OpenClaw was chosen to emphasize that the assistant is open-source and community-driven while retaining the “claw” heritage of its lobster-themed origins. The transition to OpenClaw also involved more rigorous trademark searches and secured domains to ensure this name “finally sticks”.
While the interim name “Moltbot” symbolized a lobster shedding its shell to grow, Steinberger has since settled on OpenClaw which is a name that explicitly highlights its open-source nature while retaining its “lobster lineage”, all after sifting trademark names and securing all relevant domains.
However, this viral success has arrived with a “security nightmare” warning from industry experts. Researchers at SOCprime have reported that they have recently discovered over 1,000 unsecured instances exposed to the public internet, leaking sensitive API keys, private chat histories, and system credentials. Because the agent requires root-level access to perform its functions, these unprotected control panels create a massive attack surface for cybercriminals. In response, Steinberger has released 34 security hardening commits, while forks of the project continue to emerge emphasizing safer, sandboxed execution environments.
The software’s core vision as a proactive “digital Chief of Staff” remains unchanged. Unlike passive chatbots, OpenClaw operates as an “agentic” AI capable of executing real-world tasks locally on devices like Mac Minis. Users interact with it through everyday messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Telegram, and Slack, to automate email management, book flights, and even control smart home devices.
Despite the naming turbulence and security scrutiny, the project continues to gain massive traction as a glimpse into a future where AI acts as an autonomous digital “Chief of Staff”. This is considered as a hot take because it reframes AI from a passive chatbot into an active, high-agency partner that manages a user’s entire digital life. Unlike reactive tools, OpenClaw is designed to proactively monitor data, anticipate needs, and execute complex multi-step workflows like email management or project coordination without constant human intervention. This shift grants the AI unprecedented “air traffic control” over sensitive information and external communications, bridging the gap between simply observing data and autonomously acting upon it.
While this promises superhuman productivity by automating executive-level functions, critics warn that granting such high-level agency to a local agent creates a significant trust and security risk.
