AI Marketing Assistant

12 February 2026

A Quick Recap: From ClawdBot to MoltBot to OpenClaw

If you read our earlier piece on ClawdBot and the MoltBot rebrand, you will remember how Austrian developer Peter Steinberger created an AI assistant that ran on Mac Minis, connected to WhatsApp and Telegram, and exploded to 60,000 GitHub stars almost overnight.

Since then, a lot has changed. After the Anthropic trademark dispute, a chaotic rebrand, and crypto scammers hijacking the old accounts, Steinberger made a bold decision. He forked the project under a new name: OpenClaw. Open source, community governed, and free from the baggage of the old brand.

That decision paid off in a big way.

Where OpenClaw Stands Today

As of February 2026, the numbers speak for themselves:

180,000+ GitHub stars, making it one of the fastest-growing open source projects ever
Millions of installs across macOS, Linux, and Windows
Version 2026.2.6 launched with enterprise features, plugin marketplace, and hardened security
5,700+ community-built skills available on ClawHub, the official plugin marketplace

What started as a personal AI running on a Mac Mini is now a full platform. And the people using it are not just tinkerers. They are businesses getting real, measurable results.

What Is Agentic AI, and Why Does It Matter?

You have probably seen the term "agentic AI" thrown around a lot lately. Here is what it actually means in plain English.

Traditional AI tools wait for you to ask a question. You type a prompt, you get an answer. Agentic AI is different. It takes a goal, breaks it into steps, and works through them on its own. It can use tools, make decisions, and recover from errors without you having to hold its hand.

Think of it like this: regular AI is a calculator. Agentic AI is an assistant who knows how to use the calculator, look things up, send emails, and come back to you when the job is done.

OpenClaw brought this idea to the mainstream. And the results people are reporting are hard to ignore.

Real Results People Are Actually Seeing

The biggest shift with OpenClaw is that people are not just experimenting any more. They are using it every day and tracking what it saves them. Here are some of the documented results from the community:

Email Triage: 2 Hours Down to 25 Minutes

Several users report setting up OpenClaw to read, categorise, and draft replies to their emails. One solo consultant shared that their morning email routine went from two hours to about 25 minutes. OpenClaw reads each email, flags the urgent ones, drafts responses for the routine ones, and leaves a summary for anything that needs a human decision.

For businesses that deal with high volumes of customer enquiries, this kind of customer support automation is a genuine game changer.

Client Onboarding: 4 Hours to 15 Minutes

A small agency set up OpenClaw to handle new client onboarding. When a new client signs up, OpenClaw creates the project folder, sends the welcome pack, sets up the Slack channel, populates the CRM, and schedules the kickoff meeting. A process that used to take four hours now takes 15 minutes with a quick human check at the end.

This is the kind of workflow automation that makes a real difference to small teams stretched thin.

10x Productivity at Digital Agencies

One of the most striking reports comes from a digital marketing agency that deployed OpenClaw across their team. They reported a 10x increase in output for tasks like content scheduling, social media management, report generation, and competitor analysis. Their team did not shrink. They just started tackling projects that were previously too time-consuming to justify.

25+ Documented Use Cases and Growing

The OpenClaw community wiki now lists over 25 detailed use cases with step-by-step guides. These range from personal productivity (meal planning, travel booking, news monitoring) to business operations (invoice processing, lead qualification, data entry). Each one includes real benchmarks from users who have been running these setups for weeks or months.

The OpenClaw Ecosystem

One reason OpenClaw has grown so fast is the ecosystem that has built up around it.

ClawHub: 5,700+ Skills and Counting

ClawHub is the official marketplace for OpenClaw plugins, called "skills". There are now over 5,700 skills covering everything from CRM integration to image generation. Skills are community-reviewed and rated, so you can find reliable ones quickly.

NanoClaw: AI on Your Phone

NanoClaw is a lightweight version designed for mobile devices. It syncs with your main OpenClaw instance and handles basic tasks when you are away from your desk. It launched in January 2026 and already has over 200,000 downloads.

Moltbook: Hardware Built for AI

Perhaps the most surprising development is Moltbook, a purpose-built hardware device designed to run OpenClaw. Think of it as a dedicated AI box that sits on your desk. It is fanless, low power, and comes pre-configured. Pre-orders opened in February and sold out within 48 hours.

Security: Still the Biggest Concern

Our previous article flagged serious security issues with ClawdBot. Some have been fixed. Others have not.

The Good News

OpenClaw v2026.2.6 introduced proper authentication by default, encrypted memory storage, and a permissions system that limits what the AI can access. The community also set up a bug bounty programme that has already paid out over $50,000 in rewards.

The Bad News

Security researcher Kevin Beaumont reported that 42,900 OpenClaw instances are still publicly exposed on the internet. Many of these are running older versions without the security fixes. A critical vulnerability (CVE-2026-25253) was disclosed in late January that allowed remote code execution on unpatched instances.

The lesson is clear: OpenClaw is powerful, but it needs to be set up properly. Running it exposed on the internet without authentication is asking for trouble.

What This Means for Businesses

Here is the bottom line. Agentic AI is not coming. It is here. And OpenClaw has made it accessible to everyone, from solo freelancers to mid-sized companies.

The businesses seeing the best results are the ones that:

Start small with one or two automations and expand from there
Focus on repetitive tasks that eat up staff time every week
Take security seriously with proper setup, containers, and monitoring
Measure the results so they know exactly what they are gaining

Whether it is managing your SEO and ad campaigns, building custom web apps, or automating your day-to-day operations, there are real gains available right now.

How Original Objective Can Help

At Original Objective, we have been working with agentic AI tools since the early days. We help businesses figure out where automation will make the biggest difference, set it up securely, and make sure it actually delivers results.

If you are curious about OpenClaw, agentic AI, or just want to know where automation could save your team time and money, we would love to chat.

Book an intro call or get in touch to start the conversation.

The Bigger Picture

OpenClaw is not just a tool. It is a sign of where things are heading. The gap between "AI as a chatbot" and "AI as a genuine assistant" has been closed. And it happened faster than almost anyone predicted.

The businesses that get ahead of this curve, the ones that start building AI into their workflows now, are going to have a serious advantage over those that wait.

The question is not whether agentic AI works. The results are already in. The question is how quickly you start using it.

OpenClaw Update: How Agentic AI Went From Hype to Real Business Results