OpenClaw is an open‑source AI assistant that runs locally on a user’s machine and connects to messaging platforms such as Discord, iMessage, Slack, Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, Google Chat, Signal and over 20 additional services, with native clients for macOS, iOS, Android, Windows and Linux. A single Gateway process acts as the trusted control plane for sessions, tools, events and channel connections; the Control UI, CLI and TUI communicate with this Gateway. Model providers—including hosted models like Claude and Codex as well as locally run models—are loaded as plug‑ins that can be swapped without altering the core. Installation provisions a supported Node.js runtime (Node 24.16+ or 26.1+, with Node 26 recommended) via platform‑specific scripts (curl | bash for macOS/Linux/WSL2, PowerShell iex for Windows) or through npm/pnpm/Bun (npm install -g openclaw@latest --allow-scripts=openclaw). After installation, onboarding verifies model access, creates a workspace and configures the Gateway; users then run openclaw gateway status or openclaw dashboard to confirm operation. By default OpenClaw only contacts its servers for a daily version check; anonymous feature statistics are opt‑in and can be disabled with update.checkOnStart: false. The project is maintained by the OpenClaw Foundation (a 501(c)(3)), funded by donors such as Amazon, Lobster Computer Company, Offline Holdings, OpenAI, Red Hat and the University of Michigan, with infrastructure support from Blacksmith, Convex, GitHub, NVIDIA and Vercel. Source is a pnpm workspace; building requires pnpm install, pnpm build and pnpm ui:build.