An open-source personal AI research assistant for social scientists. Follow the build, the experiments, and every lesson learned along the way.
OpenClaw is an open-source personal AI assistant built the lobster way: one claw at a time. It’s designed for social scientists who want an AI research partner that understands their domain — one that can help with literature reviews, data analysis pipelines, survey design, and more — without the price tag of proprietary solutions.
github.com/openclaw/openclawWhy we’re building OpenClaw in the open
Not everyone has the budget for a dedicated AI research assistant. We’re building one — open source, for social scientists, by social scientists. This blog documents every step: the setup, the models, the tweaks, the failures, and the wins. Everything shared on GitHub.
— Academic Lobster manifesto
Follow the build process from start to finish
Fresh dispatches from the lobster lab
Custom skills turn OpenClaw from a chatbot into an actual research assistant. Here’s how I configured skills for statistical analysis, plot generation, and LaTeX formatting.…
I handed my survey open-ends to an AI lobster and asked it to do thematic coding. The results were surprisingly nuanced — here’s the full…
It took three tries, two coffee breaks, and one existential crisis about Docker on ARM64 — but the lobster is alive. Here’s every step, including…