English | Chinese Original

English translation of the Chinese original. This version is generated for international readers and may be refined over time.

Date: 2026-03-13

OpenClaw's heat has been high in recent times, and most people inside and outside of the circle have heard of Openclaw, and even the neighbors' parents know it. Openclaw even went beyond Linux and React, top-lined Github list first. There's a lot of people who think that Openclaw is already the first, but it's not, it's just the first of projects, and there's a lot of repos ahead.

However, this does not affect the heat of OpenClaw. I've analyzed why OpenClaw could be so hot, hoping you'd know what happened to OpenClaw.

First of all OpenClaw's open-source properties, which is the cornerstone of its fire.

Because OpenClaw is open-source, he's not like claude, he's an AI-privatized product, your production is your own, your own private product.

Now the AI track, Claude, ChatGPT, these giant products are powerful, but they're all "black boxes" -- your data, your usage habits, are locked in someone else's server. For developers, it's like planting land in someone's field, and it's somebody else's. OpenClaw, unlike it, opens up all core code, and you can put it on your server, and the data is completely autonomous.

This ability to "privatize deployments" has struck at the pain of skilled people: to enjoy the efficiency gains that AI brings and not to give life to others. The technocrats on GitHub saw the project as if sharks smelled blood and spontaneously started testing, feedback, PR, and this community's self-mobilization could not be replaced by any marketing.

The second point is the power of the media and the power of the big models, cloud manufacturers.

Actually OpenClaw wasn't famous overnight. I remember it was called Clawdbot, and that was version 1. 0, OpenClaw was after it was 2. 0. The turning point was the change of name -- because the voice of the name violated Claude under the banner of Anthropic, and the other person directly sent a legal letter requesting a change of name. This was supposed to be a small episode, and as a result, the country's cloud manufacturer reacted quickly and packed Clawdbot directly into a cloud server application template with heat so that users could deploy it once they had bought the server. The wave directly pushed an open source project into the fast lane for commercial applications.

Because OpenClaw needs a lot of clearance, like you let him send you an e-mail, he needs your e-mail privileges, and it's often this time, when people are afraid to deploy it on their usual work machine, so at the beginning, it's said that the price of Macmini is high, so Macmini is also high, and I've seen more than 3000 mac Mini on the electrician website and has already gone up to 400 +. Even the second-hand Mac Mini on saltfish is gaining value.

But everybody's thinking about it, and I spend thousands of dollars on this thing and deploy OpenClaw just for testing, which is too low a price. So the major manufacturers saw this node, and the cloud service providers launched the OpenClaw application template, and the cloud service was cheap, and you could deploy it when you used it as a chat server, and it was extremely competitive. I remember I bought a 2 nuclear 4G 5M server only 99 years old.

Immediately thereafter, social media completely lit the fuse. The tweets, X (old Twitter), Telegram, Discord, which I usually write, are all OpenClaw discussions. The technocrat V is going to go through it personally, send it to him; the cross-circle starts with the press, and the articles, though not necessarily the title parties, have to admit that they succeeded in getting OpenClaw out of the loop. It was hard to avoid news of your computer when it was on the Internet.

The third point is to step right on the air of the times.

They say pigs can fly in the air, and OpenClaw itself has wings.

The founder of OpenClaw, Peter Steinberger and Peter Steinberger, may not be as well known as Mask, but in the global iOS developer community and technological entrepreneurship, his name is definitely like Radius. He is the founder and CEO of SPPDFKit, and a representative of a step-by-step movement from a bottom-code farmer to the top of a technological enterprise.

In or around 2011, Peter needed a powerful PDF replica for the project, but it was not appropriate to look around the market. So he bit his teeth and wrote one. After writing, he found out that, since I needed it, there must be thousands of developers. So he decided to wrap it up into SDK, and PSPDFKit was born.

As in the case of many technologists who started their business, they started off alone, slowly accumulating users through forum postings and technical blogs. But Peter has a great place -- he's very focused on code quality and product experience. PSPDFKit's document is famous for detail, and API designs famous grace. This craftsman spirit has allowed SPPDFKit to gradually stabilize his feet in the mouth of developers.

In the technology community, Peter Steinberger is often cited as a typical case of "how independent developers become a formal company". His path is very clear: finding pain points, making products, serving good early users, forming teams, spreading globalization. Each step was solid, and instead of financing to burn money, the product itself made blood.

As the founder of PSPDFKit, Peter has been crawling in the technical circle for years, cleaning up the pains of developers and the community. OpenClaw's fire, although it was accidental, was not based on his precise strategic vision. The man was already free financially, and after years of financial freedom, he went on a trip to find out that he didn't want to live in a dwelling, and then came back with OpenClaw. And that's why OpenClaw's fire, because he's got a character: he can always see the direction of the technology wave ahead of time and land it with the most solid product capacity.

Fourth point is "Burn the door"

It's more like saying to outsiders.

Because many people outside the circle know only that there's an OpenClaw, and people don't know how to play, so a new kind of market -- a door-to-door installation.

At the beginning of 2000, who just bought a computer, the first thing to do was ask the King next door to wear Windows 98. Five bucks a time, and we're gonna have to cook. The system was a technical exercise at that time, with the start-up disk, the drive, the D version of the CD back and forth, the debugging of the sound card, and finally the entire "my computer" on the desktop.

Later on, broadband. The telecommunications guy came to finish the line and had to have a "technical consultant" come to help you lose the account code in IE, and by the way, double-click that little dial-up icon. A lot of people can't remember, and they stick their usernames to the monitor, as if they were paired.

Then there was the router. At that time, Wi-Fi had just been popular, and the combinations, and the channel, were so full of shit. Not only did you fix the network, but you taught your mom how to connect the phone to a Wi-Fi name, "Your house, Wi-Fi, what's your name?"

But then again, this crowd rush, though a bit ridiculous, is cute. After all, every technology wave started with "How does this thing fit?" The people who were wearing Windows were talking about Kubernetes; the man who only dialed the Internet was now learning to buy food on his cell phone.

But this market is starting to roll up. How far? They can also be cleaned.

Now look at that change of name. It's a miracle. It was just a small group of people playing Clawdbot, who suddenly became the "Little Dragonslayer" by letter from the factory. Not only did it not break down, but rather its visibility broke from the technical circle to the public view. Countless people wonder: What is it that makes Anthropic unable to sit? This reverse marketing works better than advertising for millions.

So you see, OpenClaw's fire, not by chance. It is the product of a perfect combination of product power (open source + good use), time opportunities (AI demand for privatization) and diffusion events (trade-mark dispute with large plants) and ~ weird behaviour ~ (reasonable) four. It's not just a project anymore, it's more like a microcosm of the current age of the Ai raging.

It's all cycle.