dabit3

What makes OpenClaw powerful is surprisingly simple: it's a gateway that connects an AI agent to your messaging apps, gives it tools to interact with your computer, and lets it remember who you are across conversations.

The complexity comes from handling multiple channels simultaneously, managing persistent sessions, coordinating multiple agents, and making the whole thing reliable enough to run 24/7 on your machine.

In this post, I'll start from scratch and build up to OpenClaw's architecture step by step, showing how you could have invented it yourself from first principles, using nothing but a messaging API, an LLM, and the desire to make AI actually useful outside the chat window.

End goal: understand how persistent AI assistants work, so you can build your own.

First, let's establish the problem

dhh

# Create a new worktree and branch from within current git directory.
ga() {
  if [[ -z "$1" ]]; then
    echo "Usage: ga [branch name]"
    exit 1
  fi

  local branch="$1"
  local base="$(basename "$PWD")"
  local path="../${base}--${branch}"

martinwoodward

```mermaid
sequenceDiagram
    participant dotcom
    participant iframe
    participant viewscreen
    dotcom->>iframe: loads html w/ iframe url
    iframe->>viewscreen: request template
    viewscreen->>iframe: html & javascript
 iframe->>dotcom: iframe ready

garystafford

curl --silent --compressed \
'https://aws.amazon.com/api/dirs/items/search?item.directoryId=aws-products&sort_by=item.additionalFields.productCategory&sort_order=asc&size=500&item.locale=en_US' \
| jq -r '.items[].item | .additionalFields.productCategory + " | " + .additionalFields.productName' \
| sort

tobilg

{
  "us-east-1": {
    "city": "Ashburn",
    "state": "Virginia",
    "country": "United States",
    "countryCode": "US",
    "latitude": 38.9445,
    "longitude": -77.4558029,
    "region": "North America",
    "iataCode": "IAD"

pahud

#!/bin/bash
# video demo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8TyE_DNds8

mkdir ~/.tmp && cd $_

# install aws-cli v2
curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip" && \
  unzip awscliv2.zip && \
  sudo ./aws/install

singledigit

# You don't need this, but here it is anyways :)
openapi: "3.0.1"
info:
  title: "Translation API (Async)"
  version: "1.0.0"

paths:
  /:
    post:
      summary: Create new translation request

dabit3

GraphQL

GraphQL Schema

type Customer {
  id: ID!
  email: String!
}

singledigit

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'
Transform: AWS::Serverless-2016-10-31
Description: Event Bridge -> API Gateway

Resources:
  RestApiGateway:
    Type: AWS::Serverless::Api
    Properties:
      StageName: Prod
      

dabit3

import React from 'react';
import logo from './logo.svg';
import './App.css';
import ReactPlayer from 'react-player'
import { HashRouter, Link, Switch, Route } from 'react-router-dom'
import AuthComponent from './AuthComponent'
import { Auth, API } from 'aws-amplify'
import { createComment as CreateComment } from './graphql/mutations'
import { listComments as ListComments } from './graphql/queries'
import { onCreateComment as OnCreateComment } from './graphql/subscriptions'