If you just Googled “ClawdBot” or “MoltBot” and ended up here
— welcome. You’re in exactly the right place.
Let’s get the big reveal out of the way: ClawdBot, MoltBot, and
OpenClaw are all the same project. Same codebase, same team, same
vision. The name just kept… evolving. Like a Pokémon nobody asked to
level up.
If you’ve been following along since the early days, you’ve probably
updated your bookmarks more than your actual config files. If you’re
brand new, you might be wondering why three different names point to the
same thing and whether you should trust a project that can’t seem to
pick one.
Fair question. Let’s unpack it.
The Short Version
ClawdBot launched in early 2024. It rebranded to MoltBot in mid-2024.
Then MoltBot became OpenClaw in late 2024. Each rename had a real reason
behind it — not just vibes — and the underlying tech kept improving
through every transition.
Now here’s the longer, messier, more honest version.
ClawdBot: Where
It All Started (January–June 2024)
Back in January 2024, the project launched under the name
ClawdBot. The concept was simple: a personal AI
assistant that could actually do things — run commands, manage
files, talk to APIs, live on your machine like a helpful gremlin that
doesn’t eat after midnight.
The name was a portmanteau. “Claud” (a nod to the Claude model family
it was built around) plus “Bot.” Straightforward. Maybe a little too
cute.
ClawdBot picked up a small but enthusiastic community pretty quickly.
The Discord hummed along, the GitHub stars ticked up, and people started
building real workflows on top of it. Config files referenced
clawdbot everywhere. The CLI was clawdbot. The
npm package was clawdbot. It was baked in deep.
So naturally, it was time to change the name.
Why ClawdBot Had to Go
Two reasons, and neither was “we got bored.”
First, the trademark problem. As the project grew,
it became increasingly clear that shipping a product with “Claud” in the
name — however creatively misspelled — was walking a tightrope over a
legal pit. Anthropic’s Claude was becoming a household name (at least in
AI-obsessed households), and the phonetic similarity was a liability.
Nobody got a cease-and-desist, but nobody wanted to wait for one
either.
Second, the scope had outgrown the name. ClawdBot
implied a single bot, probably tied to a single model. But the project
was already evolving into something more modular — supporting multiple
models, multiple channels, node pairing, and a plugin architecture.
Calling it “ClawdBot” was like calling a Swiss Army knife “the red blade
thing.”
The decision was made. ClawdBot would molt.
(Yes, that’s exactly where the next name came from.)
MoltBot: The Middle
Child (June–November 2024)
In June 2024, ClawdBot officially became MoltBot.
The metaphor was deliberate: molting is how crustaceans shed their old
shell to grow into a bigger one. The crab imagery stuck. The community
loved it. Briefly.
MoltBot brought genuine improvements alongside the rebrand. The
architecture got a serious overhaul — the gateway/agent split was
introduced, multi-channel support landed, and the config system was
redesigned from scratch. If ClawdBot was a prototype, MoltBot was the
first real product.
Migration from ClawdBot to MoltBot was relatively painless. The team
shipped a migration script that handled config renames, updated CLI
references, and even swapped out the binary name. Most users were up and
running in under five minutes.
For about five months, MoltBot was the name. Blog posts were written.
Tutorials were recorded. Stickers were printed. (Okay, maybe not
stickers. But someone definitely made a Discord emoji.)
Why MoltBot Didn’t Last
Either
MoltBot was a better name than ClawdBot, but it still had
problems.
Discoverability was rough. Try telling someone at a
meetup that your project is called “MoltBot.” You’d get blank stares, or
worse, people Googling “malt bot” and finding craft beer automation
projects. The name was clever if you already knew the backstory, and
baffling if you didn’t.
The “Bot” suffix was limiting — again. The project
had grown beyond being a bot in any traditional sense. It was becoming a
full platform: nodes, canvases, skills, browser control, multi-device
orchestration. Calling it a “bot” undersold it by a mile.
And then the big strategic shift happened. The team
decided to open-source the core. That changed everything about how the
project needed to present itself to the world. An open-source platform
needs a name that signals openness, community, and longevity — not a
quirky pun about crustacean biology.
OpenClaw:
The Name That Sticks (November 2024–Present)
In November 2024, MoltBot became OpenClaw.
The name keeps the crab lineage alive (claws, pincers, the whole
crustacean vibe) while leading with “Open” to signal exactly what the
project had become: open-source, open-architecture, open to community
contributions.
This wasn’t just a find-and-replace job. The OpenClaw rebrand
coincided with the biggest technical release in the project’s history.
The gateway was rewritten. The plugin system was formalized. The skill
architecture went modular. Node pairing, canvas rendering, and the
browser control layer all shipped in their mature forms around the same
time.
But at its core? Still the same project. Still the same idea of an AI
assistant that lives on your machine, respects your privacy, and
actually gets things done. The DNA hasn’t changed — just the shell.
(Last crab pun, I promise. Maybe.)
If you want the full picture of what OpenClaw is and how it works
today, the WTF Is OpenClaw guide
breaks it all down without assuming you’ve been here since the ClawdBot
days.
What
Actually Changed With Each Rename (And What Didn’t)
Here’s a quick reality check for anyone worried that a name change
means their setup is going to break or the project is unstable:
What changed: The name. The CLI command. The config
directory paths. The npm package name. The branding, docs, and website
URLs.
What didn’t change: The core architecture. Your
workflows. The community. The development team. The philosophy of
local-first, privacy-respecting AI assistance.
Each rebrand was a shedding of skin, not a rewrite from scratch. Your
muscle memory might need updating, but your mental model of how the tool
works carries over perfectly.
Migrating Old Configs and
References
If you’re still running configs that reference clawdbot
or moltbot, don’t panic. Old references won’t spontaneously
combust.
Coming from ClawdBot: If you’re somehow still on a
ClawdBot-era install (respect, honestly), you’ll want to do a clean
install of OpenClaw and migrate your config manually. The config
structure has changed enough since early 2024 that the old migration
scripts won’t cut it. The OpenClaw
Migration Guide walks through this step by step.
Coming from MoltBot: This is the more common
scenario. The OpenClaw installer detects legacy MoltBot configs and
offers to migrate them automatically. Config keys are mostly the same —
a handful were renamed for clarity, but the migration tool handles the
mapping. Again, the migration
guide has the full details, including edge cases for custom skills
and node configurations.
For both paths: Update any shell aliases, cron jobs,
or automation scripts that reference the old binary names. Search your
dotfiles for clawdbot or moltbot and swap in
openclaw. Future you will be grateful.
“But
Why Should I Trust a Project That Keeps Renaming Itself?”
This is the elephant in the room, so let’s address it head-on.
Name changes in open-source aren’t a red flag — they’re practically a
rite of passage. Node.js was originally called web.js. Firefox was
Firebird before that, and Phoenix before that. Kubernetes was
Project Seven. Even Git was just Linus being Linus with a cheeky
name.
Projects rename when they outgrow their original identity. That’s a
sign of growth, not instability. The ClawdBot-to-OpenClaw
journey tracks almost perfectly with the project’s evolution from a
clever hack to a serious platform.
And for what it’s worth — the team has been pretty clear that
OpenClaw is the final name. The open-source foundation, the community
governance model, and the sheer amount of branding work that went into
the transition all signal permanence. Nobody’s going through this again
if they can help it.
The Timeline at a Glance
January 2024 — ClawdBot launches. A personal AI
assistant built around Claude, running locally. Small community forms
fast.
June 2024 — ClawdBot rebrands to MoltBot. Trademark
concerns and scope expansion drive the change. Major architecture
overhaul ships alongside the new name.
November 2024 — MoltBot rebrands to OpenClaw.
Project goes open-source. Gateway rewrite, modular skills, and the full
platform vision come together.
February 2025 and beyond — OpenClaw continues
development under its (hopefully) permanent name. Community grows. The
crab abides.
The Bottom Line
Whether you knew it as ClawdBot, MoltBot, or OpenClaw — you’ve been
following the same project the whole time. The names changed because the
project kept outgrowing them. That’s a good problem to have.
If you’re here because you Googled an old name, now you know:
OpenClaw is the current name, and it’s not going
anywhere. Your old bookmarks led you to the right place.
Welcome home.
Ready to get started (or get re-started)? The WTF Is OpenClaw guide is the best
on-ramp, and the migration
guide will sort out any leftover config cobwebs.
Now go update your bookmarks. For the last time.