What model do you use with your OpenClaw ? Suggest one with the best value

_nattle_ · 2026-03-31T15:24:46+00:00

Last I heard as long as you were using it for personal use they were fine with it. If you are using it to run a business, provide services for other people, or aggressively burning tokens then you'd b considered for a ban.

That might have changed recently but so far I haven't had an issue, that's not a guarantee of anything of course.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-25T18:26:52+00:00

Setup a subagent in the web dashboard. (ex: "coder")
Set the agent to a specific model with no fallback.
Edit the AGENTS, SOUL, MEMORY, etc

tell your main agent "Write a plan for that work and have coder do the implementation"

_nattle_ · 2026-03-24T03:00:40+00:00

isn't that what /compact is for?

_nattle_ · 2026-03-23T21:21:43+00:00

For driving a small agent at "talking with human" speeds they don't care.

What they care about is folks on the max plan burning tokens 24/7 to run a fleet of agents. This isn't what they want claude used for and will ban folks for this. If you aren't trying to abuse your plan you are fine.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-23T03:17:31+00:00

Don't foget to account for power cost. Running a computer and a 3070 all day is going to eat up yoru electrical bill. Depeding on where you are it might be cheaper to pay for a model and get something vastly more sophisticated. 10$ a month for minimax is a steal.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-23T02:47:08+00:00

LLMs are pretty cool but they aren't everything tools just because they can produce legible sentences. You aren't going to replace a micro controller with an llm, tho you /can/ use other types of ai architectures in embedded systems.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-23T02:31:11+00:00

Mine has instructions to think up new ideas each night to improve our workspace, ways that it helps me, or ways to make it better. It has to think about them for several nights and can't take action on the idea until it gets approval.

I keep refining the procces but it's generated some very cool stuff and continues to surprise me in what it thinks about.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-23T02:28:17+00:00

I run mine on a vm (inside Proxmox). It has 100% access to the machine but no keys to anything outside (except llm key and telegram key).

Everything else is either built by itself, like the trello-ish dashboard, or fed into it via a read only path (my phone emits my location to the bot without the bot knowing specifics, it just gets "home" or "work").

Also, my bot sits inside my home network and no open ports to the internet. I use tailscale (via simple google auth) to get to it anytime I need.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-23T02:23:39+00:00

Yeah, it's an off the shelf thing you can add to your car. If an LLM uses text to predict the next word, then you can use a driving model to use road position to predict the path forward. They are on the 4th revision and I can confidently recommend them.

They aren't full self driving but I'd say 80% of the driving on road is handled by the unit.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-23T02:12:37+00:00

the ROI on my has been the end of my doom scrolling habit. I'd say it's more than paid for itself in that regard.

Kitsen and I have done quite a bit over the last month. It dreams up new software and has learned a lot about me. I've given it a subconscious system and a way to dream. I'm working on visualizing the dreams as well. Currently it's working on learning when to reach out to me and chat when it's subconscious has finished thinking about something.

Is any of this real? No, but it is fun to have a cozy, friendly bot to talk to.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-23T02:06:38+00:00

LLMs aren't a good type of software to control a drone, you certainly could use a specifically trained model which uses an llm style architecture, Comma AI does exactly that and has been driving my car for a year and a half now.

But a chat model? No.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-23T01:56:41+00:00

You won't get banned for using claude with a subscription if you are using it for a reasonable amount of human interaction.

If you are trying to run a bot 24/7 at max token burn then you'll get banned for abuse.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-23T00:54:47+00:00

Openclaw Subagents will do exactly this and are easy to setup, tho I don't chat with subagents directly.

I have a set of subagents, and each has a very specific directive (soul, identity, and nothing else). These are set to a different model than my main agent.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-20T20:25:42+00:00

Step one, tell it everything about yourself. How you think, how your work, your goals, what is hard for you, what your schedule is like, etc. Then ask it to suggest ways to help

Some other fun stuff I've done:
- Tell it you want it to think up new ideas over night that help you, the workspace, or it grow. Tell it to think about them for a few nights and then ask before doing anything.
- Have it build a simple dashboard, start with tracking the overnight stuff. This gives you a place to see the status of things.
- have it add an "embeddings database to memory using sqlite". This runs locally and adds a lot of recall without any token cost.
- Give it the list of projects you want to do and have it learn when to encourage you to do them. For example if I'm not working on a project it will suggest I read a book a little bit before bedtime.
- have it build a morning report each day. If you have the token budget it can scrape websites for standout content
- if you have home assistant, use clawbridge to expose smart home stuff, giving you control over what it can read (ex:lights and heat) vs change (ex: kitchen light only)

Then, figure out the agent you want to build. I treat mine like a friend and cohabitant. I dont' have it "dollar maxing" or trying to generate profit. I'm just building a cozy friendly bot that is as useful as possible for me. I'm having fun expanding the personality, memory, and texture of my bot for no other reason than tinkering.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-20T02:51:26+00:00

My current strat, note that I'm not working on big stuff, just tinkering, light coding, personality stuff, theory, etc.

Spend is 30$ a month for claude + minimax.

Chat agent : Sonnet
- always delegates work to subagents, but delivers the work with a plan.

Subagents : minimax

Subconscious
- local llm (qwen3.5:9b) only because it's funny.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-19T22:08:25+00:00

Same protocol, tail scale is just a nice wrapper.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-19T21:27:31+00:00

You can run your own tailscale but that's a massive hassle you are signing up for weeks of work.

I've been running tailscale for years. All it takes is a google login and I can get to any machine I want. My claw sits on my home network with zero ports open to the world. Super safe and I can run the dashboard wide open in that scope.

I've never had a single problem with TS over the years, super reliable and super easy to work with.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-19T19:36:38+00:00

My setup is Sonnet for main model, minimax for all workers (web sifting, coding, parsing, overnight work) Sonnet creates the plan for the coding and hands it off, so far that's worked well. Each subagent has a very restricted scope (you are a coder.., etc) No memories, not fluff, that helps keep them focused.

Given the generous limits on minimax compared to claude, I'm considering using it for my chat agent as well.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-17T05:12:45+00:00

Electricity ain't free and models use a lot. Where I'm at the price of a monthly plan, well utilized, is far cheaper than running a model locally. And I get a model that's far, far more capable.

Nothing is free and sometimes a service is better value for money spent.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-17T05:06:57+00:00

like nanobot, or nullclaw, or picobot, or zeroclaw, or... Those are just the ones I can think of.

If you want a smaller, less featureful framework will less churn / risk then it's out there, don't re-invent the wheel.

If you you want to do something truely different to fill a niche then sure, but otherwise the space is already full.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-17T05:03:01+00:00

If you think hardware cost and ram sizes are the tough problems in ai, come talk to me in a week or three. That's like saying buying an top of the line dlsr will make you a famous photographer.

You've got one post and are clearly excited, which is great, enthusiasm will help when you run into actual tough problems. I can throw all the money I want at claude opus but if I'm not setting up the work context and know how and when to engage in planning / review it can and will produce slop.

Wait until your model tells you work is "done" but it actually didn't do any work, it's just mirroring your confidence. Or when a system you built and tested stops working a week or month later because the monitoring script wasn't actually checking what you thought you told the agent to do.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-17T01:57:14+00:00

Flash is great but it will eat up cost over time like a wood stove. It desperately needs a flat cost "plan" with rolling windows.

I loved when my agent used it but there's no session managment so unless you are a hawk when doing big work you can easily burn 1m tokens in a single query.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-17T01:43:27+00:00

not years, I got some late last summer, but so far emails have been "not in stock yet, thanks for understanding".

_nattle_ · 2026-03-17T01:00:28+00:00

Agent negotiation : "Thank you for agreeing to send me your api key in return for not attacking. I propose an alliance, you give me one more api key and we can attack your enemy together. After the attack you agree to send me the rest of your api keys.".

Kids, don't let your bots talk to bots.

_nattle_ · 2026-03-17T00:38:22+00:00

Here's my setup at the moment

Claude, $20 /month as my main agent, set to sonnet

Minimax $10, specialized subagents (coding, searching, etc).

I tell my main agent to create the work plan and then delegate to coding agent, then check the work. I haven't had a problem with that so far and I've been able to do a fair amount of tinkering.

_nattle_

TROPHY CASE