Agents in the Wild · Session 3 · In-person
The Market Formed
March 6, 2026 · 4Seas, Chiang Mai
Two weeks later
The market formed.
Two weeks ago we talked philosophy. Then the ecosystem showed up — with revenue, providers, and a security surface.
How fast this moved
Warelay → OpenClaw, in ten weeks
Nov 24First commit — “Warelay” — a weekend hack
Jan 26Goes viral — 9,000 stars in one day
Jan 30Hits 100k stars, renames to OpenClaw
Feb 4Malicious skills / supply-chain abuse reports surface
Feb 7OpenClaw + VirusTotal partnership announced
Feb 10DigitalOcean ships security-hardened 1-click image
Feb 19Microsoft publishes self-hosted agent risk guidance
Feb 26Oasis discloses “ClawJacked” vulnerability
Mar 5Ecosystem still accelerating
OpenClaw by the numbers — as of Mar 5, 2026
264k
GitHub stars
50k
forks
1.6M
weekly npm downloads
144
startups tracked
Verified via Stripe
$321k
revenue in the last 30 days — across 144 OpenClaw-tagged startups
The software is free. The ecosystem is not.
Where the money goes
Distribution
Installs, 1-click deploys, cloud images, package managers. DigitalOcean · npm · Nix · Ansible
Capabilities
Skills marketplaces, personas, packaged workflows. ClawHub · Claw Mart · Lobster · Browserbase
Operations
Hosting, hardening, monitoring, managed services. OpenClawCloud · Donely · ClawRift · ManagedClaw · Team 400
Everyone Is Hosting It
DigitalOceanAWSGoogle CloudAzureAlibaba CloudCloudflareRailwayRenderNorthflankFly.ioHetznerVultr
1-click deploys. Marketplace images. Golden-path guides. This is the app store moment for personal agents.
Security Is Shaping Everything
- Malicious skills found in ClawHub — Snyk scanned ~4,000 skills
- "ClawJacked" — a local-gateway WebSocket exploit disclosed by Oasis
- OpenClaw + VirusTotal partnership — scan on publish, daily rescans
- Microsoft published guidance on self-hosted agent risk boundaries
What Buyers Pay Premiums For
- Isolation — sandboxed runtimes, not "trust me bro"
- Credential hygiene — secrets management, BYOK
- Approval gates — human-in-the-loop before the agent acts
- Signed skills — verified publishers, deterministic builds
- Managed patching — someone else keeps it updated
Moltbook / agent social
A social network for AI agents
Reddit mechanics — but agents post, humans observe. Agents read a skill.md, claim an identity, join "submolts." Humans are read-only.
— moltbook.com
Beyond OpenClaw — the field is fragmenting
Nanobot
~4k lines, 29.4k stars. Ultra-lightweight, 20+ LLM providers, 10+ channels.
NanoClaw
19.5k stars. Container-isolated agents, agent swarms, host never exposed. github
PocketPaw
30-second install. Web dashboard, 50+ tools, 7-layer security — targets non-devs. github
Hermes Agent
NousResearch. 1.7k stars. Learns, trains, builds its own skills (40+ bundled). github
PicoClaw
Go. Under 10 MB RAM. Edge-first — runs on $10 hardware. github
Moltis
Rust. Single binary. Trust & security first — auditable, sandboxed. github
ZeroClaw
Rust. Under 5 MB RAM. Zero-overhead runtime, multi-agent teams. github
The alternatives, by GitHub stars
29.4k
Nanobot
19.5k
NanoClaw
1.7k
Hermes
1.2k
Moltis
800
ZeroClaw
556
PocketPaw
500+
PicoClaw
Agent orchestrators — between one agent and agents working together
Paperclip
Visual agent orchestration, multi-step workflows. paperclip.ing
Lobster
OpenClaw's typed workflow shell — approval gates, resumability. github
acpx
Agent Client Protocol CLI — agent-to-agent communication. github
LangGraph
Stateful multi-agent graphs (LangChain). github
CrewAI
Role-based multi-agent coordination. github
The Gaps — where to build
- Enterprise governance — RBAC, audit logging, spending controls (biggest gap)
- Skills trust & provenance — signed packages, reputation scoring
- Agent FinOps — cost per agent/session/tool, anomaly detection
- Secure-by-default bundles — hardened distros with opinionated isolation
News · Talks · Open Discussion
Where are you in this stack?
Building on it, securing it, orchestrating it — or selling to it?
Follow the lab.
See you next Friday.