The OpenClaw Podcast - The ClawCast - Episode 3

### TL;DR This blog post centers on the rework of OpenClaw's onboarding process, comparisons with Hermes, and the necessity of a self-improvement system. Community members and developers engaged in an in-depth discussion about lowering the barrier to entry. ## Opening and Guest Introductions **hannesrudolph** (OpenClaw Community Manager): Welcome to Cedric and Alex, co-founders of Vana Labs (an AI automation company), currently focused on using AI tools to automate workflows for businesses in the Armenia region. Josh is one of the maintainers of OpenClaw. **Josh**: I became a maintainer in February after emailing Peter on a whim and getting approved. I'm best known for developing the **lossless claw** plugin (a context management system enabling unlimited-length conversations). I also run Martian Engineering, a development studio of senior engineers, and have recently been building agents, deploying as many as possible on OpenClaw. **Alex**: Software engineer for 22 years, entrepreneur for 16. I've been using OpenClaw since it was called **cloudbot** (later renamed moldbot). Early on, I built a project manager agent for a small team and really love OpenClaw. ## Why Was Today's Demo Canceled? The plan was for Cedric to give a 15-minute onboarding demo, but **Peter is completely reworking the onboarding process**, and the flow originally planned for the demo has actually been removed. While testing the run, Cedric discovered that Peter's PR introduced "caretakers" and completely deleted the old onboarding flow. He stayed up until 3 AM trying to figure it out, ultimately finding the demo impossible to conduct. Josh added: Patrick (a member of the OpenClaw Foundation technical team), who usually co-hosts, is absent today and chose not to participate in the live stream. ## Onboarding Controversy: Technical Users vs. Non-Technical Users Cedric asked: Why does the onboarding process need to change? For a technical user like him, the command-line "next, next" approach makes perfect sense. But hannesrudolph argued that the issue is: non-technical users want to "use the tool" rather than "tinker with the tool." For example, after downloading OpenClaw, users should be able to just enter an API key and start using it, not go through complex steps. Alex countered: Connecting OpenClaw to Trello, Telegram bots, etc., requires API keys, which naturally imposes a technical barrier. Hannesrudolph acknowledged this but emphasized that the project's goal is to benefit everyone, so the barrier must be lowered. The planned UI and onboarding overhaul is precisely for this purpose—so that even family members can install and use it. ## Reasons Users Are Migrating to Hermes Josh saw a tweet from user Mike Gennady (a Microsoft employee) indicating he might migrate from OpenClaw to Hermes, one of the main reasons being **Hermes' self-improvement system**. Josh spent an entire day studying Hermes' self-improvement mechanism and thinks it's "indeed a good idea, and objectively so," because many people adopt Hermes specifically for this feature. Josh used his own client as an example: A venture fund founder uses an OpenClaw agent in a Slack channel, but the agent often makes errors. As an engineer, Josh can jump into Slack and adjust the skills anytime, but ordinary users don't know what "skills" are, let alone how to update them. Hermes abstracts skill updates as implementation details—the agent handles it automatically, and users don't need to understand the underlying system. Hannesrudolph added: It's not that users can't understand that updates are needed; rather, the tool shouldn't force users to be educated. This is exactly where OpenClaw needs to improve—focus on experience, not technical challenges. ## Alex's Personal Experience: Hermes Is Not Perfect Alex said he tried Hermes two months ago and again one month ago, and the experience was not as "plug-and-play" as advertised. The first time, he encountered random bugs; the second time, the agent kept falling into a "compressing, failing" loop, and adjusting settings didn't help. He's not putting down Hermes, but emphasizing a difference in **direction**—Hermes tries to *be* the experience, and OpenClaw needs to absorb that. ## Community Maintainer's View on Self-Improvement Systems Josh believes implementing skill-based self-improvement in OpenClaw would not be difficult: either as a plugin (exposing the right interfaces) or as a core implementation. The "skill workshop" added a few versions ago already provides most of the foundational capabilities; only a few small PRs are needed to change how skill usage is recorded and tracked. Hannesrudolph referenced Peter's point from the last show: he wants his father to be able to install OpenClaw directly. Hannesrudolph thought of his own friends (including a former Red Hat employee) who chose Hermes because of "ease of use," and he believes OpenClaw is fully capable of doing the same—it just needs to lower the barrier from "solving technical problems" to "solving procedural problems." ## Summary and Outlook This episode's demo was canceled due to the onboarding rework, but it sparked a deep discussion about OpenClaw's future direction: lowering the technical barrier, introducing self-improvement capabilities, and delivering an "out-of-the-box" experience for non-technical users. Community maintainer Josh has already started pushing related PRs, and Peter is reworking the UI/onboarding flow. How this will be implemented next is worth following closely. --- **Source**: The OpenClaw Podcast - The ClawCast - Episode 3 (https://youtu.be/TQ7SgFXvieY)