A messaging problem, not a model problem
Peter Steinberger had built PSPDFKit, a PDF software company that grew to about 70 employees and raised 100 million euros in 2021, then stepped away from tech for roughly three years afterward. The project that became OpenClaw started in November 2025 out of a narrower complaint: chat and work were scattered across WhatsApp, Slack and email, and the assistants he had access to could talk but not act on any of it. [4]
What he shipped was a local-first agent: it runs on hardware the user owns (a laptop, a homelab box, a VPS), keeps state and credentials there, and takes instructions through chat apps the user already has open rather than through a new interface. From that position it can browse the web and run shell commands on the user's behalf. [4]
It was not called Clawdbot at first
The GitHub repository was created on 2025-11-24, but under the name Warelay. Steinberger renamed it CLAWDIS on 2025-12-03, then Clawdbot on 2026-01-02, five and a half weeks after creation and roughly seven weeks before the trademark dispute that made the name a story. [2][1]
Atlas interpretation: The event's title above describes the repository as becoming OpenClaw, which is accurate to where it ended up, but a reader looking at the creation date alone would reasonably assume the project was called Clawdbot from day one. It was not: two other names came and went first, unrelated to any dispute, before the name that would later attract Anthropic's attention was even chosen. [2]
Anthropic objects, and the name changes twice
Clawdbot combined the lobster branding with a nod to Anthropic's Claude, and it was the name in place when the project went viral in January 2026. Anthropic contacted Steinberger directly and asked for a rename over the similarity to Claude; he has said even a modified variant such as "Clawbot" was refused. He announced the rename to Moltbot on 2026-01-27, writing on social media, "I was forced to rename the account by Anthropic. Wasn't my decision." [3]
Moltbot lasted three days. On 2026-01-30 Steinberger settled on OpenClaw, saying this time the team had checked first: "trademark searches came back clear, domains have been purchased." The name kept the crustacean branding (lobsters molt to grow) while dropping anything that could read as borrowed from another company's product name. [3][2]
What the renaming cost, and what came after
The churn had a cost beyond the name itself: during the rebrand, scammers claimed the vacated @clawdbot social media handle and used it to launch a fraudulent cryptocurrency token. Steinberger was not involved and did not endorse it. [4]
On 2026-02-14, Steinberger announced he was joining OpenAI and that stewardship of the project would move to a newly formed OpenClaw Foundation, a nonprofit. When the repository's star count was checked for this page it stood at 386,898; a later check in March 2026 put the count near 247,000, a discrepancy this page cannot resolve from the sources alone (a purge of inflated or bot-driven stars is one explanation floated in coverage of the project, but is not confirmed here). [2][1]
Sources
- openclaw/openclaw
OpenClaw · Aug 20, 2026
- OpenClaw
Wikipedia · Sep 9, 2026
- From Clawdbot to Moltbot to OpenClaw: Trademark friction strikes a viral AI agent
LinkedIn · Jan 27, 2026
- From Burnout to Breakout: A Journey that leads to OpenClaw
Founder Coho (Substack) · Feb 14, 2026