I Tried OpenClaw Again. And Yes, It's Still Useless (For Me)

Another date with the AI assistant everyone won’t shut up about...

Fellow human, a few months ago, I wrote about spending two hours (well, three) installing OpenClaw, the Clawdbot-turned-Moltbot-turned-OpenClaw project that broke Tech Twitter and made people buy Mac Minis.

Back then, my conclusion was basically: impressive, ahead of its time, but not for me.

I should have left it there. And a normal, emotionally stable person would have left it there.

But I am not that person. I’m a stubborn goat.

So Here’s What Happened…

After that first article, I actually uninstalled it. I gave it an honest shot, poked around, couldn’t find a single thing in my daily life that genuinely needed it, and quietly broke up with it like an emotionally intelligent adult.

Then these guys on Twitter wouldn't shut up about it. So, there I was, sitting around with my FOMO, thinking maybe I set it up wrong. Maybe the magic is one config file away.

Then, I decided to give it another shot.

And this time, I told myself to forget the fancy stuff. I don’t need the browser-controlling, email-reading, or calendar-managing sci-fi. I just need to find one or two simple, boring things it can do well.

The Small Wins…

I was able to figure it out to a relatively useful state. I did find a couple of genuinely nice use cases when I lowered my expectations to floor level:

A Slack PA. I hooked it into Slack and asked it to read through my channels and give me a daily summary of what I missed. When it worked, this was actually not bad.

A Notion task manager. I let it create and manage tasks on my Notion. Tell it “remind me to follow up with the designer”, and it drops it into Notion.

Reminders and check-ins. The proactive notification part, which pings me about stuff without me asking, is the kind of feature that feels like the future when it behaves.

For about a day and a half, I felt like one of those Twitter people.

But the reality still lingered, and I later came to my senses.

Why It’s Still Useless (For Me)

1. It is overly, unnecessarily, and almost annoyingly complicated.

Nothing about this thing is plug-and-play. Every simple action hides three dependencies, two config files, and one terminal command, which you only discover by failing first.

Setting up something as basic as “read my Slack and summarise it” should not feel like defusing a bomb.

It’s genuinely annoying how complicated it is, not “I’m-not-technical” annoying, just why-is-this-so-hard annoying.

It’s the kind of complicated that feels like a “win” if you just try to figure it out and make it work.

2. It’s the buggiest piece of software I’ve used in a long time.

I’m not exaggerating. If this were a paid product, I would have politely requested a refund, possibly with attitude.

You will run into an issue. Then another.

The integrations break for no reason, one day Slack works, the next it just… doesn’t. It misreads things and confidently does the wrong action (a “task” appeared in my Notion that I’m pretty sure it dreamt up). You spend more time babysitting it than being helped by it.

3. It chews money like it did money ritual for me.

This was the dealbreaker. Because it’s always on and processing everything through an AI model, the API credits pile up fast.

$123 to read Slack channels and sort Notion tasks????????

For a tool I’m using to do two small chores, the bill makes no sense.

Maybe I don’t know how to optimise it. Maybe there’s a setting I’m missing. But nothing this fiddly should also be this expensive.

So… I Uninstalled It, Again.

Yes. And hopefully, for the last time.

On some days, I think personal AI agents are completely overrated. On other days, I think they’re a genuinely big deal. I live somewhere in the middle, which is exactly why I keep giving them a shot in the first place.

But a tool like OpenClaw asks for a lot before it gives anything back. A lot of data exposure, integrations, and a fair amount of technical know-how.

And if all I’m doing with it is simple Slack and Notion errands, while it eats this many credits and throws this many issues at me, where’s the motivation to do anything monumental with it?

Then there’s also the part where I probably have ten simpler ways to achieve most of these little automations. So why would I reach for the most complicated, expensive approach?

Until that math changes, I’m out.

Kay - your fellow human.