February 11, 2026
Claws out in the comments
NanoClaw solves one of OpenClaw's biggest security issues
Fans cheer the safety cage; skeptics cry PR stunt and 'wrong problem'
TLDR: NanoClaw locks AI assistants in safer “boxes” and quickly won attention, promising fewer disasters than OpenClaw’s anything-goes vibe. Commenters split: supporters love the safety cage and hackability; skeptics say containers don’t fix the real risks, call it PR fluff, and question the “500 lines” claim.
OpenClaw’s chaotic “do-everything” AI had folks clutching their laptops, so along comes NanoClaw—a lighter, locked-down spin that puts every bot in a sealed “room” and only lets it touch what you approve. It launched Jan 31 under MIT license, shot past 7,000 GitHub stars, and claims a tiny, audit-friendly codebase. The pitch: containers = guardrails so prompt-injected gremlins can’t torch your whole computer.
The comments? A knife fight. One skeptic says file access isn’t the real monster—connecting these bots to your data and apps is where “all the dragons” live, adding that people already run risky tools on separate machines (cue jokes about sacrificial Mac Minis). Fans counter that NanoClaw feels sane and usable, with one praising Apple’s speedy containers and even joking the best part is asking it to modify itself. There’s a nitpick too: a commenter points to the GitHub repo and says it’s “not 500 lines,” though still way leaner than OpenClaw.
Then the PR drama hits: since the creator’s connected to a tech PR firm, some call the whole thing a marketing stunt, and one wag claims the write-up reads like it was penned by an AI. Verdict from the crowd: half “finally, a safety cage,” half “wrong fix, slick pitch.”
Key Points
- •NanoClaw launched on Jan 31, 2026 under the MIT License and quickly surpassed 7,000 GitHub stars.
- •It addresses OpenClaw’s security concerns by running each agent in isolated containers (Apple Containers on macOS, Docker on Linux), limiting access to user-mounted directories.
- •NanoClaw emphasizes minimalism (~500 lines of TypeScript) for rapid human or AI auditability (~8 minutes).
- •Its architecture uses a single-process Node.js orchestrator, per-group message queues with concurrency control, SQLite persistence, and filesystem-based IPC.
- •NanoClaw supports Agent Swarms via the Anthropic Agent SDK, isolating each sub-agent’s memory to prevent cross-group data leakage.