See more of my writing here.
In this post, I'll start from scratch and build up to OpenClaw's architecture step by step, showing how you could have invented it yourself from first principles, using nothing but a messaging API, an LLM, and the desire to make AI actually useful outside the chat window.
End goal: understand how persistent AI assistants work, so you can build your own (or become an OpenClaw power user).
When you use ChatGPT or Claude in a browser, there are several limitations:
| =Navigating= | |
| visit('/projects') | |
| visit(post_comments_path(post)) | |
| =Clicking links and buttons= | |
| click_link('id-of-link') | |
| click_link('Link Text') | |
| click_button('Save') | |
| click('Link Text') # Click either a link or a button | |
| click('Button Value') |
| #!/usr/bin/env bash | |
| func_check_for_root() { | |
| if [ ! $( id -u ) -eq 0 ]; then | |
| echo "ERROR: $0 Must be run as root, Script terminating" ;exit 7 | |
| fi | |
| } | |
| func_check_for_root | |
| #SETUP PARAMS |
| ENV["RAILS_ENV"] = "test" | |
| require File.expand_path('../../config/environment', __FILE__) | |
| require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/blueprints' | |
| require 'faker' | |
| require 'rails/test_help' | |
| require 'minitest/autorun' | |
| require 'minitest/pride' | |
| class MiniTest::Unit::TestCase | |
| include MiniTest::ActiveRecordAssertions |
| # http://henrik.nyh.se/2008/12/git-dirty-prompt | |
| # http://www.simplisticcomplexity.com/2008/03/13/show-your-git-branch-name-in-your-prompt/ | |
| # username@Machine ~/dev/dir[master]$ # clean working directory | |
| # username@Machine ~/dev/dir[master*]$ # dirty working directory | |
| # Edit .bash_profile | |
| $ nano ~/.bash_profile | |
| function parse_git_dirty { | |
| [[ $(git status 2> /dev/null | tail -n1) != "nothing to commit (working directory clean)" ]] && echo "*" |
| wget "ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-6.2.tar.gz" | |
| tar xf readline-6.2.tar.gz | |
| cd readline-6.2 | |
| ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.rbenv/versions/1.9.3-p0-patched | |
| make -j 2 | |
| make install | |
| cd .. | |
| wget "http://pyyaml.org/download/libyaml/yaml-0.1.4.tar.gz" | |
| tar xf yaml-0.1.4.tar.gz |
| cd ~ | |
| sudo yum update | |
| sudo yum install java-1.7.0-openjdk.i686 -y | |
| wget https://github.com/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-0.19.9.tar.gz -O elasticsearch.tar.gz | |
| tar -xf elasticsearch.tar.gz | |
| rm elasticsearch.tar.gz | |
| mv elasticsearch-* elasticsearch | |
| sudo mv elasticsearch /usr/local/share |
| gem 'pg' | |
| group :development do | |
| gem 'ruby-debug' | |
| end | |
| gem 'rake', '~> 0.8.7' | |
| gem 'devise' | |
| gem 'oa-oauth', :require => 'omniauth/oauth' | |
| gem 'omniauth' | |
| gem 'haml' | |
| gem 'dynamic_form' |