This is a great example of how silly this whole thing is. There’s next to nothing to these claws. Turns out that if you give an llm the ability to call APIs they will.
I have a couple ESP32 with a very small OLED display, I'm now thinking I could make an "intelligent" version of the Tamagotchi with this. Do you HN crowd have other cool ideas?
Blowing more than 800kb on essentially an http api wrapper is actually kinda bad. The original Doom binary was 700kb and had vastly more complexity. This is in C after all, so by stripping out nonessential stuff and using the right compiler options, I'd expect something like this to come in under 100kb.
Doom had the benefit of an OS that included a lot of low-level bits like a net stack. This doesn’t! That 800kB includes everything it would need from an OS too.
yeah i sandbagged the size just a little to start (small enough to fit on the c3, 888 picked for good luck & prosperity; I even have a build that pads to get 888 exactly), so i can now try reduce some of it as an exercise etc.
but 100kb you’re not gonna see :) this has WiFi, tls, etc. doom didn’t need those
It's not completely impossible, depending on what your expectations are. That language model that was built out of redstone in minecraft had... looks like 5 million parameters. And it could do mostly coherent sentences.
haha well I got something ridiculous coming soon for zclaw that will kinda work on board.. will require the S3 variant tho, needs a little more memory. Training it later today.
This is absolutely glorious. We used to talk about "smart devices" and IoT… I would be so curious to see what would happen if these connected devices had a bit more agency and communicative power. It's easy to imagine the downsides, and I don't want my email to be managed from an ESP23 device, but what else could this unlock?
The various *claws are just a pipe between LLM APIs and a bunch of other API/CLIs. Like you can have it listen via telegram or Whatsapp for a prompt you send. Like to generate some email or social post, which it sends to the LLM API. Get back a tool call that claw then makes to hit your email or social API. You could have it regularly poll for new emails or posts, generate a reply via some prompt, and send the reply.
The reason people were buying a separate Mac minis just to do open claw was 1) security, as it was all vibe coded, so needs to be sandboxed 2) relay iMessage and maybe 3) local inference but pretty slowly. If you don't need to relay iMessage, a raspberry pi could host it on its own device. So if all you need is the pipe, an ESP32 works.
I’m running my own api/LLM bridge (claw thing) on a raspberry pi right now. I was struggling to understand why all the Mac mini hype when nobody is doing local inference. I just use a hook that listens for email. Email is especially nice because all the conversation/thread history tracking is built in to email already.
33 comments:
This is a great example of how silly this whole thing is. There’s next to nothing to these claws. Turns out that if you give an llm the ability to call APIs they will.
I have a couple ESP32 with a very small OLED display, I'm now thinking I could make an "intelligent" version of the Tamagotchi with this. Do you HN crowd have other cool ideas?
That would be sweet. That the supermini type with the 0.46” display? Those are fun for lots of things.
"LLM backends: Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter."
And here I was hoping that this was local inference :)
Sure. Why purchase a H200 if you can go with an ESP32 ^^
Blowing more than 800kb on essentially an http api wrapper is actually kinda bad. The original Doom binary was 700kb and had vastly more complexity. This is in C after all, so by stripping out nonessential stuff and using the right compiler options, I'd expect something like this to come in under 100kb.
Doom had the benefit of an OS that included a lot of low-level bits like a net stack. This doesn’t! That 800kB includes everything it would need from an OS too.
yah my back of the envelope math..
the “app logic”/wrapper pieces come out to about 25kb
WiFi is 350 Tls is 120 and certs are 90!
yeah i sandbagged the size just a little to start (small enough to fit on the c3, 888 picked for good luck & prosperity; I even have a build that pads to get 888 exactly), so i can now try reduce some of it as an exercise etc.
but 100kb you’re not gonna see :) this has WiFi, tls, etc. doom didn’t need those
right, 888 kB would be impossible for local inference
however, it is really not that impressive for just a client
It's not completely impossible, depending on what your expectations are. That language model that was built out of redstone in minecraft had... looks like 5 million parameters. And it could do mostly coherent sentences.
haha well I got something ridiculous coming soon for zclaw that will kinda work on board.. will require the S3 variant tho, needs a little more memory. Training it later today.
My new DIY laptop has 400GB RAM accessible and it runs only esp32*
____
* Requires external ram subscription
Relevant: https://github.com/sipeed/picoclaw
Genuinely curious - did you use a coding agent for most of this or does this level if performance take hand written code?
I think you can use C++ on esp32, that would make the code more readable
Is there a heartbeat alternative? I feel like this is the magic behind OpenClaw and what gives it the "self-driven" feel.
This is absolutely glorious. We used to talk about "smart devices" and IoT… I would be so curious to see what would happen if these connected devices had a bit more agency and communicative power. It's easy to imagine the downsides, and I don't want my email to be managed from an ESP23 device, but what else could this unlock?
A highly opinionated thermostat?
Serious question: why? What are the use cases and workflows?
The various *claws are just a pipe between LLM APIs and a bunch of other API/CLIs. Like you can have it listen via telegram or Whatsapp for a prompt you send. Like to generate some email or social post, which it sends to the LLM API. Get back a tool call that claw then makes to hit your email or social API. You could have it regularly poll for new emails or posts, generate a reply via some prompt, and send the reply.
The reason people were buying a separate Mac minis just to do open claw was 1) security, as it was all vibe coded, so needs to be sandboxed 2) relay iMessage and maybe 3) local inference but pretty slowly. If you don't need to relay iMessage, a raspberry pi could host it on its own device. So if all you need is the pipe, an ESP32 works.
I’m running my own api/LLM bridge (claw thing) on a raspberry pi right now. I was struggling to understand why all the Mac mini hype when nobody is doing local inference. I just use a hook that listens for email. Email is especially nice because all the conversation/thread history tracking is built in to email already.
yeah i still can't believe many people bought a mac mini just for the claw hype
I don't fully get it either. At least agents build stuff, claws just run around pretending to be alive?
They do build things. The same things.
for fun!
I don't really need any assistance...
Me neither.
But I have 10-15 ESP32's just waiting for a useful project. Does HN have better suggestions?
desk rover - https://www.huyvector.org/diy-cute-desk-robot-mo-chan
a kid-pleaser at the very least
Build a synthesizer
Why do you have so many? eWaste..
I need 1, but they come in packs of 10.
No, no, but we insist!