zclaw: personal AI assistant in under 888 KB, running on an ESP32
39 points - today at 12:37 PM
SourceI 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?
roxolotl
today at 10:31 PM
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.
alexalx666
today at 10:37 PM
I think you can use C++ on esp32, that would make the code more readable
throwa356262
today at 8:35 PM
"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 ^^
sigmoid10
today at 10:30 PM
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
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.
peterisza
today at 9:06 PM
right, 888 kB would be impossible for local inference
however, it is really not that impressive for just a client
Dylan16807
today at 9:20 PM
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.
Genuinely curious - did you use a coding agent for most of this or does this level if performance take hand written code?
theturtletalks
today at 9:09 PM
Is there a heartbeat alternative? I feel like this is the magic behind OpenClaw and what gives it the "self-driven" feel.
bensyverson
today at 10:02 PM
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?
Serious question: why? What are the use cases and workflows?
eleventyseven
today at 10:06 PM
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 don't fully get it either. At least agents build stuff, claws just run around pretending to be alive?
codazoda
today at 10:32 PM
They do build things. The same things.
I don't really need any assistance...
throwa356262
today at 8:38 PM
Me neither.
But I have 10-15 ESP32's just waiting for a useful project. Does HN have better suggestions?
brcmthrowaway
today at 8:55 PM
Why do you have so many? eWaste..
iwontberude
today at 9:21 PM
No, no, but we insist!