OpenClaw | My PC died. Here is how I replaced it for $0. 💀

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Adam Stewart
January 30, 2026

Adam here!

My old workstation finally gave up the ghost this week. (Pretty sure the power supply fried itself).

I really wanted to run one of these new "AI Agents" everyone is talking about! The ones that actually do work instead of just chatting. But I was not about to drop $1,000 on a new Mac Mini just to test out a bot.

So I found a way to do it for $0.

Formerly ClawdBot then MoltBot and now…

Meet OpenClaw

It’s an AI employee that lives in the cloud, works 24/7, and costs absolutely nothing to start.

Wait, what happened to the name?

If you’ve been following the drama on X (Twitter), you know this bot has had an identity crisis.

  1. ClawdBot: The original. Anthropic politely asked the creator to change it because it sounded too much like "Claude."

  2. MoltBot: The rebrand. (Get it? Lobsters molt? 🦞). Unfortunately, crypto scammers hijacked the handle immediately after the switch.

  3. OpenClaw: The final form. Safe, open-source, and ready for business.

What can it actually DO?

Unlike ChatGPT, which waits for you to talk to it, OpenClaw is proactive. It can wake up, check your emails, and text you without you asking.

Here are some real use cases I've seen:

  • The Deep Researcher: Instead of Googling for hours, you can ask it to "Find the best budget monitors on Reddit" and it browses multiple threads to write you a summary report.

  • The Bug Fixer: Developers are connecting it to GitHub to automatically fix typos and bugs in their code while they sleep.

  • The Morning Briefing: My personal favorite. It wakes up at 7 AM, checks my calendar, summarizes the news I actually care about, and texts me a "Battle Plan" for the day on Telegram.

How to build one (The $0 Speed Run)

You don’t need a fancy computer. We are going to host this virtually on AWS Free Tier.

  • The Computer: AWS EC2 (Free Tier Ubuntu instance)

  • The Brain: Google Gemini Flash (Fast & currently free)

  • The Body: Telegram

The 3-Step Setup:

  1. Launch a free Ubuntu server on AWS.

  2. Grab a free API key from Google AI Studio and a Bot Token from Telegram’s @BotFather.

  3. Run the "Magic Line" installer in your terminal.

(I’m dropping a reel tutorial on this soon)

Let me know if you build your own "Burrito" (that’s what I named mine 🌯).

Here are awesome use cases:

Instagram Reel