In This Article
Introduction
OpenClaw traces its origins to a single weekend in November 2025. Peter Steinberger, founder of PSPDFKit, was frustrated by a simple UX problem: getting AI assistance required navigating to a specific web portal every time. He wanted his AI assistant in the same place he already spent his digital life: messaging apps. He built "WhatsApp Relay" — a tool to forward AI responses to WhatsApp. That weekend project became OpenClaw, the most significant agentic infrastructure of 2026.
This article tells the origin story in detail. Understanding where OpenClaw came from — a weekend hack, a personal frustration, a "vibe coding" experiment — helps explain its design philosophy: utility first, architecture later. Ship fast, iterate, let the community guide. The WhatsApp Relay was maybe 200 lines. Today OpenClaw exceeds 430,000. The core insight never changed: AI belongs in your messaging apps.
The Problem
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — all lived in browser tabs. To ask a question, you had to: open browser, navigate to site, type. Context lived in the tab. Close it, lose it. Switch devices, lose it. The AI was a destination you visited, not a presence you lived with.
Steinberger's frustration was specific. He was already in WhatsApp constantly — family, colleagues, clients. To get AI help, he had to leave that flow. Copy a question, open a tab, paste, wait, copy the answer, go back to WhatsApp. The friction was small per interaction but added up. And the AI had no memory of his context. Every conversation started from zero.
Worse: the AI couldn't act. It could describe how to do something; it couldn't do it. No calendar access, no email, no file system. Just text in, text out. Steinberger wanted more. He wanted AI in the flow of his life, with the ability to act on his behalf.
The Solution
WhatsApp Relay: a small service that received messages from WhatsApp, forwarded them to an LLM (Claude, initially), and sent the response back. No new app. No context switching. AI in the conversation. The first version was minimal — maybe 200 lines. It worked.
Technical flow: WhatsApp Business API (or a similar bridge) received messages. A small Node.js script picked them up, sent the text to the Claude API, got a response, sent it back to WhatsApp. The user experience: you message a number, you get an AI response. Simple. The "relay" was literally relaying — message in, message out. No memory, no tools, no proactive behavior. Just a bridge.
But it was enough. Steinberger used it. It solved his problem. He could ask Claude questions from WhatsApp. The seed was planted.
The Weekend Build
Steinberger built it in a weekend — "vibe coding" at its purest. Prioritize utility over architecture. Ship fast. Iterate. No over-engineering. He posted it. Developers found it. They wanted more: Telegram support, Slack, memory, proactive tasks. The relay grew.
"Vibe coding" — using AI assistants to write code rapidly, iterating in natural language — was how Steinberger developed. The result: fast iteration, less boilerplate, more focus on what matters. The WhatsApp Relay was a vibe coding product: built with AI, for AI-in-messaging. See vibe coding.
The community response was immediate. "This is exactly what I needed." "Can you add Telegram?" "I want it to remember things." "Can it run tasks on a schedule?" Each request was a feature. The relay became a framework.
Evolution: Relay to Framework
WhatsApp Relay → Clawdbot (public launch, added Telegram, memory, tools) → Moltbot (rebrand after Anthropic) → OpenClaw (final name, Foundation). Each step added capabilities. The core insight never changed: AI belongs in your messaging apps, running persistently, acting proactively.
What was added: Channel adapters for multiple platforms. Persistent memory (Markdown files). The Heartbeat Engine for proactive tasks. Skills for extensibility. Docker for getting it running. The Gateway architecture. 430,000 lines of code. But the soul of the project — messaging-first, local-first, proactive — was there from day one.
The weekend project became the most significant agentic infrastructure of 2026. 100K GitHub stars in 7 days. OpenAI hired its creator. The SaaSpocalypse. All from a WhatsApp relay.
Lessons from the Origins
Start with a personal problem. Steinberger didn't set out to build a platform. He wanted AI in WhatsApp. The best software often starts that way.
Ship fast. The first version was minimal. It worked. Community feedback drove the rest. Over-engineering at the start would have slowed everything down.
Vibe coding works. AI-assisted development let one person move fast. The trade-off: technical debt, security lag. The Foundation is now addressing that. But the velocity was real.
Distribution matters. WhatsApp and Telegram are where people already are. OpenClaw didn't need to create a new habit. It met users in their existing flow.
Wrapping Up
The WhatsApp Relay origins remind us that transformative software can start as a simple solution to a personal frustration. See Peter Steinberger, vibe coding, and name history for more.