This project offers a minimal, educational implementation of the OpenClaw AI agent architecture, focusing on system-level design principles often omitted in basic tutorials. It targets engineers and researchers seeking to understand the complexities of production-grade AI agents, providing a practical foundation for building more sophisticated, evolving "life systems" rather than mere function mappers. The core benefit lies in demystifying long-term memory, context management, skill extensibility, and proactive operational mechanisms.

How It Works

OpenClaw Mini distills the core subsystems of the extensive OpenClaw system into a manageable codebase. It features a Session Manager for persistent conversation history (JSONL), a simplified Memory Manager for keyword-based long-term recall, and an on-demand Context Loader that injects structured project knowledge (e.g., AGENTS.md, TOOLS.md) while managing context size via truncation and summarization. A Skills Manager enables dynamic, trigger-word-based capability expansion. The most novel component is the Heartbeat Manager, implementing a proactive "awakening" system with request merging and precise scheduling to allow agents to act autonomously.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Install: Navigate to examples/openclaw-mini and run pnpm install.
• Prerequisites: Node.js/pnpm environment, and an Anthropic API key (export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-xxx). An optional OPENCLAW_MINI_AGENT_ID environment variable can be set.
• Run: Initiate an interactive chat session with pnpm dev chat.
• Links: The project README serves as the primary documentation.

Highlighted Details

• System-Level Architecture: Replicates key design patterns for production AI agents, moving beyond simple agent loops.
• Proactive Heartbeat: Features an event-driven scheduling system (HeartbeatWake and HeartbeatRunner) for autonomous agent actions.
• Contextual Intelligence: Implements structured context loading, pruning, and compaction for efficient information injection.
• Extensible Skills: Supports dynamic addition of agent capabilities via trigger words defined in frontmatter.

Maintenance & Community

This project appears to be a focused educational replica of OpenClaw's core architecture. The README does not detail specific contributors, ongoing maintenance plans, or community channels like Discord or Slack.

Licensing & Compatibility

The project is released under the MIT license, which is highly permissive for commercial use, modification, and integration into closed-source applications.

Limitations & Caveats

As a "minimal implementation," OpenClaw Mini simplifies several components from the full OpenClaw system, notably the Memory Manager, which uses keyword search instead of vector databases. It relies on the Anthropic API, and the proactive heartbeat mechanism is disabled by default in the provided examples. Its primary purpose is educational, focusing on core concepts rather than a fully featured production agent.