Like most of us in the tech world, I recently tried openclaw and was astounded at both the abilities and the API costs. I decided I would make an openclaw alternative that only had free providers, so any old laptop, raspberry pi, or VPS can run it for totally free.
I chose to do it in python for two reasons. 1. I am familiar with it 2. LLMs are familiar with it, this means you can have your agent change it’s own code to improve! If you do this, please submit a PR on github! It does currently require linux or mac, IDK if WSL would work.
To get started you need a free API key, we support two providers currently, Nvidia NIM ( https://build.nvidia.com/) and OpenRouter (https://openrouter.ai/) . Sign up to either or both and save your API key somewhere safe.
The next step is to create a bot on discord. Head to the Discord Dev Portal ( https://discord.com/developers/a...) and create a new application, you will want to name it what you want your bot to be named and give it a cool picture. After you’ve created your application, click on it and then click Bot in the sidebar. You want to reset your token, copy it and put it someplace very safe. That’s your bot’s ID card. Next click General Information in the sidebar and copy and paste your application ID somewhere.
Next you want to run “git clone https://github.com/openconstruct...” and change to that directory. Run “pip install -r requirements.txt” this installs the necessary packages for the discord and websearch features. If you get an error at this step you need to create and activate a venv.
Once that is done you run “python -m freeclaw onboard” this will run you through the setup steps, you will need all of the things I told you to save. The script will generate an invite URL for you to paste in your browser to invite your bot to your server. I recommend setting up a server for just you and the bot(s).
After that you can run “python -m freeclaw discord” and your server should start up, you can now message your bot in discord!
