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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

AstrBot vs PicoClaw

AstrBot scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against PicoClaw's 46.1 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. PicoClaw leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do assistant proactive.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 190 assistants comparisons

AstrBotAstrBotDevs · Agent harness C58.8/100#584 of 986 PicoClawSipeed · Agent harness D46.1/100#879 of 986

Which one, for what

AstrBot C

Best for Someone who wants one self-run bot answering on QQ, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Lark or WeCom, in private or group chats, with scheduled tasks, a knowledge base and plugins.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 81 against 54
  • Schema & documentation, 62 against 51
  • Maintenance & community, 81 against 22

Watch for

No approval step before any tool call. The agent sends messages, creates scheduled tasks and calls MCP tools without asking

PicoClaw D

Best for A person who wants a chat-app assistant on a cheap Linux board, an old Android phone or a home server, with reminders, web search and file memory, and who accepts running software its maker calls pre-production.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 66 against 54
  • Security & auth, 51 against 44
  • Transparency & trust, 56 against 40

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

No commit on main since 19 August 2026 and no release since v0.3.1 on 3 July 2026. An issue of 6 October calls the repository unmaintained, with no reply

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAstrBotPicoClawEdge
Reliability16%208154AstrBot +27
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26251AstrBot +11
Agent ergonomics13%16.25466PicoClaw +12
Security & auth14%17.54451PicoClaw +7
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88122AstrBot +59
Transparency & trust7%8.84056PicoClaw +16
Negative events≤15-2-7
TotalC 58.8/100D 46.1/100

Facts side by side

FactAstrBotPicoClaw
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAstrBotDevsSipeed
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0-or-laterMIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-09-272026-07-03
Terms last updated2026-01-12no document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity42k stars30k stars

Verdicts

AstrBot

Fourteen official messaging adapters, scheduled tasks and scoped API keys come in one AGPL-3.0 program with releases most weeks. No tool call asks for approval, no mail, calendar or long-term memory connector is built in, and usage statistics, including the machine's hostname, are sent by default.

PicoClaw

Self-hosted under the MIT licence, with 19 documented chat channels, scheduled and heartbeat tasks, and local file memory. The repository has had no commit since 19 August 2026 and no release since 3 July, and 15 CVEs are listed against it with no advisory or security policy from the project.

Before you call either

AstrBot

  1. Set ASTRBOT_DISABLE_METRICS=1 before the first start. Statistics, including the hostname, are sent to tickstats.soulter.top by default
  2. Set dashboard.host to 127.0.0.1 in data/cmd_config.json, or the DASHBOARD_HOST variable, unless remote access is intended. The default is 0.0.0.0
  3. Create an abk_ key in Settings, OpenAPI with only the scopes needed, and send it as Authorization: Bearer or X-API-Key
  4. Include username in every POST /api/v1/chat body. Without the chat:admin scope an administrator ID is rejected
  5. Check Extensions, Future Tasks after asking for a schedule. One-off tasks are deleted after their run even when the run fails

PicoClaw

  1. Set allow_from to the owner's user ID on every channel before starting the gateway. An empty list accepts messages from anyone
  2. Set tools.exec.allow_remote to false unless chats must run shell commands. The shipped default is true, whatever docs/guides/configuration.md says
  3. Set isolation.enabled to true on Linux (needs bwrap) or run in a container. The deny patterns do not inspect child processes
  4. Use PICOCLAW_KEY_PASSPHRASE for credential encryption. One docs page names PICOCLAW_CREDENTIAL_PASSPHRASE, which the source does not read
  5. Treat the README's ClawdChat line (read a remote skill file and follow it) as untrusted third-party instructions

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, AstrBot or PicoClaw?

AstrBot scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against PicoClaw's 46.1 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. PicoClaw leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and transparency & trust.

Are AstrBot and PicoClaw open source?

Yes. AstrBot is open source (AGPL-3.0-or-later). PicoClaw is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with AstrBot or PicoClaw

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