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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

IronClaw vs PicoClaw

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against PicoClaw's 46.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do assistant proactive.

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

IronClawNEAR AI · Agent harness B66.7/100#288 of 986 PicoClawSipeed · Agent harness D46.1/100#879 of 986

Which one, for what

IronClaw B

Best for One technical owner who wants a self-hosted assistant over Gmail, Calendar, Slack and Telegram with credentials kept out of the model's reach.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 67 against 54
  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 51
  • Security & auth, 66 against 51
  • Maintenance & community, 74 against 22
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 56

Watch for

Global auto-approve defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask (send, trash, delete) run without a prompt. Only financial, approval and budget effects always ask

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.

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card

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 runIronClawPicoClawEdge
Reliability16%206754IronClaw +13
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27451IronClaw +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.26966IronClaw +3
Security & auth14%17.56651IronClaw +15
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87422IronClaw +52
Transparency & trust7%8.87556IronClaw +19
Negative events≤15-2-7
TotalB 66.7/100D 46.1/100

Facts side by side

FactIronClawPicoClaw
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorNEAR AISipeed
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceMIT OR Apache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-09-292026-07-03
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno date givenno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity13k stars30k stars

Verdicts

IronClaw

Credentials stay in an encrypted store and are injected at the host boundary, and extensions declare per-tool permissions, network targets and OAuth scopes. The global auto-approve setting defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask, such as gmail.send_message, run unprompted until the owner turns it off.

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

IronClaw

  1. Open Settings and turn off global auto-approve, or set send and delete tools to ask each time, before connecting mail or chat accounts
  2. Install with the release installer and run ironclaw onboard. 1.x does not migrate 0.29 data, so use a fresh home directory
  3. Call POST /api/v1/responses with the bearer token from ~/.ironclaw/reborn/webui-token. Keep under 30 requests in 60 seconds
  4. Resolve approval and OAuth gates in the web interface. The Responses API fails the turn instead of surfacing them
  5. Connect MCP servers over HTTP only. The stdio transport is rejected

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, IronClaw or PicoClaw?

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against PicoClaw's 46.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Are IronClaw and PicoClaw open source?

Yes. IronClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0). PicoClaw is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with IronClaw or PicoClaw

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