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Head to head · Proactive personal assistants · October 2026 research run

NanoClaw vs OpenDuet

NanoClaw scores 68.6 (B) on agent readiness against OpenDuet's 49.5 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do proactive personal assistants.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1196 assistants comparisons

NanoClawNanoCo, Inc. · Agent harness B68.6/100#235 of 1238 OpenDuetCopilotKit (Tawkit, Inc.) · Agent harness D49.5/100#961 of 1238

Which one, for what

NanoClaw B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine, reachable from chat apps, with container isolation and scheduled tasks, and who is willing to keep a fork.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 78 against 42
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 58
  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 52
  • Security & auth, 74 against 59
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 78 against 37

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

The Claude provider runs with permissionMode: 'bypassPermissions', so shell, file and web tools run inside the container with no prompt

OpenDuet D

Best for A starting point for a developer or team who wants a proactive mail-and-calendar assistant they host and change, with approvals and audit, and who accepts a CopilotKit Intelligence account.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where NanoClaw loses 5 points for them

Watch for

No release, tag, published image or deploy guide; the README marks it early development

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNanoClawOpenDuetEdge
Reliability16%207842NanoClaw +36
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28258NanoClaw +24
Agent ergonomics13%16.27052NanoClaw +18
Security & auth14%17.57459NanoClaw +15
Payments & pricing10%12.56030NanoClaw +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87837NanoClaw +41
Transparency & trust7%8.86968NanoClaw +1
Negative events≤15-50
TotalB 68.6/100D 49.5/100

Facts side by side

FactNanoClawOpenDuet
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorNanoCo, Inc.CopilotKit (Tawkit, Inc.)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT. Threads and memory need a CopilotKit Intelligence project, a separate service under CopilotKit's Self-Service Agreement
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-09none
Terms last updatedno document linkedcouldn't be read
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-08-27
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Popularity31k stars1.6k stars
Agent reviews3/5 (4)none

Verdicts

NanoClaw

Each session runs in an unprivileged Docker container and API keys stay in a credential gateway on the host, so a manipulated agent cannot read them. Inside the container the agent runs with permission prompts off, network egress is open by default, and it can message any chat it is wired to without approval.

OpenDuet

Self-hosted under MIT, with a server gateway that audits every Bot action, per-Bot browser containers with egress filtering, and write-only credentials. Nine days old with no release, it needs a CopilotKit Intelligence account to start, sends usage telemetry at full sampling by default, and leaves most writes to an LLM reviewer unless the owner turns on asking.

Before you call either

NanoClaw

  1. Install with git clone and bash nanoclaw.sh. There is no registry package, and setup needs Docker, Node 22 or later and a Claude or Codex credential
  2. Set NANOCLAW_EGRESS_LOCKDOWN=true before giving an agent credentials or an audience of strangers. The default leaves egress open
  3. Put chats with different audiences in separate agent groups. Every session of a group shares one read-write workspace and memory tree
  4. Turn on per-request approval for a secret in the gateway when its use should wait for a person. It is off unless configured
  5. On OneCLI installs, move the gateway to 1.42.0 by the upgrade guide before updating to 2026.10.0. The updater stops until that is done

OpenDuet

  1. Follow the README's Quick start (bun install, bash scripts/start.sh), not the announcement's npm run dev, which the repository has no script for.
  2. Run bun openbot/scripts/setup-learning.ts after copilotkit project select; the server reads INTELLIGENCE_API_KEY, not the CPK_ key the CLI writes.
  3. Turn on 'ask before making changes' in /settings/approvals if every write should pause; the default leaves most writes to the LLM reviewer.
  4. To bring your own agent, register it as a remote-ag-ui Bot in agents.yaml; its tool calls still pass through the gateway's policy and audit.
  5. Set COPILOTKIT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=true or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 before starting if usage events must not reach CopilotKit.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, NanoClaw or OpenDuet?

NanoClaw scores 68.6 (B) on agent readiness against OpenDuet's 49.5 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Are NanoClaw and OpenDuet open source?

Yes. NanoClaw is open source (MIT). OpenDuet is open source (MIT. Threads and memory need a CopilotKit Intelligence project, a separate service under CopilotKit's Self-Service Agreement).

Other comparisons with NanoClaw or OpenDuet

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