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

OpenClaw vs OpenDuet

OpenClaw scores 67.4 (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

OpenClawOpenClaw Foundation · Agent harness B67.4/100#288 of 1238 OpenDuetCopilotKit (Tawkit, Inc.) · Agent harness D49.5/100#961 of 1238

Which one, for what

OpenClaw B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine across many chat apps, with their choice of model and files they can read and delete.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 75 against 42
  • Schema & documentation, 84 against 58
  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 52
  • Security & auth, 74 against 59
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 37

Watch for

Without configuration the default is full access. Host exec runs with no approval and sandboxing is off

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

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where OpenClaw loses 8 points for them

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOpenClawOpenDuetEdge
Reliability16%207542OpenClaw +33
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28458OpenClaw +26
Agent ergonomics13%16.27752OpenClaw +25
Security & auth14%17.57459OpenClaw +15
Payments & pricing10%12.56030OpenClaw +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88637OpenClaw +49
Transparency & trust7%8.87268OpenClaw +4
Negative events≤15-80
TotalB 67.4/100D 49.5/100

Facts side by side

FactOpenClawOpenDuet
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorOpenClaw FoundationCopilotKit (Tawkit, Inc.)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth 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 documentedyesno
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-12none
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
Popularity392k stars1.6k stars
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)none

Verdicts

OpenClaw

Self-hosted under the MIT licence, with state, memory and credentials kept on the owner's machine and no paid tier. A fresh install runs tools on the host with full access, no approval prompt and no sandbox, and the project has published 722 security advisories since January 2026, 14 of them critical.

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

OpenClaw

  1. Set a session permission mode of guarded or workspace, or tools.exec.mode, before connecting mail. The default runs host commands without approval
  2. Turn on agents.defaults.sandbox for any agent that reads mail, web pages or attachments. Sandboxing is off by default
  3. Set tools.message.crossContext.allowAcrossProviders and allowWithinProvider to false to confine sends to the current conversation
  4. Route incoming mail to a restricted reader agent, as the IMAP and Gmail guides show, and deny gateway, cron, sessions_spawn and sessions_send for it
  5. Run openclaw security audit after setup, and treat the Gateway token as an owner credential. POST /tools/invoke accepts it with full operator access

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, OpenClaw or OpenDuet?

OpenClaw scores 67.4 (B) on agent readiness against OpenDuet's 49.5 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Are OpenClaw and OpenDuet open source?

Yes. OpenClaw 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 OpenClaw or OpenDuet

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