[HN Gopher] zclaw: personal AI assistant in under 888 KB, runnin...
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zclaw: personal AI assistant in under 888 KB, running on an ESP32
Author : tosh
Score : 47 points
Date : 2026-02-21 12:37 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| johnea wrote:
| I don't really need any assistance...
| throwa356262 wrote:
| Me neither.
|
| But I have 10-15 ESP32's just waiting for a useful project.
| Does HN have better suggestions?
| pacifika wrote:
| Build a synthesizer
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Why do you have so many? eWaste..
| cameron_b wrote:
| desk rover - https://www.huyvector.org/diy-cute-desk-robot-
| mo-chan
|
| a kid-pleaser at the very least
| iwontberude wrote:
| No, no, but we insist!
| throwa356262 wrote:
| "LLM backends: Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter."
|
| And here I was hoping that this was local inference :)
| micw wrote:
| Sure. Why purchase a H200 if you can go with an ESP32 ^^
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| Blowing more than 800kb on essentially an http api wrapper is
| actually kinda bad. The original Doom binary was 700kb and
| had vastly more complexity. This is in C after all, so by
| stripping out nonessential stuff and using the right compiler
| options, I'd expect something like this to come in under
| 100kb.
| __tnm wrote:
| yeah i sandbagged the size just a little to start (small
| enough to fit on the c3, 888 picked for good luck &
| prosperity; I even have a build that pads to get 888
| exactly), so i can now try reduce some of it as an exercise
| etc.
|
| but 100kb you're not gonna see :) this has WiFi, tls, etc.
| doom didn't need those
| pitched wrote:
| Doom had the benefit of an OS that included a lot of low-
| level bits like a net stack. This doesn't! That 800kB
| includes everything it would need from an OS too.
| __tnm wrote:
| yah my back of the envelope math..
|
| the "app logic"/wrapper pieces come out to about 25kb
|
| WiFi is 350 Tls is 120 and certs are 90!
| peterisza wrote:
| right, 888 kB would be impossible for local inference
|
| however, it is really not that impressive for just a client
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not completely impossible, depending on what your
| expectations are. That language model that was built out of
| redstone in minecraft had... looks like 5 million parameters.
| And it could do mostly coherent sentences.
| __tnm wrote:
| haha well I got something ridiculous coming soon for zclaw that
| will _kinda_ work on board.. will require the S3 variant tho,
| needs a little more memory. Training it later today.
| g947o wrote:
| Serious question: why? What are the use cases and workflows?
| milar wrote:
| for fun!
| grzracz wrote:
| I don't fully get it either. At least agents build stuff, claws
| just run around pretending to be alive?
| codazoda wrote:
| They do build things. The same things.
| eleventyseven wrote:
| The various *claws are just a pipe between LLM APIs and a bunch
| of other API/CLIs. Like you can have it listen via telegram or
| Whatsapp for a prompt you send. Like to generate some email or
| social post, which it sends to the LLM API. Get back a tool
| call that claw then makes to hit your email or social API. You
| could have it regularly poll for new emails or posts, generate
| a reply via some prompt, and send the reply.
|
| The reason people were buying a separate Mac minis just to do
| open claw was 1) security, as it was all vibe coded, so needs
| to be sandboxed 2) relay iMessage and maybe 3) local inference
| but pretty slowly. If you don't need to relay iMessage, a
| raspberry pi could host it on its own device. So if all you
| need is the pipe, an ESP32 works.
| grigio wrote:
| yeah i still can't believe many people bought a mac mini just
| for the claw hype
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Is there a heartbeat alternative? I feel like this is the magic
| behind OpenClaw and what gives it the "self-driven" feel.
| v9v wrote:
| Relevant: https://github.com/sipeed/picoclaw
| yauneyz wrote:
| Genuinely curious - did you use a coding agent for most of this
| or does this level if performance take hand written code?
| bensyverson wrote:
| This is absolutely glorious. We used to talk about "smart
| devices" and IoT... I would be so curious to see what would
| happen if these connected devices had a bit more agency and
| communicative power. It's easy to imagine the downsides, and I
| don't want my email to be managed from an ESP23 device, but what
| else could this unlock?
| GTP wrote:
| I have a couple ESP32 with a very small OLED display, I'm now
| thinking I could make an "intelligent" version of the Tamagotchi
| with this. Do you HN crowd have other cool ideas?
| roxolotl wrote:
| This is a great example of how silly this whole thing is. There's
| next to nothing to these claws. Turns out that if you give an llm
| the ability to call APIs they will.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| I think you can use C++ on esp32, that would make the code more
| readable
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(page generated 2026-02-21 23:00 UTC)