ZeroClaw Community FAQ (Unofficial)
Frequently Asked Questions about ZeroClaw AI Agent Runtime
Common questions about ZeroClaw and how it works.
ZeroClaw is an ultra-lightweight, fully autonomous AI agent runtime written in Rust. It's designed as infrastructure that abstracts models, tools, memory, and execution so agents can be built once and run anywhere — from $10 ARM boards to cloud servers.
On macOS: 'brew install zeroclaw'. On Linux: run the one-click bootstrap script 'curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw/main/scripts/bootstrap.sh | bash'. On Windows: install Rust via rustup, then 'cargo install zeroclaw'. Pre-built binaries are also available for all platforms.
ZeroClaw uses <5MB RAM vs OpenClaw's >1GB. It starts in <10ms vs >500s on equivalent hardware. The binary is ~8.8MB with zero runtime dependencies, while OpenClaw requires Node.js (~390MB overhead). ZeroClaw runs on $10 hardware; OpenClaw typically needs a $599 Mac mini.
ZeroClaw is fully model-agnostic via its Provider trait. Built-in support includes OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, xAI Grok, Mistral, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Hugging Face, OpenRouter (100+ models), and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint including local models via Ollama.
ZeroClaw supports 17+ channels: CLI, Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, Matrix, Mattermost, IRC, Lark, DingTalk, QQ, Nostr, Email, Linq, and Webhook. All channels use a deny-by-default allowlist policy for security.
Security is enforced at every layer: gateway binds to localhost only, 6-digit pairing codes for authentication, filesystem scoping with blocked system dirs, symlink escape detection, deny-by-default channel allowlists, and optional Docker sandboxed runtime. It passes all community security checklist items.
ZeroClaw has a full-stack search engine with zero external dependencies. It includes SQLite vector DB with cosine similarity, FTS5 keyword search with BM25 scoring, custom hybrid merge, pluggable embedding providers, and LRU cache eviction. Backends: SQLite, PostgreSQL, Lucid, Markdown, or none.
Yes. ZeroClaw is designed for low-cost hardware. The <5MB memory footprint and single static binary mean it runs comfortably on Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, and other ARM SBCs. Use '--prefer-prebuilt' during bootstrap to skip compilation on resource-constrained devices.
Every subsystem in ZeroClaw (providers, channels, tools, memory, tunnels, runtime, security, identity, observability) is defined as a Rust trait. You can swap any implementation via config — no code changes needed. For example, switch from SQLite to PostgreSQL memory, or from Cloudflare to ngrok tunnels.
The ZeroClaw project itself is open-source under Apache 2.0 at github.com/zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw — code contributions go to the official repo there. For this site (ZeroClaws.io), which is a separate unofficial community project, you can suggest tutorial topics or send article drafts to [email protected].
Built-in tools include shell/file/memory operations, cron/schedule tasks, git integration, browser automation, HTTP requests, screenshot/image tools, Pushover notifications, Composio (opt-in), delegate tasks, and hardware tools. You can extend with community skill packs via TOML manifests.
Yes. ZeroClaw supports Cloudflare, Tailscale, ngrok, and custom tunnel binaries. The gateway refuses public bind without an active tunnel for security. Configure via the Tunnel trait in your config.
The official and only trusted repository is github.com/zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw. The official website is zeroclawlabs.ai. Do not trust zeroclaw.org or zeroclaw.net — those are impersonation attempts by a different fork.
Pre-built binaries are available for Linux (x86_64, aarch64, armv7), macOS (x86_64, aarch64), and Windows (x86_64). The portable Rust architecture supports ARM, x86, and RISC-V.
Run 'zeroclaw onboard --api-key sk-... --provider openrouter' for quick setup, or 'zeroclaw onboard --interactive' for the wizard. ZeroClaw also supports subscription auth for OpenAI Codex and Anthropic Claude Code with encrypted profile storage.
Full documentation is in the repository at docs/README.md with a table of contents at docs/SUMMARY.md. Quick routes: docs/reference for API reference, docs/operations for ops guides, docs/troubleshooting for common issues, docs/security for security details.
Official channels: X (@zeroclawlabs), Reddit (r/zeroclawlabs), Telegram (@zeroclawlabs, @zeroclawlabs_cn for Chinese, @zeroclawlabs_ru for Russian), WeChat group, and Xiaohongshu. All listed on the GitHub README.