OpenClawvsShannon
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
OpenClaw
OpenClaw Foundation · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
6.84 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 6.8
- Cost
- 7.3
- Longevity
- 7.2
“Warelay, Clawdbot, Moltbot, OpenClaw: three renames in ten weeks, one of them courtesy of Anthropic's trademark lawyers.”
Shannon
Kocoro Lab · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
7.01 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.0
- Usefulness
- 6.7
- Cost
- 8.3
- Longevity
- 6.2
“It arrives as a Docker Compose stack with a workflow engine and a policy engine, so your agent framework now needs its own platform team.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | OpenClaw | Shannon |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local, sandbox | local, sandbox |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | No |
| Git operations | No | No |
| Browser control | Yes | No |
| Sandboxed execution | Yes | YesCode execution is isolated in a WASI sandbox inside the Rust agent core, and the whole stack ships as Docker Compose services. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, GitHub Copilot, Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, llama.cpp | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, xAI, Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | Yes | Yes |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | byok |
| Starts at | $0/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 391,182 | 2,279 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | OpenClaw | Shannon | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.3 | 7.0 | OpenClaw — Pick OpenClaw if you want an always-on assistant on your own hardware that answers on Telegram; pick Hermes Agent if you want it to teach itself new skills. |
| El Crítico | 6.5 | 6.5 | no preference |
| El Profesor | 7.0 | 7.8 | Shannon — Running agent workflows on a durable execution engine makes every run replayable step by step, which turns debugging from archaeology into reproduction. |
| La Inversora | 6.3 | 6.0 | OpenClaw — A non-profit foundation formed in February 2026 after the creator joined OpenAI, 388,000 stars and no revenue line; nothing to acquire and nothing to run out of. |
| La Jefa | 5.3 | 7.3 | Shannon — Multi-tenant isolation is enforced by policy rules and destructive steps require human approval, which is the first open project this quarter that anticipated my questions. |
| El Hacker | 8.8 | 7.8 | OpenClaw — MIT, an mcp.servers block with per-server toolFilter, Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM and llama.cpp as first-class providers, and it serves MCP too; this one is mine. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.