The zero-cost alternative to OpenClaw. No LLM. No API bills. No prompt injection. Runs on any machine.
50 STARS — We hit fifty stars on GitHub! Every huge milestone we add something new. This time: Blogging — two modes. Deterministic blogging (no AI, just extractive summarization) and optional AI-powered blogging with 11 providers (5 local, 6 cloud). Publish to WordPress, Joomla, SFTP, or any API. See the Blogging Guide. Next milestone: 100 stars.
While OpenClaw users are burning $200/day and $3,600/month on API tokens, SafeClaw delivers 90% of the functionality using traditional programming — rule-based parsing, ML pipelines, and local-first tools. Your API bill: $0. Forever.
SafeClaw uses VADER, spaCy, sumy, YOLO, Whisper, Piper, and other battle-tested ML techniques instead of generative AI. The result: deterministic, predictable, private, and completely free to run.
| SafeClaw | OpenClaw | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $0 | $100–$3,600+ |
| Requires LLM | No (optional for AI blog) | Yes |
| Prompt injection risk | None | Yes |
| Works offline | Yes (core features) | No |
| Runs on any machine | Yes (Linux, macOS, Windows) | Needs powerful hardware or cloud APIs |
| Deterministic output | Yes | No (LLM responses vary) |
| Privacy | Local by default (external only when you ask, e.g. weather) | Data sent to API providers |
- Speech-to-Text — Whisper STT runs locally, no cloud transcription
- Text-to-Speech — Piper TTS for natural voice output, completely offline
- Voice-first workflow — Talk to SafeClaw like you would any assistant
- Smart home integration — Control your connected devices
- Bluetooth device control — Discover and manage Bluetooth devices
- Network scanning — Device discovery on your local network
- Twitter/X summarization — Add accounts, get summaries of their activity
- Mastodon summarization — Follow and summarize fediverse accounts
- Bluesky summarization — Track and summarize Bluesky feeds
- No API tokens needed for public content
- 50+ preset feeds — Hacker News, Ars Technica, BBC, Reuters, Nature, and more
- 8 categories — Tech, World, Science, Business, Programming, Security, Linux, AI
- Custom feeds — Import any RSS/Atom feed
- Auto-summarization — Extractive summaries with sumy (no AI)
- Per-user preferences — Customize your news sources
- Self-hosted by default — Your data stays local unless you explicitly request external info (like weather)
- No API keys required — Core features work completely offline
- No cloud AI dependencies — No tokens sent to OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google
- No prompt injection — No LLM means no injection attacks
- CLI — Interactive command line with Rich formatting
- Telegram — Full bot integration
- Discord — Coming soon
- Slack — Coming soon
- Webhooks — Inbound and outbound support
- Command chaining — Combine actions naturally: "read my email and remind me at 3pm"
- Web crawling — Async crawling with depth limits and domain filtering
- Summarization — LexRank, TextRank, LSA, Luhn algorithms
- Reminders — Natural language time parsing with dateparser
- Shell commands — Sandboxed command execution
- File operations — Search, list, read files
- Cron jobs — Scheduled task automation
- Daily briefings — Weather, reminders, news from your feeds
- VADER Sentiment — Lexicon-based sentiment analysis
- Keyword Extraction — TF-IDF style extraction
- Readability Scoring — Flesch-Kincaid metrics
- IMAP Support — Read emails from Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo
- SMTP Support — Send emails
- Standard protocols — No API keys required
- ICS Files — Import and parse .ics calendar files
- CalDAV — Connect to Google Calendar, iCloud (optional)
- Event filtering — Today, upcoming, by date range
- PDF — Text extraction with PyMuPDF
- DOCX — Microsoft Word documents
- HTML/Markdown/TXT — Plain text formats
- Desktop notifications — Cross-platform (macOS, Windows, Linux)
- Priority levels — Low, normal, high, urgent
- Rate limiting — Prevent notification spam
- NLP — spaCy named entity recognition (~50MB)
- Vision — YOLO object detection + OCR (~2GB)
- OCR — Tesseract text extraction from images (lightweight)
- Built-in personality and hidden surprises — because tools should be fun
Deterministic Blog (No AI, No Cost):
- Write blog news — Add entries with natural language: "write blog news We shipped faster crawling today."
- Crawl sites for content — "crawl https://example.com for title content", "crawl example.com for body content"
- Auto-generated titles — Extractive summarization picks the most representative content as your headline. No LLM, just math.
- Plain .txt output — Your blog is a simple text file you can share anywhere
AI Blog (Optional, Multi-Provider):
- Generate full posts from a topic — "ai blog generate about sustainable technology"
- Rewrite, expand, polish — "ai rewrite blog", "ai expand blog"
- AI headlines and SEO — "ai headlines", "ai blog seo"
- 11 providers — 5 local (Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, LocalAI, Jan) + 6 cloud (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Groq, custom)
- Local AI = free + private — Run Ollama or LM Studio and pay nothing
Multi-Platform Publishing:
- WordPress — REST API v2 with Application Passwords, JWT, or Basic Auth
- Joomla — Web Services API (Joomla 4+)
- SFTP — Upload HTML to any server
- Generic API — POST JSON to any endpoint
- Front page management — Set which post is the home page on any target
| Feature | SafeClaw | OpenClaw |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted | ✅ | ✅ |
| Cross-platform (Linux, macOS, Windows) | ✅ | ✅ |
| No AI/LLM required | ✅ | ❌ |
| Offline capable | ✅ | ❌ |
| Zero API cost | ✅ | ❌ |
| No prompt injection | ✅ | ❌ |
| Privacy-first | ✅ (local by default) | ✅ |
| Voice (STT/TTS) | ✅ (Whisper + Piper, local) | ✅ (ElevenLabs, paid API) |
| Smart home control | ✅ | ✅ (via skills) |
| Bluetooth control | ✅ | ❌ |
| Network scanning | ✅ | ❌ |
| Social media summaries | ✅ (Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky) | ❌ (requires separate skills) |
| Multi-channel | ✅ (CLI, Telegram, Webhooks) | ✅ (13+ platforms) |
| Web crawling | ✅ | ✅ |
| Summarization | ✅ (extractive) | ✅ (AI-generated) |
| RSS/News feeds | ✅ (50+ feeds) | ✅ (via skills) |
| Sentiment analysis | ✅ (VADER) | ✅ (AI) |
| Email integration | ✅ | ✅ |
| Calendar support | ✅ | ✅ |
| Document reading | ✅ | ✅ |
| Desktop notifications | ✅ | ✅ |
| Object detection | ✅ (YOLO) | ❌ |
| OCR | ✅ (Tesseract) | ❌ |
| Cron jobs | ✅ | ✅ |
| Webhooks | ✅ | ✅ |
| Plugin system | ✅ | ✅ (5,700+ skills) |
| Free-form chat | ❌ | ✅ |
| Creative writing | ❌ | ✅ |
| Blog (no LLM) | ✅ (extractive titles) | ❌ (requires AI) |
| Blog (AI-powered) | ✅ (optional, 11 providers) | ✅ |
| Blog publishing (WordPress, Joomla, SFTP) | ✅ | ❌ (requires plugins) |
| Command chaining | ✅ ("read email and remind me at 3pm") | ✅ |
| Autonomous multi-step tasks | ❌ | ✅ |
| Self-writing skills | ❌ | ✅ |
| Browser automation | ❌ | ✅ |
# Install pipx if needed
# Linux:
sudo apt install pipx
# macOS:
brew install pipx
pipx ensurepath
# Install SafeClaw
pipx install safeclaw# Create and activate venv
python3 -m venv ~/.safeclaw-venv
source ~/.safeclaw-venv/bin/activate
# Install SafeClaw
pip install safeclawgit clone https://github.com/princezuda/safeclaw.git
cd safeclaw
pip install -e .# NLP - spaCy named entity recognition (~50MB)
pip install safeclaw[nlp]
# Vision - YOLO object detection + OCR (~2GB, requires PyTorch)
pip install safeclaw[vision]
# OCR only - text extraction from images (lightweight, requires Tesseract)
pip install safeclaw[ocr]
# All ML features
pip install safeclaw[ml]Requirements: Python 3.11+, ~50MB disk (base), ~2GB additional for vision features. Runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
# Start interactive mode
safeclaw
# Or with verbose logging
safeclaw --verbose> news # Get headlines from enabled feeds
> news tech # Get tech news only
> news categories # See all available categories
> news enable science # Enable science feeds
> add feed https://blog.example.com/rss # Add custom feed
> summarize https://news.ycombinator.com
> crawl https://example.com
> remind me to call mom tomorrow at 3pm
> morning briefing # Includes news from your feeds!
> check my email # View inbox (requires setup)
> read my email and remind me at 3pm # Chain commands naturally
> calendar today # Today's events from .ics
> analyze sentiment of this text # VADER sentiment analysis
> read document.pdf # Extract text from documents
> write blog news We shipped a new feature today. # Blog entry (no AI)
> crawl https://example.com for title content # Crawl for blog
> blog title # Generate title from entries
> publish blog # Save blog as .txt
> blog # Interactive blog menu (AI or manual)
> ai blog generate about home automation # AI writes a full post
> ai rewrite blog # AI polishes your draft
> publish blog to my-wordpress # Publish to WordPress
> help
# News
safeclaw news # Headlines from enabled categories
safeclaw news tech # Tech news only
safeclaw news --categories # List all categories
safeclaw news world -n 20 # 20 world news headlines
safeclaw news --add https://blog.example.com/rss --name "My Blog"
safeclaw news -s # With auto-summarization
# Summarize
safeclaw summarize https://example.com/article -n 5
# Crawl
safeclaw crawl https://example.com --depth 2
# Text analysis
safeclaw analyze "This product is amazing! I love it."
safeclaw analyze document.txt --no-readability
# Documents
safeclaw document report.pdf
safeclaw document paper.docx --summarize -n 5
safeclaw document notes.md --output extracted.txt
# Calendar
safeclaw calendar import --file calendar.ics
safeclaw calendar today
safeclaw calendar upcoming --days 14
# Blog — Deterministic (no AI)
safeclaw blog help # Blog feature guide
safeclaw blog write "New crawling features shipped today."
safeclaw blog show # View draft and published posts
safeclaw blog title # Generate title from entries
safeclaw blog publish # Save blog as .txt
safeclaw blog publish "My Custom Title" # Publish with custom title
# Blog — AI-powered (requires ai_providers in config)
safeclaw blog # Interactive menu (AI or manual)
# ai blog generate about <topic> # AI writes a full blog post
# ai rewrite blog # AI polishes your draft
# ai expand blog # AI makes it longer
# ai headlines # AI generates headline options
# ai blog seo # AI generates SEO metadata
# Publishing (requires publish_targets in config)
# publish blog to my-wordpress # Publish to a specific target
# publish blog to all # Publish to all targets
# set front page 123 on my-wp # Set home page on a target
# Webhooks
safeclaw webhook --port 8765
# Initialize config
safeclaw initSafeClaw looks for configuration in config/config.yaml:
safeclaw:
name: "SafeClaw"
language: "en"
timezone: "UTC"
channels:
cli:
enabled: true
webhook:
enabled: true
port: 8765
telegram:
enabled: false
token: "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN"
actions:
shell:
enabled: true
sandboxed: true
timeout: 30
files:
enabled: true
allowed_paths:
- "~"SafeClaw has two blogging modes. You can use either or both.
Write entries manually, crawl websites for content, and let SafeClaw generate titles using extractive summarization (LexRank, TextRank, LSA, Luhn). No API keys, no cost, fully offline.
Setup: None — works out of the box.
> write blog news We shipped faster crawling today.
Added entry (1 total).
> crawl https://example.com for title content
Extracted 3 titles, added to draft.
> blog title
Generated: "Faster Crawling Ships Today"
> publish blog
Saved: 2026-02-24-faster-crawling-ships-today.txt
Commands:
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
write blog news <content> |
Add a manual entry to your draft |
crawl <url> for title content |
Extract page headings into draft |
crawl <url> for body content |
Extract main body text into draft |
crawl <url> for non-title content |
Extract non-heading text into draft |
blog title |
Generate a title using extractive summarization |
show blog |
View your draft and published posts |
edit blog <new content> |
Replace draft content |
publish blog |
Save as .txt locally |
publish blog My Custom Title |
Save with a custom title |
AI generates full blog posts from a topic. You can rewrite, expand, generate headlines, and produce SEO metadata. Supports 11 providers — 5 local (free) and 6 cloud (API key required).
Setup:
-
Choose a provider. For free/private, use a local provider. For quality/speed, use a cloud provider.
-
Configure it in
config/config.yamlunderai_providers. Uncomment and fill in one or more:
Local AI (free, private, no API key):
ai_providers:
# Ollama — easiest local option
- label: "local-ollama"
provider: "ollama"
model: "llama3.1"
endpoint: "http://localhost:11434/api/chat"
# LM Studio — GUI app with model browser
# - label: "local-lmstudio"
# provider: "lm_studio"
# model: "local-model"
# endpoint: "http://localhost:1234/v1/chat/completions"
# llama.cpp — high-performance C++ inference
# - label: "local-llamacpp"
# provider: "llamacpp"
# model: "local-model"
# endpoint: "http://localhost:8080/v1/chat/completions"
# Jan — user-friendly desktop app
# - label: "local-jan"
# provider: "jan"
# model: "llama3.1-8b"
# endpoint: "http://localhost:1337/v1/chat/completions"Cloud AI (API key required):
ai_providers:
# OpenAI
- label: "openai"
provider: "openai"
api_key: "sk-..." # https://platform.openai.com/api-keys
model: "gpt-4o"
# Anthropic (Claude)
# - label: "anthropic"
# provider: "anthropic"
# api_key: "sk-ant-..." # https://console.anthropic.com/settings/keys
# model: "claude-sonnet-4-20250514"
# Google Gemini
# - label: "google"
# provider: "google"
# api_key: "AI..." # https://aistudio.google.com/apikey
# model: "gemini-1.5-flash"
# Mistral
# - label: "mistral"
# provider: "mistral"
# api_key: "..." # https://console.mistral.ai/api-keys
# model: "mistral-large-latest"
# Groq (fast inference)
# - label: "groq"
# provider: "groq"
# api_key: "gsk_..." # https://console.groq.com/keys
# model: "llama-3.1-70b-versatile"- Install the local AI server (if using local):
# Ollama (recommended — one command)
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
ollama pull llama3.1
# LM Studio — download from https://lmstudio.ai
# Jan — download from https://jan.ai
# llama.cpp — git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp && make- Use it:
> blog
1. AI Blog for You (Recommended) [ollama/llama3.1]
2. Manual Blogging (No AI)
> 1
What should the blog post be about?
> sustainable technology trends in 2026
AI-Generated Blog Post
Provider: ollama/llama3.1 (847 tokens)
---
[full article here]
---
What would you like to do?
edit blog <changes> - Replace with your edits
ai rewrite blog - Have AI polish/rewrite it
ai expand blog - Have AI make it longer
publish blog - Save as .txt locally
publish blog to <target>- Publish to WordPress/Joomla/SFTP
AI Commands:
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
blog |
Interactive menu — choose AI or manual |
ai blog generate about <topic> |
Generate a full blog post from a topic |
ai rewrite blog |
Rewrite/polish your current draft |
ai expand blog |
Expand short content into a longer article |
ai headlines |
Generate 5 headline options for your draft |
ai blog seo |
Generate SEO metadata (title, description, keywords, slug) |
ai options |
Show local AI providers and install instructions |
ai providers |
Show cloud AI providers and API key links |
switch ai provider <label> |
Switch between configured providers at runtime |
Multiple providers: You can configure several providers at once. The first enabled one becomes the default. Switch at runtime with switch ai provider <label>.
Publish your blog (from either mode) to WordPress, Joomla, any SFTP server, or a generic API endpoint.
Setup: Add one or more targets to config/config.yaml under publish_targets:
publish_targets:
# WordPress (REST API v2)
- label: "my-wordpress"
type: "wordpress"
url: "https://mysite.com"
username: "admin"
password: "xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx" # Application Password (WP Admin > Users > Profile)
wp_status: "publish" # publish, draft, pending, private
# Joomla (Web Services API, Joomla 4+)
- label: "my-joomla"
type: "joomla"
url: "https://myjoomla.com"
api_key: "your-joomla-api-token" # Joomla Admin > Users > API Token
joomla_category_id: 2
# SFTP (any server)
- label: "my-server"
type: "sftp"
sftp_host: "myserver.com"
sftp_user: "deploy"
sftp_key_path: "~/.ssh/id_rsa"
sftp_remote_path: "/var/www/html/blog"
# Generic API (POST JSON to any endpoint)
- label: "my-api"
type: "api"
url: "https://api.mysite.com/posts"
api_key: "your-bearer-token"Publishing commands:
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
publish blog to my-wordpress |
Publish to a specific target |
publish blog to all |
Publish to all enabled targets |
list publish targets |
Show configured targets |
set front page <id> on <target> |
Set which post is the home page |
show front page |
Show current front page setting |
list pages for <target> |
List available pages/posts on a target |
| Deterministic | AI-Powered | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $0 | $0 (local) or pay-per-token (cloud) |
| Privacy | Fully local | Local AI = local; cloud = data sent to provider |
| Titles | Extractive summarization | LLM-generated |
| Content | Manual writing + crawling | LLM generates from topic |
| Speed | Instant | Seconds (local) to seconds (cloud) |
| Determinism | 100% reproducible | Varies by model/temperature |
| Setup | None | Install local AI or add cloud API key |
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ SAFECLAW │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ ┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ │
│ │ CHANNELS │ │ ACTIONS │ │ TRIGGERS │ │ CORE │ │
│ ├─────────────┤ ├─────────────┤ ├──────────────┤ ├────────────┤ │
│ │ • CLI │ │ • Blog ──────────────────────────▸ AI Writer │ │
│ │ • Telegram │ │ • Files │ │ • Cron │ │ • Analyzer │ │
│ │ • Webhooks │ │ • Shell │ │ • Webhooks │ │ • Documents│ │
│ │ • Discord │ │ • Crawl │ │ • Watchers │ │ • Notify │ │
│ └─────────────┘ │ • Summarize │ │ • Events │ │ • Feeds │ │
│ │ • Reminder │ └──────────────┘ │ • Crawler │ │
│ ┌─────────────┐ │ • Briefing │ │ • Summary │ │
│ │ VOICE │ │ • News/RSS │ ┌──────────────┐ │ • Voice │ │
│ ├─────────────┤ │ • Email │ │ DEVICES │ │ • Social │ │
│ │ • Whisper │ │ • Calendar │ ├──────────────┤ └────────────┘ │
│ │ • Piper TTS │ │ • Social │ │ • Bluetooth │ │
│ └─────────────┘ └──────┬──────┘ │ • Network │ ┌────────────┐ │
│ │ │ • Smart Home │ │ AI WRITER │ │
│ │ └──────────────┘ ├────────────┤ │
│ │ │ Local: │ │
│ ▼ │ • Ollama │ │
│ ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ • LM Studio│ │
│ │ BLOG PUBLISHER │ │ • llama.cpp│ │
│ │ WordPress • Joomla • SFTP • Generic API │ │ Cloud: │ │
│ │ Front page management across all targets │ │ • OpenAI │ │
│ └─────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │ • Anthropic│ │
│ │ • Google │ │
│ ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ • Mistral │ │
│ │ COMMAND PARSER │ │ • Groq │ │
│ │ Keyword + Regex + Fuzzy Match + Date Parser │ └────────────┘ │
│ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │
│ ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ MEMORY (SQLite) │ │
│ │ History • Preferences • Reminders • Cache • Events • Blog Drafts │ │
│ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Instead of burning tokens on LLMs, SafeClaw uses:
- Keyword matching — Fast lookup of command keywords
- Regex patterns — Structured extraction of parameters
- Fuzzy matching — Typo tolerance with rapidfuzz
- Date parsing — Natural language dates with dateparser
# Example: "remind me to call mom tomorrow at 3pm"
# → intent: "reminder"
# → params: {task: "call mom", time: "tomorrow at 3pm"}
# → entities: {datetime: 2024-01-16 15:00:00}
Fully local voice processing — no cloud APIs, no per-minute billing:
- Whisper STT — OpenAI's Whisper model running locally for speech recognition
- Piper TTS — Fast, high-quality text-to-speech with multiple voice options
Uses sumy's extractive algorithms:
- LexRank — Graph-based, like PageRank for sentences
- TextRank — Word co-occurrence graphs
- LSA — Latent Semantic Analysis
- Luhn — Statistical word frequency
No neural networks, no API calls — pure math.
Add Twitter, Mastodon, or Bluesky accounts and get extractive summaries of their recent posts. No API tokens needed for public content. Useful for tracking industry voices, news accounts, or competitors without doomscrolling.
Async crawling with httpx + BeautifulSoup:
- Single page link extraction
- Multi-page crawling with depth limits
- Domain filtering and pattern matching
- Built-in caching
from safeclaw.actions.base import BaseAction
class MyAction(BaseAction):
name = "myaction"
async def execute(self, params, user_id, channel, engine):
# Your logic here
return "Action completed!"
# Register it
engine.register_action("myaction", MyAction().execute)Add to config/intents.yaml:
intents:
deploy:
keywords: ["deploy", "release", "ship"]
patterns:
- "deploy to (production|staging)"
examples:
- "deploy to production"
action: "webhook"Plugins are automatically loaded from the plugins directory:
src/safeclaw/plugins/
├── official/ # Curated, tested plugins
│ └── smarthome.py
├── community/ # User-contributed plugins
│ └── your_plugin.py
├── base.py # BasePlugin class
└── loader.py # Plugin loader
SafeClaw is for you if:
- You want automation without API bills
- You're tired of unpredictable OpenClaw costs
- Privacy matters to you — your data stays local by default
- You prefer deterministic, predictable behavior
- You want voice control without paying for ElevenLabs
- You need social media monitoring without the doomscroll
- You want smart home and Bluetooth control in one tool
- You want AI blogging with your choice of provider (or no AI at all)
- You want to publish to WordPress, Joomla, or any server from the CLI
- You don't need free-form AI conversation
Stick with OpenClaw if:
- You need autonomous multi-step reasoning
- Free-form conversation is essential
- You want the AI to write its own skills
- Browser automation is a core need
# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/princezuda/safeclaw.git
cd safeclaw
# Install dev dependencies
pip install -e ".[dev]"
# Run tests
pytest
# Type checking
mypy src/safeclaw
# Linting
ruff check src/safeclawMIT License — see LICENSE for details.
Contributions welcome! Areas we'd love help with:
- More channel adapters (Discord, Slack, Matrix)
- Smart home integrations (Home Assistant, Philips Hue)
- Better intent patterns
- Additional social media platforms
- Documentation improvements
- Tests and CI/CD
- Whisper — Local speech-to-text
- Piper — Local text-to-speech
- sumy — Extractive summarization
- VADER — Sentiment analysis
- feedparser — RSS/Atom feed parsing
- dateparser — Natural language date parsing
- rapidfuzz — Fast fuzzy matching
- httpx — Async HTTP client (AI providers, publishing)
- FastAPI — Webhook server
- Rich — Beautiful CLI output
- PyMuPDF — PDF parsing
- python-docx — DOCX parsing
- icalendar — ICS calendar parsing
- desktop-notifier — Cross-platform notifications
- spaCy — Named entity recognition
- YOLO — Object detection
- Ollama — Local AI inference (optional, for AI blogging)
- LM Studio — Desktop AI model runner (optional)
SafeClaw — Because your assistant shouldn't cost more than your rent. 🐾
