The Complete History of OpenClaw: From Warelay to 100K GitHub Stars

When Peter published Introducing OpenClaw on the official blog, he told the story of how the project went from Clawd → Moltbot → OpenClaw. It’s a great read. But if you were there from the very beginning — before the 100,000 GitHub stars, before the 2 million visitors in a single week — you know the naming story starts earlier than that.

Here’s the complete timeline, including the names the official post didn’t mention.

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1. WhatsApp Relay — The Weekend Hack (November 2025)

Every legendary open source project has an origin story that sounds deceptively simple. Linux was “just a hobby.” OpenClaw was “just a WhatsApp relay.”

Peter’s original weekend project did exactly what the name said: it relayed messages between WhatsApp and an AI model. No grand vision. No platform ambitions. Just a developer scratching an itch — wouldn’t it be cool if Claude could reply in my WhatsApp chats?

The name was literal, functional, and never meant to stick. But the code worked. And people noticed.

2. Warelay — The First Real Name (November 24, 2025)

The very first commit to the repository landed on November 24, 2025 — and it already carried the Warelay name. A portmanteau of “WhatsApp Relay” that compressed the origin story into a single word.

It was utilitarian. It told you what the thing did. But it didn’t tell you what the thing could become. As support for Telegram, Discord, and Slack started landing, a name rooted in “WhatsApp” felt increasingly limiting.

Warelay served its purpose as a working title, but the community was already outgrowing it.

3. Clawd — Claude With a Claw (Late November 2025)

Within days of that first commit, the project found its voice. By November 25, the prompts were prefixed with a “Clawd identity” — the playful collision of “Claude” (the AI model the project initially wrapped) and “claw.” It was punchy. It was clever. “Claude with a claw” — what’s not to love?

The community loved it. The momentum was building. But there was one small problem brewing: when your project name is one letter away from a trademarked AI model, a polite email from Anthropic’s legal team is inevitable.

4. Clawdis — The Classical Era (Early December 2025)

On December 3, 2025, the project underwent its first formal rebrand: Clawdis. The “-is” suffix gave it a classical, almost dignified ring. Like a Roman senator who happened to be a lobster.

Clawdis leaned into the crustacean identity that would eventually define the project. The claw imagery, the shell metaphors, the lobster mascot — it all solidified during this era. Packages were renamed, paths were updated, and for about two weeks, Clawdis was the name.

But it didn’t quite stick. The community was still growing, and the name needed to grow with it.

5. Clawdbot — The Workhorse Name (December 2025 – January 2026)

Here’s the name the official post skipped over entirely. Clawdbot was the name the project lived under for over a month — the GitHub organization was clawdbot/clawdbot, the package was clawdbot, and the community built around it.

It was functional, descriptive, and worked. But as Anthropic’s trademark concerns around the “Clawd” root persisted, the team knew another molt was coming.

6. Moltbot — The 5am Discord Decision (January 27, 2026)

What followed was one of the most chaotic naming sessions in open source history. Picture this: a Discord voice channel at 5am, packed with sleep-deprived contributors throwing increasingly unhinged name suggestions into the void.

Moltbot emerged as the winner. The reasoning was poetic — lobsters molt, shedding their shells to grow into something bigger. The project was doing the same thing: shedding its old identity to become something larger than anyone anticipated.

It was meaningful. It was on-brand with the crustacean theme. NetworkChuck even gave it a shoutout.

But as Peter later admitted: it never quite rolled off the tongue. Try saying “Hey, have you tried Moltbot?” in casual conversation. It sounds like a Transformer that got left in the microwave.

The community knew it. The team knew it. The molt wasn’t over yet.

7. OpenClaw — The Final Form 🦞 (January 30, 2026)

Just three days after the Moltbot rename, clarity struck.

OpenClaw. Two syllables that capture everything the project has become:

• Open — open source, open to everyone, community-driven. The project’s codebase lives on GitHub for anyone to inspect, fork, and improve. Your assistant runs on your machine, with your keys, under your control.
• Claw — the lobster heritage, a direct line back to every crustacean pun and claw emoji that defined the community from day one.

This time, the team did their homework. Trademark searches came back clear. Domains were purchased. Migration code was written. The rebrand wasn’t a whim — it was an operation.

And it stuck. OpenClaw is the name. The lobster has molted into its final form.

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The Numbers Tell the Story

Let’s zoom out for a second and appreciate the scale of what happened in just over two months — from that first Warelay commit on November 24, 2025 to the OpenClaw rebrand on January 30, 2026:

• 100,000+ GitHub stars — making it one of the fastest-growing open source projects in history
• 2 million visitors in a single week — the kind of traffic that melts servers and makes maintainers question their life choices
• Multiple channel support — WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Teams, Twitch, Google Chat
• 34 security-related commits in the rebrand release alone
• Machine-checkable security models published for the community to audit
• A project that grew from one developer’s weekend hack to needing full-time maintainers

Peter’s been open about the challenges: prompt injection remains an “industry-wide unsolved problem,” and the team is laser-focused on security, gateway reliability, and supporting more models and providers. They’ve even published security best practices and formal security models — the kind of transparency that earns trust.

Why the Mascot Stayed

Through seven name changes, one thing never wavered: the lobster.

As Peter put it in the official announcement: “Yes, the mascot is still a lobster. Some things are sacred.” 🦞

The crustacean identity wasn’t a marketing decision. It grew organically from the community — from the claw puns, from the molting metaphors, from the “Claw Crew” that formed around the project. When your community names themselves after your mascot, you don’t mess with that.

What This Means for OpenClaw Academy

We’re OpenClaw Academy — the community education site. We’re not the official project (that’s openclaw.ai), but we’re building courses, tutorials, and resources to help everyone in the Claw Crew level up.

Understanding where OpenClaw came from helps you understand where it’s going. This is a project built by its community, named by its community, and shaped by its community. That’s rare. That’s worth celebrating.

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Get Involved

• 🦞 Official site: openclaw.ai
• 📖 Official blog post: Introducing OpenClaw
• ⭐ Star on GitHub: github.com/openclaw/openclaw
• 💬 Join the Claw Crew: Discord
• 🔒 Security docs: Security Best Practices
• 📚 OpenClaw Academy courses: Check our courses page to start building with OpenClaw

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From WhatsApp Relay to Warelay to Clawd to Clawdis to Clawdbot to Moltbot to OpenClaw — seven names, one lobster, and a community that made it all happen. Welcome to the Claw Crew. 🦞