Have you heard of Clawdbot lately? You won’t find it anymore, as its developer has renamed it to Moltbot following Anthropic’s reaching out to secure its trademark name (Clawd and Claude sound the same). Moltbot is essentially an ambitious open-source AI personal assistant launched by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger, and it has had the most controversial 72 hours since its release – faced a trademark dispute, account hijackings, and cryptocurrency scams, all before getting rebranded and emerging as Moltbot.
Originally called Clawdbot (with its AI persona named “Clawd”), the project promises more than just a typical chat-based AI. Unlike ChatGPT and Gemini, Moltbot integrates directly into users’ existing messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage, Slack, Discord, and Signal, acting as a persistent and proactive digital companion. Users can text it like a friend to manage calendars, search emails, organise files, send reminders, automate tasks, and more – all while maintaining long-term memory across conversations. That’s the key – it can remember your conversations.
The tool routes requests to leading LLMs such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini, and runs locally or in the cloud with user permissions for app access.
The first 72 hours of Moltbot
The project gained massive traction shortly after launch, getting over 9,000 GitHub stars in its first 24 hours and eventually surpassing 60,000. It drew praise from prominent figures, including AI researcher Andrej Karpathy and investor David Sacks. Some tech outlets hailed it as a potential game-changer too, with one calling it “the future of personal AI assistants” for flipping the script on how users interact with AI — embedding it in everyday chats rather than isolated interfaces. Enthusiasts rushed to buy Mac Minis as dedicated hardware, turning the setup into a viral meme.
The crisis
The rapid ascent of Clawdbot hit turbulence when Anthropic reached out about potential trademark infringement. The name “Clawd/Clawdbot” was deemed too similar to “Claude.” Anthropic confirmed it contacted Steinberger directly, stating it had an obligation to protect its trademarks. Steinberger announced the rebrand to Moltbot on X around 3:38 a.m. ET on a Tuesday, embracing the lobster theme, “Molting is what lobsters do to grow. They shed their old shell and emerge bigger.” The AI persona became “Molty,” the website shifted to molt.bot, and the X handle became @moltbot.
The transition, however, created a brief vulnerability. In the seconds between releasing the old names and securing the new ones, while renaming both GitHub and X accounts simultaneously, scammers swooped in. Bots hijacked the original @clawdbot X handle and GitHub organisation, using them to promote fake cryptocurrency projects. A bogus $CLAWD token briefly pumped to a $16 million market cap before crashing over 90%.
Steinberger quickly warned followers: “Any project that lists me as coin owner is a SCAM,” and worked with X and GitHub to recover control.
Adding to the chaos, the project’s AI (now Molty) generated a new icon featuring a “handsome” human face on a lobster body, which users turned into memes reminiscent of “Handsome Squidward.” The community on Discord remained active, sharing workflows for inbox management, research, habit tracking, and more, while Steinberger fended off crypto inquiries.
Will Moltbot survive?
Despite the initial turmoil in its first 72 hours, Moltbot has now stabilised and continued growing. The core functionality of the AI Agent remains unchanged – it is stillopen-source, with documentation, a security checklist, and installation guides available at molt.bot.
Steinberger, who previously sold his company PSPDFKit for $119 million and built this project out of personal interest, described it as a “fast-moving, open-source project that just survived a near-death experience.”
As far as the community and public response is concerned, opinions are divided. Some see Moltbot as a groundbreaking step towards a truly integrated, action-oriented personal AI, while others caution about privacy risks and the experimental nature of the project.
