Trending open-source AI agent Clawdbot rebrands to Moltbot after pressure from Anthropic

Clawdbot, the recently viral AI agent (especially on X) that everyone seems to be talking about this week, has been forced to change its name to after facing pressure from Anthropic due to the name’s similarity to Claude.

The project’s rapid growth brought a lot of visibility, and creator Peter Steinberger says Anthropic requested the change over trademark concerns. The rebrand is already live across GitHub and the web, with clawd.bot being replaced by molt.bot, and the mascot renamed from Clawd to Molty while keeping the lobster theme.

If you are not familiar with it, Moltbot (previously Clawdbot) is a free, open source AI assistant that you can self host and control through messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram. It is built to take actions from your system, not just chat, with features like replying to emails, managing calendars, screening phone calls, and booking reservations with minimal prompting. Some users are even buying Mac minis just to host it (although it is worth noting you can do the same on other operating systems or even in VMs). However, it is important to note that using an agentic system like this comes with several security and privacy risks, since to do many of these tasks, the system needs very sensitive access, including accounts and credentials, encrypted messenger access, phone numbers, bank accounts, and your personal files. So, if you are interested in trying it out, we at AlternativeTo recommend doing so only in VMs or on a spare system, not on your main devices.