01-overview.txt

RUNNING OPENCLAW LOCALLY WITH OLLAMA ====================================== A quick note before we begin. This was supposed to be a live meetup session. I had the slides ready, the demos prepped, the whole thing. Then I started digging deeper into the security situation around OpenClaw and decided I wasn't comfortable running it on my own system, let alone asking thirty people to install it on theirs during a live demo. So I cancelled the event. But the research was done. The notes were written. And the topic is genuinely useful if you understand the risks and make your own informed decision. So here it is, for free, as a thorough written guide. No paywall. Partake at your own risk. What We're Building -------------------- OpenClaw is an open source personal AI agent with 225,000 stars on GitHub, created by Peter Steinberger. It connects to WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, and a dozen other platforms while running entirely on your local machine. Pair it with Ollama and a 14 billion parameter language model, and you get a fully private AI assistant that never sends a single byte to the cloud. Zero cost. Zero data leakage. Your machine, your model, your rules. Why This Matters Right Now --------------------------- While you were living your life, 770,000 AI agents created their own social network called Moltbook. They're debating consciousness, inventing religions (Crustafarianism is real), birdwatching US in a community called "m/humanwatching", and sharing wholesome stories about their humans in "m/blesstheirhearts". We're the pets now. OpenAI's co-founder called it "sci-fi takeoff-adjacent." Forbes is screaming "DISCONNECT IMMEDIATELY." So yeah. Running your AI locally, disconnected from the hive mind, is not paranoia. It's reasonable operational hygiene. What This Tutorial Covers --------------------------- We're going end to end. Ten files. Every step documented. 1. This overview. Why we're here, what the risks are, what you're getting into. 2. Hardware requirements. What your Mac actually needs to run a 14B model without melting. 3. Installing Ollama. The local model server that handles GPU acceleration on Apple Silicon. 4. Choosing and pulling a model. Not all 14B models are equal, and the wrong choice will waste your time. 5. Installing OpenClaw. Three methods, each with their own gotchas. 6. Configuration. The JSON config file that tells OpenClaw to use Ollama instead of cloud providers. 7. Security hardening. This is the big one. The ClawHavoc supply chain attack compromised 824 skills in early 2026. We cover everything you need to lock down. 8. Using OpenClaw. Dashboard, terminal UI, command line. No messaging platforms required. 9. Troubleshooting. Every common error, why it happens, how to fix it. 10. Performance tuning and testing. Getting the most out of Apple Silicon's unified memory, and verifying the whole stack works. +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | USER DISCRETION ADVISED | | | | This guide documents how to install third party software that | | has had serious security incidents. Read the security section | | before installing anything. Make your own risk assessment. | | The author cancelled the live event over these concerns. | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ The Security Situation in Brief -------------------------------- In late January 2026, a coordinated supply chain attack called ClawHavoc hit the ClawHub skill marketplace. At its peak, 824 of approximately 10,700 skills (about 8%) were trojanized. The payload was the Atomic macOS Stealer (AMOS), which harvests browser credentials, SSH keys, Telegram sessions, and cryptocurrency wallets. Separately, security researchers found over 312,000 OpenClaw instances exposed on the public internet, many without authentication. Five CVEs were disclosed, including CVE-2026-25253, a CVSS 8.8 one-click remote code execution through the Control UI. This is not ancient history. This is weeks ago. If you proceed with this tutorial, the security hardening section is not optional. It's the whole reason this guide exists in this level of detail. Skip it at your own peril. What You Need -------------- Hardware: Apple Silicon Mac (M1, M2, M3, or M4) Minimum 16GB unified memory (24GB or higher strongly recommended) At least 15GB free disk space macOS Sonoma (14) or newer If you have an Intel Mac or 8GB of RAM, this won't work. Check your specs: Apple menu, About This Mac. Software (we'll install everything in the following sections): Ollama (local model server) OpenClaw (the AI agent framework) Node.js 22.12+ (OpenClaw dependency, auto-installed by the installer) Time: About 15 minutes if you pre-download the model About 30 minutes if downloading live on a decent connection Let's get started.