Deep sea exploration: #openclaw - 2. A Lobstrosity After 10 hours of fighting with every part of the OpenClaw 2026.2.15 version I was able to get it running with some custom JSON wizardry only to learn the following: 1. None of the free APIs in OpenRouter actually work. They all say API calls are used upstream and to try again later. 2. Even completely configured correctly, double and triple checked, the telegram token mismatch was impossible to get around. Even creating new bots through the Bot_Father and using different accounts was useless. So I communicated only in terminal. 3. I was able to hatch my new Claw and used /gemini-2.0-flash-lite-001 for the brain. I ran a total of 6 commands including: * Hello - it said hello back * [Pairing Code] it said there was a token mismatch even though the only way to get the pairing code is for OpenClaw to send it from your terminal to telegram * How do we fix this? It said it needed access to the web, which it already had and is configured correctly. * You have access - three sentences explaining it didn't * Here is the new token and ID- there is a token mismatch ( I had already updated both correctly, so that wasn't the actual case) * Your API limit has been reached -try again later 4. I checked my open router balance to see those 6 commands had cost me $.30 So. Since that model of Gemini is $.075 per million in and $.10 per million out. OpenClaw had managed to burn through 4 million tokens in it's 12 minute lifecycle. How was this possible? It would appear the culprit is HEARTBEAT.md It seems that 2026.2.15 hits the the API with the entirety of your chat history and it's entire build config every 5 seconds from what I can see. Action taken. Uninstalled and reverting to... Oh wait? It could not be uninstalled. Funny that. Reverted to a snapshot in Virtual Box from pre install and am installing 2026.1.39 to test with that. Under sea adventure. Thank fuck I didn't use another API and went with the cheapest option. Some of them are $35 per 2m tokens lol. Will update soon.

Further adventures in #openclaw After the ruthless murder I committed yesterday of my first Claw and the destruction of his entire nanoverse I found some interesting problems with the install. 1. I do not recommend the onboarding quick start unless you want to use anthropic. Manual is the jam. 2. OpenRouter is a great service for the money, works seemlessly 3. Defaulting the agent to a free AI api and choosing with /model when you want the horsepower is the move 4. The handshake for telegram is a pain in the ass, I am trying out "open" instead if "pairing" More to come

Holly shit that was fun. I just had my first at #openclaw experience and thank fuck I am low level cyber sec lol. Built it in Virtual Box, gave it the keys to the kingdom and $5 in api calls to fuck with and it went full on skynet in there within 20 minutes. Couldn't kill it. Took full rootkit style control of terminal. So destroyed the instance. Doing it again with gpt-oss-120b:free so it doesn't blast through credits and I want to see what it does in there.

Looks like I have a lot of reading to do on this. Where should I begin?

Finally. Closed for the night