GitHub – centminmod/explain-openclaw: Multi-AI documentation for OpenClaw: architecture, security audits, deployment guide

If you’ve ever felt curious, but also a little cautious, about running your own AI assistant, this GitHub project is worth slowing down for. The repository explain-openclaw is not flashy. And honestly, that’s the point.

What you’re getting here is a deeply practical, almost hand-holding guide to **OpenClaw**, a self-hosted AI assistant framework. The kind you run on your own machine. A Mac mini under your desk. A quiet VPS you trust. Somewhere you actually control.

The guide is written for people who are new to agent frameworks, but who still want to understand what’s really happening under the hood. Not just how to install things, but *why* they’re designed the way they are. It pulls together multiple AI-generated summaries, then double-checks every important claim against the actual OpenClaw documentation and source code. When there’s a conflict, the docs and code win. Always.

At the heart of OpenClaw is something called the **Gateway**. Think of it like a central switchboard that never sleeps. Messages come in from WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, iMessage, all normalized into one flow. The agent processes them, tools get called if needed, and responses go back out. Simple in concept. Serious in responsibility.

And that’s where the security focus comes in. The guide makes one thing very clear. Your Gateway host is the trust boundary. If it’s misconfigured or exposed, your assistant can turn into something you never intended. A data leak. An automation engine pointed the wrong way.

I appreciated how grounded the advice is. Use the onboarding wizard. Run the security audits. Understand what the `–fix` flag actually changes, and what it can’t. Know where credentials are stored. These are the things people end up Googling at 2am, half worried they broke something.

What’s refreshing is the tone. Local-first. Calm. Empowering. You’re reminded that OpenClaw isn’t a model itself, it’s the layer that connects models, tools, and conversations in a way that stays under your control.

If you’re thinking about self-hosted AI, not as a toy but as something long-term, this guide feels like a steady companion. Not rushing you. Just helping you build something solid, one careful decision at a time.