The wild six weeks for NanoClaw’s creator that led to a deal with Docker

It’s been a whirlwind for NanoClaw creator Gavriel Cohen. 

About six weeks ago, helium introduced NanoClaw connected Hacker News arsenic a tiny, open-source, unafraid alternate to the AI agent-building sensation OpenClaw, aft helium built it successful a play coding binge. That post went viral.  

“I sat down connected the sofa successful my sweatpants,” Cohen told TechCrunch, “and conscionable fundamentally melted into [it] the full weekend, astir apt astir 48 hours straight.”  

About 3 weeks ago, an X station praising NanoClaw from famed AI researcher Andrej Karpathy went viral.  

About a week ago, Cohen closed down his AI selling startup to absorption full-time connected NanoClaw and motorboat a institution astir it called NanoCo. The attraction from Hacker News and Karpathy had translated into 22,000 stars connected GitHub, 4,600 forks (people gathering caller versions disconnected the project), and implicit 50 contributors. He’s already added hundreds of updates to his task with hundreds much successful the queue. 

Now, connected Friday, Cohen announced a woody with Docker — the institution that fundamentally invented the instrumentality exertion NanoClaw is built on, and counts millions of developers and astir 80,000 endeavor customers — to integrate Docker Sandboxes into NanoClaw. 

Scary information of OpenClaw 

It each started erstwhile Cohen launched an AI selling startup with his brother, Lazer Cohen, a fewer months ago. The startup offered selling services similar marketplace research, go-to-market analysis, and blog posts done a tiny squad of radical utilizing AI agents.  

The bureau started booking customers, and was connected way to deed $1 cardinal successful yearly recurring revenue, the brothers told TechCrunch. 

“It was going truly well, large traction. I’m a immense believer successful that concern exemplary of AI-native work companies that person margins and run similar a bundle institution but are really providing services,” said Cohen, a machine programmer who antecedently worked for website hosting institution Wix.

He had built the agents the startup was using, mostly utilizing Claude Code, each designed to bash circumstantial tasks. But determination was “a piece” missing, helium said. The cause could bash enactment erstwhile prompted, but the humans couldn’t pre-schedule work, oregon link agents to squad connection tools similar WhatsApp and delegate tasks that way. (WhatsApp is to astir of the satellite what Slack is to firm America.) 

Cohen heard astir OpenClaw, the fashionable AI cause instrumentality whose creator present works for OpenAI. Cohen utilized it to physique retired those last interfaces, and loved it. 

“There was this large aha infinitesimal of: this is the portion that connects each of these abstracted workflows that I’ve been building,” helium said and instantly decided, “I privation much of them: connected R& D, connected product, connected lawsuit management,” 1 for each task the startup had to handle. 

But past OpenClaw frightened the bejesus retired of him. 

In researching a hiccup with performance, helium stumbled crossed a record wherever the OpenClaw cause had downloaded each of his WhatsApp messages and stored them successful plain, unencrypted substance connected his computer. Not conscionable the work-related messages it was fixed explicit entree to, but each of them, his idiosyncratic messages too.  

OpenClaw has been wide panned as a “security nightmare” due to the fact that of the mode it accesses representation and relationship permissions. It is hard to bounds its entree to information connected a instrumentality erstwhile it has been installed.  

That contented volition apt amended implicit time, fixed the project’s popularity, but Cohen had different concern: the sheer size of OpenClaw. As helium researched information options for it, helium saw each the packages that had been bundled into it. It included an “obscure” unfastened root task helium himself had written a fewer months earlier for editing PDFs utilizing a Google representation editing model. He had nary thought it was determination — helium wasn’t adjacent actively maintaining that project.  

He realized determination was nary mode for him to validate each OpenClaw’s codification and its dependencies, which, by immoderate estimates, sprawled crossed 800,000 lines of code. 

So helium built his ain successful conscionable 500 lines of code, intended to beryllium utilized for his company, and shared it. He based it connected Apple’s caller instrumentality tech, which creates isolated environments that forestall bundle from accessing immoderate information connected a instrumentality beyond what it is explicitly authorized to usage

Going viral

At 4 a.m., a mates of weeks aft sharing it connected Hacker News, his telephone started ringing non-stop. A person had seen Karpathy’s station and was urging Cohen to aftermath up and commencement tweeting, which helium did, mounting disconnected a public discussion with the well-known AI researcher.  

Attention to NanoClaw followed similar a landslide. More tweets, YouTube reviews from programmers, and news stories. A domain squatter adjacent snagged a NanoClaw website URL. The close 1 is nanoclaw.dev. 

Then Oleg Selajev, a developer who works for Docker reached out. Selajev saw the buzz and modified NanoClaw to regenerate Apple’s instrumentality exertion with Docker’s competing alternative, Sandboxes.

Cohen had nary hesitation astir pushing enactment for Sandboxes retired arsenic portion of the main NanoClaw project. “This is nary longer my ain idiosyncratic cause that I’m moving connected my Mac Mini,” helium recalled thinking. “This present has a assemblage astir it. There are thousands of radical utilizing it. Yeah, I said, I’m going to determination implicit to the standard.” 

For each the changes these weeks person brought Cohen and his member Lazer, present CEO and president of NanoCo respectively, 1 country inactive needs to beryllium figured out: however NanoCo volition marque money. 

NanoClaw is escaped and unfastened root and, arsenic these things go, the Cohens vow it ever volition be. They cognize they would beryllium strung up arsenic villains if they ever betrayed the unfastened root assemblage by changing that. Currently the Cohens are surviving connected a friends-and-family fundraising round, they said.  

While they are cautious astir announcing their commercialized plans yet — successful ample portion due to the fact that they haven’t had a accidental to afloat formulate them — VCs are already calling, they say. 

The crippled program is to physique a afloat supported commercialized merchandise with services including alleged guardant deployed engineers — specialists embedded straight with lawsuit companies to assistance them physique and negociate their systems. This volition apt absorption connected assisting companies successful gathering and maintaining unafraid agents. That is, however, a crowded tract increasing much crowded by the hour. 

But fixed the elephantine assemblage of developers that NanoClaw conscionable unlocked with Docker, we’re definite to perceive much astir this soon.

Pictured supra from near to right, Lazer and Gavriel Cohen.