hen OpenAI hired OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger, it officially turned personal AI agents into the hottest trend of 2026.
If you're feeling FOMO and are about to spend $500 on a Mac mini to install OpenClaw and spin up your own personal AI assistant, there are a few factors you may want to consider first.
Despite what you may have heard, installing OpenClaw is a pretty technical and time-intensive process. There are four-hour YouTube videos that walk you through the entire process —and that doesn't include all the prep and planning it takes to do it right by setting up separate accounts for email, texting, GitHub, Slack, an Apple account, and any other services you want your personal AI assistant to work with.
That brings us to the second caveat: You shouldn’t install this on your main computer or allow it to use your logged-in accounts for email, file storage, text messaging, etc. That would be like hiring a new employee and giving them the password to your laptop and your email on the first day.
Remember that AI agents are non-deterministic systems. That means they don't follow a set of step-by-step instructions. In fact, they can delete all of your files because they perceive that you are well-organized and thought it would be helpful to clean up for you.
So instead of installing OpenClaw yourself right now, consider one of these options:
- Use a cloud-based OpenClaw service like Hostinger, MyClaw.ai, or V2Cloud. You can spin up one of these almost instantly for $5-$10 per month, and they give you a secure sandbox that keeps your personal AI assistant from accessing other machines and data on your network.
- Wait until OpenAI and Steinberger release their personal AI assistant product that will "bring agents to your mom and everyone else," as OpenAI's CMO Kate Rouch said. We should expect that to happen relatively quickly.
- Give Anthropic's Claude Cowork a try. It's another AI agent, but it has more guardrails to keep you from getting in trouble. For enterprises, there's also the lesser-known Amazon Quick Suite, which offers many of the benefits of personal AI assistants within the confines of a traditional IT environment.