explaingit

nearai/ironclaw

★ 12,233RustAudience · developerComplexity · 4/5LicenseSetup · hard

TLDR

IronClaw is a privacy-first personal AI assistant that runs entirely on your own machine, keeps your data encrypted locally, and isolates every plugin in a secure WebAssembly sandbox so tools cannot leak your credentials.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((ironclaw))
    What it does
      Local AI assistant
      Runs WASM tools
      Scheduled tasks
    Security
      WASM sandboxing
      Credential injection
      URL allowlist
    Interfaces
      CLI prompt
      Web UI
      Telegram Slack
    AI Providers
      NEAR AI
      OpenAI Anthropic
      Local via Ollama
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Code map

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Run a local AI assistant that accesses your files and tools without sending data to third-party servers.

USE CASE 2

Build and deploy custom WASM tools that IronClaw generates on the fly from a plain-language description of what you need.

USE CASE 3

Connect IronClaw to Telegram or Slack so you get AI responses in your messaging apps while keeping all data on your machine.

USE CASE 4

Schedule automated AI-driven tasks that run on a timer or respond to incoming webhooks from other services.

Tech stack

RustWebAssemblyPostgreSQL

Getting it running

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1h+

Requires a PostgreSQL database for memory and search, plus authentication setup with your chosen AI provider.

Use freely for any purpose, including commercial use, under either the MIT or Apache 2.0 license, your choice.

In plain English

IronClaw is a personal AI assistant you install and run on your own machine. The core idea is that your data stays on your device, encrypted, and never gets sent to a company's servers without your knowledge. The project is open source and built in Rust, a programming language known for reliability and speed. The security design is one of the more distinctive parts of this project. Any tool or plugin that IronClaw runs is executed inside a WebAssembly sandbox, which is an isolated container that limits what the tool can actually do. Credentials like passwords or API keys are never handed directly to tools, they are injected at a controlled boundary so tools cannot read or leak them. The system also checks outgoing web requests against an approved list of destinations, blocking anything that was not explicitly permitted. You can talk to IronClaw through several different interfaces: a command-line prompt, a browser-based web interface with real-time streaming, or messaging platforms like Telegram and Slack (connected via plugin channels). It can run scheduled tasks on a timed schedule, respond to incoming webhooks from other services, and handle multiple jobs at the same time in isolated contexts. One feature the README highlights is the ability to build new tools on the fly. You describe what you need, and IronClaw generates a new WASM tool to do it without requiring a software update from the developers. It also supports the Model Context Protocol, which is a standard for connecting AI assistants to external data sources and tools. For the AI brain itself, IronClaw defaults to NEAR AI but lets you swap in other providers including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Mistral, and locally-run models via Ollama. Configuration is handled through a setup wizard that walks you through connecting a PostgreSQL database (required for memory and search), authenticating with your chosen AI provider, and storing secrets in your system keychain. Installation is available via a shell script for macOS and Linux, a Windows installer, or Homebrew. Building from source requires Rust and a database setup step. The license is MIT or Apache 2.0.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Help me write an IronClaw WASM tool that reads a local CSV file and returns a plain-English summary of its contents.
Prompt 2
How do I configure IronClaw to use Ollama as the AI provider instead of NEAR AI, and connect it to my PostgreSQL database?
Prompt 3
Show me how to set up an IronClaw webhook channel so it can respond to POST events from my web application.
Prompt 4
Write an IronClaw plugin configuration that restricts outgoing web requests to only api.github.com and api.openai.com.
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