Side Project Goes Viral
A side project called OpenClaw AI just became a massive open-source hit, rocketing past React in GitHub stars. The personal AI assistant for emails and calendars started as a fun project before its explosive growth sparked industry acquisition interest. It's a prime example of how shipping a side project can demonstrate PM skills and create unexpected career opportunities.
The project's journey began in November 2025 when creator Peter Steinberger, founder of PSPDFKit who had come out of retirement to experiment with AI, built the initial version as a simple WhatsApp wrapper for Claude Code. The initial name, "Clawdbot," was a playful nod to Anthropic's Claude model, but a polite trademark complaint from Anthropic led to a community brainstorm and a new name: "Moltbot." The name changed again just two days later to OpenClaw after "Moltbot" proved difficult to pronounce and didn't resonate. This final rebrand was handled more strategically, with prior trademark searches and domain registrations. The rapid name changes occurred amidst explosive growth, with the project soaring from 9,000 to over 60,000 GitHub stars in a matter of days in late January 2026. By early March 2026, OpenClaw had surpassed 250,000 GitHub stars, officially overtaking established giants like React (at 243,000) and Linux to become the most-starred software project on the platform. This milestone was reached in just four months, a velocity unheard of for projects that typically take years to garner similar community backing. From a product strategy perspective, OpenClaw's design as a model-agnostic, self-hosted agent was key to its success. It doesn't provide the AI model itself but acts as an orchestration layer, allowing users to connect their preferred large language models (like GPT-4 or Claude) and run them locally for privacy. This approach transforms the AI from a simple chatbot into an autonomous agent that can execute tasks across a user's local files and applications. The project's trajectory attracted significant industry attention, with both Meta and OpenAI expressing interest. Steinberger ultimately announced he would be joining OpenAI on February 14, 2026, to work on bringing AI agents to a wider audience. He emphasized that his goal was to "change the world, not build a large company," a lesson from his 13 years developing PSPDFKit. To ensure its continued growth and independence, OpenClaw was moved into an open-source foundation, with OpenAI providing financial sponsorship. This move allows the project to remain a community-driven platform for developers to experiment with and build upon, while Steinberger focuses on building the next generation of personal AI agents at OpenAI.
