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Show HN: OpenClawMachines – Extending OpenClaw to the Enterprise

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Run as many isolated OpenClaw agents as you need, on hardware you own. OpenClaw Machines is an open-source platform for running OpenClaw in secure AI sandboxes on your own infrastructure. A control plane orchestrates your hosts, and each agent runs in its own Firecracker microVM on them - hardware-isolated, safe for untrusted and agent-generated code.

A Cloudflare data plane is the front door: every machine gets its own subdomain behind edge auth, reached through a tunnel that terminates inside the VM - no host port is exposed for user-to-VM traffic. The current control plane still needs private or firewall-restricted access to each agent's authenticated control API on 9090. See it running at openclawmachines.com.

The Apache-2.0 public core ships every piece of that stack:

  • a minimal control plane - Go API, Postgres-backed accounts, machines, and hosts; placement, machine lifecycle, host enrollment, backups, and durable workflows
  • the host agent (ocm-agent) - boots, supervises, and reaps Firecracker microVMs on your enrolled Linux boxes, managing bridge/TAP networking and rootfs staging
  • a per-host LLM proxy (LiteLLM) - one place for model keys and BYO-key support, with per-machine usage tracking across providers (or your own locally served models)
  • the OpenClaw runtime - the in-VM pieces: auth proxy, web-chat gateway, live terminal, and the artifact-driven runtime staging/upgrade flow
  • the browser runtime - paired Chromium browser VMs with CDP routing and a watchable live view
  • workspace integrations / native MCP - GitHub, Google Workspace, OpenAPI, GraphQL, and remote-MCP tools connected once per workspace and exposed to machines through the OCM MCP facade
  • and the build pipelines that assemble it all - every component's build command, the GCS artifact bucket layout, host provisioning scripts, and the release lanes

The ocm CLI lives in the separate mathaix/ocm-cli Apache-2.0 repository.

Click the screenshot to watch the 43-second demo on YouTube. This is a linked image, not an embedded player. The demo covers host onboarding, agent spin-up, the running Firecracker VM terminal, workspace MCP integrations, and an agent tool call end to end.

Key Features

  • Security. Real isolation, not containers: one Firecracker microVM per agent, with its own guest kernel behind a KVM hardware boundary - and auth enforced at the edge and again inside every VM.
  • Cost. One flat server cost: rent a single bare-metal box and run as many hardware-isolated agents as it fits - see how the options compare. The same architecture cuts token spend too: route agents to open-source models running on your own GPU hardware instead of paying per-token APIs.
  • Sovereignty. Your hardware, your data, your keys. Run the control plane and workers on machines you own, and route model traffic through the per-host LLM proxy to any provider - or to models served on your own GPUs.
  • Open source. Apache-2.0 public core and companion ocm CLI, permissively licensed for adoption, embedding, and contribution.
  • Enterprise. Multi-user accounts and teams, admin-gated host management, encrypted per-machine secrets, and capacity/placement policies across your fleet.
  • Ecosystem. Browser VMs for web automation, live terminal and web chat, per-VM routing, workspace-scoped native MCP integrations, backups/snapshots, agent memory, and observability with OpenTelemetry/Opik tracing and per-machine usage tracking.

How It Compares

If you run OpenClaw today, you have a few options:

  • Local hardware - run it on your own laptop or desktop.
  • A VPS (e.g. Hostinger, DigitalOcean) - rent a virtual server and run it there.
  • A managed service (e.g. KiloClaw) - spin up a hosted OpenClaw instance and pay per instance.

OpenClaw Machines is the fourth option: rent one bare-metal server (OVHcloud, Hetzner, …), point OpenClaw Machines at it, and spin up as many hardware-isolated OpenClaw instances as the box will hold. One agent or fifty - the cost stays one flat server.

In short: the managed route is easiest but priced per agent; local and VPS are cheap to start but don't isolate or scale well. OpenClaw Machines trades a little more setup for the best economics and isolation once you're running more than a couple of agents - one server, many hardware-isolated agents, all yours.

Architecture Overview

OpenClaw Machines turns your own Linux servers into a pool of secure, on-demand sandboxes. Each sandbox is a real Firecracker microVM (its own kernel, hardware-isolated via KVM) that runs one AI agent. The platform is the control plane that creates those VMs, keeps track of them, routes traffic to them, and tears them down - so you can run many untrusted agents safely on infrastructure you own. Think: a mini-cloud for AI agents, that you self-host.

  • Control plane (Go backend) - the brain. Accounts, machines, hosts, and config; the API the UI/CLI call; placement and lifecycle orchestration.
  • Hosts + worker agents - your Linux boxes. Enroll a host with an install script; its worker agent boots and stops Firecracker microVMs when told to.
  • Machines - one isolated microVM per agent. Inside: the OpenClaw agent, a web chat gateway, and a live terminal.
  • Browser VMs - separate microVMs running headful Chromium with a live view, driven by the agent over CDP for browser automation.
  • Routing / data plane - every running VM gets its own subdomain and a Cloudflare Tunnel that terminates inside the VM, with auth enforced at the edge and again in-VM.
  • Workspace integrations (native MCP) - connect external tools once per workspace (GitHub, Google Workspace, or any OpenAPI / GraphQL / remote-MCP endpoint); the control plane exposes them to each machine's agent through a single built-in MCP server, so the agent discovers and calls them with ocm.search_tools / ocm.call_tool instead of per-integration wiring.
flowchart TB
    U["you - browser / ocm CLI"] --> EDGE["Cloudflare edge Access auth · Worker route lookup (KV)"]
    EDGE -->|dashboard / API| CP["Control plane (Go) accounts · machines · hosts placement · lifecycle · backups"]
    CP --- DB[("Postgres")]
    CP -->|enroll · heartbeat · boot/stop :9090| H1["Host 1 - your Linux box ocm-agent · LLM proxy · CDP proxy"]
    CP -->|…| HN["Host N"]
    EDGE -->|per-VM tunnel, terminates inside the VM| VM1
    subgraph H1X["Host 1's microVMs"]
        VM1["Machine - Firecracker microVM OpenClaw agent · web chat · terminal authproxy + cloudflared inside"]
        BVM["Browser VM headful Chromium · live view"]
        VM1 -->|CDP| BVM
    end
    H1 --- H1X

The full design - data plane, routing, tunnels, lifecycle, config, and the build/release flow - is in docs/architecture.md, and the five-layer stack (React UI → Cloudflare edge → Go control plane → host agents → Firecracker sandboxes) is in docs/tech-stack.md.

Requirements

OpenClaw Machines runs Firecracker microVMs, which require KVM. You need a KVM-enabled Linux host: bare metal, or a cloud VM with nested virtualization enabled. It does not run on macOS, Windows/WSL, or a standard cloud VM without nested virtualization. Check your host: make preflight.

Getting Started

The Getting Started guide is three stages, each ending with something working:

  1. Local evaluation - the full stack + a real Firecracker machine on one KVM-capable Linux box. No Cloudflare or public domain is required; use an existing KVM host or the optional GCP provisioning example.
  2. Cloudflare + a dedicated host - the production-shaped deployment: domain, tunnels, edge auth, and an enrolled cloud or bare-metal host.
  3. The full workflow - create and use machines (chat, terminal, browser VMs), lifecycle, backups, runtime upgrades.

Using a coding agent? Point it at docs/getting-started.md and ask it to follow the guide from Stage 1.

Documentation

  • Getting Started - the three-stage guide above
  • User guide - using a machine day-to-day (model, chat, terminal, browser VM, files, logs, traces, backups)
  • Workspace integrations / native MCP - connect GitHub, Google Workspace, OpenAPI, GraphQL, and remote-MCP tools once per workspace
  • Architecture - data plane, routing, tunnels, lifecycle, workspace integrations / native MCP
  • Tech stack - the five layers, client to sandbox
  • Local and BYO-host setup
  • Control plane deployment profiles
  • Self-hosted control plane prerequisites
  • LLM operator runbook
  • Public docs inventory
  • Contributing · Security policy · Code of conduct

Related Resources

  • ocm CLI project: mathaix/ocm-cli
  • GitHub Discussions - questions, ideas, show & tell
  • Issues - bugs and feature requests
  • Roadmap - the open-source readiness tracker: what's done, what's next
  • Found a vulnerability? See the security policy. See CONTRIBUTING.md and the code of conduct.
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