Welcome to Beyond the 10-Key, a regular article discussing powerful and unique ways to utilize AI in the tax, accounting, and financial services industry. With the influx of new AI-based platforms and the ease at which these tools can be used, hardly a day goes by where a typical conversation doesn’t migrate to how AI can improve our processes, client interactions, and more.
Topic: Superpower Your AI With Clawdbot (Well, Maybe...)
While many people are still gaining just a comfort with utilizing an AI-platform through a chat system or integrated into an application they are using, one of hte top questions I receive is, “When can it actually do something for me?” Well, my friends, that time has come!
Many platform providers have been teasing interactive skills, but the actual deployment falls quite sure of their promises and targets. People are looking for the next Jarvis from Iron Man, but have only been getting an 80’s children’s cartoon replica.
But, let me introduce Clawdbot. Clawdbot has taken the technology industry by storm and actually delivers on the promises many other platforms have failed.
Clawdbot is a new AI platform built to make working with information and tasks feel easier and more intuitive. It acts like a smart assistant that can understand requests in plain language and help get things done without needing to dig through complex tools or systems. The focus is on daily use and ease of task management while helping move from questions or ideas to answers and actions quickly, allowing the research to work on the backend.
What sets Clawdbot apart is how it blends into everyday life. It can support planning, communication, research, and problem-solving while staying out of the way, stepping in only when it’s needed for input or clarification.
One of the most powerful features of Clawdbot is that it can be installed locally (we will get to that below) and has long-term, persistent memory.
Ok, but what does that actually mean?
What Clawdbot Can Actually Do
The beauty and power of Clawdbot is that it can be fully customized with added “skills” to expand its ability to interact and control systems as well as gain access to data.
I installed Clawdbot (listed below), configured it, and have worked with it for the last week. During this time, I built out a cool collection of skillsets:
Added Text-To-Speech capabilities (through an add-on named Qwen) allowing me to speak to the system and for it to respond back to me. This, honestly, gave it the most Jarvis-feel out of anything.
Much like my dated phone with a pop-up notification, I added text and voice call reminders for important events.
Connected to my interactive display alarm clock to provide me a weather and calendar summary each morning when I wake up.
Provides me an 8am summary of the cryptocurrency I currently own and those I am monitoring.
Connect my X account and focused on receiving updates, although I could have also used it to post. This saved a ton of time from monitoring the individual X accounts manually.
Connect to my file management (it even helped me locate a file without having to browse through a subfolder labyrinth).
Connected to my home automation to control my lights, charging, and even my EV.
Connect to my e-mail (well, e-mails) and provide summaries as well as assist to prioritize certain responses over general tasks.
Plus about two dozen more that performed a myriad of tasks beyond the above.
Oh my gosh. So I have to be honest here. This has kinda rocked my world. The previous “go fetch feedback from this AI platform” has been replaced with “the AI platform interacts with your data and your world to bring actions and insight to your daily life.”
The Installation
Ok, so before we chat all rainbows and raspberries, we do need to address the most technical piece of Clawdbot and that is the complicated setup.
I decided to install it on my Mac Mini. While this isn’t a required step, I chose this path to keep a test environment off of my primary computer. Additionally, running Clawdbot on a laptop that may be on/off defeats some of the purpose of its 24/7 features. Additionally, it is relatively resource-heavy tool and I would have noticed a lag on my individual computer running it there. The Mac Mini was $599, so not a huge investment for a tool that saves so much time.
The second benefit of using a local machine is that my data was all kept and managed inside of my own firewall, behind the custom configurations I have made to protect my personal environment.
The install is very technical. I was able to get Clawdbot installed and operational in under 15 minutes, but imagine a non-technical individual might require over an hour. More so, the fears over the potential problems that could arise from a. mis-configured installation are pretty big.
The most nuanced part of the entire installation is adding, linking, and configuring the skills. Each feature and integration you make requires specific technical skills to install, link it to the systems you already have designed (through an API usually), and then spending effort to configure the skill - all before it can be used.
The Good
I have to be real here. There was so much positive here. All of the skills that I have installed, I immediately began using and every skill I configured has proven to be useful.
The data is kept inside my own environment and I control who has access to what depth or level of information that I choose.
Clawdbot uses persistent memory (although I question the true persistence) which means it is supposed to remember everything it knows about you and adapts its work to match your patterns. I am a bit skeptical here, but hopeful.
There are about a dozen messaging apps (iMessage, Telegram, etc) that Clawdbot can interact with. I was able to send a reminder about upcoming calls with some friends directly through the system rather than having to remember myself.
Overall, I would say that Clawdbot is currently saving me a little bit of time; however, given the time it has taken to setup and configure, I am still significantly behind. However, it has acted like a “power-up” to the systems and tools that i use today. And that I am excited about.
The Bad
I am so frustrated to respond here because, as much as Clawdbot has been helping me, it is definitely not mainstream yet. If you are a technophile and don’t mind investing hours in setting up and designing a system, this could be a cool new toy to try.
Secondly, and this one is kinda big. Clawdbot does require pretty deep, intrusive access to your systems and data. It needs this for what it does, but it does introduce a huge security problem and could lead to a significant breach if a vulnerability is ever discovered. More so, a non-technical install may leave gaps and open systems allowing external access. Clawdbot really is designed for the technical user.
Finally, each skill requires additional time and effort to setup. I imagine this being a barrier to entry and growth for the product moving forward if it is not improved.
Brad’s Final Thoughts
Honestly, I love it. I think the product is cool. I think it has saved me effort and empowered me to work better and more efficiently.
However, it is very technical. For that reason, I really would not encourage moving forward until a less technical option is available.
I would love to hear your feedback! Is this the type of tool you are interested in?
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This sounds like an exciting development in the AI world! I can’t wait to play with it after tax season is over!