KiloClaw Unleashed: AI Agents in 60 Seconds

The friction between an AI idea and a deployed agent has, until now, largely been a saga of configuration woes and command-line headaches. Kilo, an AI infrastructure startup with GitLab co-founder Sid Sijbrandij backing it, believes it's finally smoothed things over.

Today marks the general availability of KiloClaw, a fully managed service promising to deploy a production-ready OpenClaw agent in under 60 seconds. This move aims to democratise access to powerful AI agents, bypassing the traditional complexities of SSH, Docker, and YAML that have previously limited wider adoption.

Kilo is banking on a future where “vibe coding” – that intuitive flow of development – is as much about robust hosting as it is about advanced models. For developers across Asia-Pacific looking to rapidly prototype and deploy AI solutions without significant infrastructure overhead, this could be a game-changer, mirroring the region's increasing drive towards accessible AI innovation.

Re-engineering the Agentic Sandbox

OpenClaw has rapidly gained notoriety, boasting over 161,000 GitHub stars, primarily for its ability to do things. Unlike many proprietary tools, OpenClaw can control browsers, manage files, and integrate with over 50 chat platforms like Telegram, a popular choice in many Asian markets.

Despite its capabilities, Kilo co-founder and CEO Scott Breitenother highlighted a significant hurdle in an exclusive interview:

"OpenClaw itself isn't the hard part... getting it running is."

KiloClaw departs from the typical “Mac Mini on a desk” setup favoured by early adopters. Instead, it leverages a multi-tenant Virtual Machine (VM) architecture powered by Fly.io, providing a secure and isolated environment that’s challenging for individual developers to replicate. This focus on enterprise-grade security addresses a critical concern, especially for businesses in regions like Singapore or Australia, which have stringent data governance requirements.

"What we're doing is making KiloClaw the safest way to claw," Breitenother explained. "We're handling all that network security, sandboxing, and proxies that an enterprise company would require. We are essentially running multi-tenant, hosted OpenClaw."

To further bolster security, KiloClaw uses two distinct proxies to manage traffic and safeguard the VM from the open internet. This architectural choice prevents common pitfalls like accidentally exposing API keys or leaving local instances vulnerable to attacks – a significant improvement over individual setups, as Breitenother attests: "It's going to be better than [a local setup] in every single way."

The 'Mech Suit' for Your Mind

One of the most frustrating pain points for OpenClaw users is the infamous “3 am crash” – locally hosted Node.js processes silently dying overnight. KiloClaw elegantly solves this with built-in process monitoring and an “always on” cloud-native state, ensuring agents remain active and responsive.

Unlike Kilo Code workflows, which are triggered by developer commands, KiloClaw agents are persistent.

Breitenother describes it: "KiloClaw is just running and listening. It's always on, waiting for your WhatsApp message or your Slack message. It has to be always on. That's a different paradigm—always-on infrastructure to engage with."

This continuous operation facilitates a suite of “agentic affordances,” described by Kilo as an “exoskeleton for the mind”:

• Scheduled Automations: Agents can perform tasks like research or report generation via cron jobs, even when the human user is offline.
• Persistent Memory: A “Memory Bank” stores context in structured Markdown files within the repository, maintaining project state regardless of the underlying model.
• Cross-platform Command: Agents can be triggered from Slack, Telegram, or a terminal, ensuring a unified execution state across all entry points.

This capability allows engineers to shift their focus. "We've actually moved our engineers to be product owners. The time they freed up from writing code, they're actually doing much more thinking. They're setting the strategy for the product," Breitenother revealed. This aligns with a broader trend in the tech industry, where companies are increasingly looking to maximise their human capital by automating routine tasks, a theme we’ve touched upon previously in AI's Blunders: Why Your Brain Still Matters More.

The Gateway Advantage: Hundreds of Models, Zero Lock-in

A pivotal feature of KiloClaw is its seamless integration with the Kilo Gateway. While the original OpenClaw often leaned on Anthropic's models, KiloClaw liberates users with access to over 500 different models from providers like OpenAI, Google, and MiniMax, alongside open-weight models such as Qwen or GLM.

This extensive selection is crucial in a rapidly evolving industry.

"Your preferred model today may not be the same, and honestly shouldn't be the same, a month and a half from now."

The platform allows users to switch between models, perhaps using Opus for complex tasks and a cost-effective open-weight model for routine work. This flexibility is particularly valuable for startups in Southeast Asia, where budget optimisation is often a key growth driver.

Kilo reinforces this flexibility with a transparent “zero markup” pricing model on AI tokens, ensuring users pay the exact API rates from model vendors. Power users can opt for Kilo Pass, a subscription tier that offers bonus credits, effectively subsidising high-volume agentic operations. This approach directly contrasts with the often opaque pricing structures seen elsewhere, as examined in Free ChatGPT's True Cost Revealed.

Getting Started with KiloClaw

Deploying your own KiloClaw agent is straightforward:

1. Sign in or Register: Access the Kilo Code application at https://app.kilo.ai.
2. Create Your Instance: Navigate to the "Claw" tab and click "Create Instance."
3. Choose Your Model: Select a default AI model from the dropdown; options include free models like MiniMax.
4. Configure Messaging (Optional): Connect your agent to Discord, Telegram, or Slack for direct communication.
5. Provision and Start: Click "Create and Provision" to set up your VM, then "Start" to boot the agent.
6. Verify and Access: Click "Open" and generate a one-time verify token for secure access.
7. Begin Vibe Coding: Interact with your 24/7 running agent via the chat interface.

PinchBench: Benchmarking the Agentic Era

To aid model selection, Kilo has open-sourced PinchBench, a benchmark specifically designed for agentic workloads at https://pinchbench.com/. Unlike traditional benchmarks that test isolated chat prompts, PinchBench evaluates agents on 23 real-world, multi-step tasks, such as calendar management and multi-source research.

Brendan O'Leary, Developer Relations at Kilo Code, spearheaded PinchBench, drawing inspiration from developer YouTubers like Theo Browne. He explained that the goal was to create a benchmark for "the kind of things that we asked OpenClaw to do."

To ensure rigorous evaluation for subjective tasks, PinchBench employs Claude 4.5 Opus as a “judge model.” This high-end model grades the output of other models, providing specific feedback on execution quality. O'Leary has personally run PinchBench "hundreds and hundreds of times against OpenClaw" to validate its accuracy.

"We're doing this work anyway to know which defaults we should recommend. We decided to open source it because the individual developer shouldn't have to think about which model is best for the job. We want to give people more and more information."

O'Leary’s favourite visualisation is a scatter plot comparing “Cost to Intelligence,” helping users identify the most efficient models. He also launched a YouTube series, "Will It Claw?" to demonstrate KiloClaw's capabilities.

KiloClaw vs. The OpenClaw Ecosystem

The market for OpenClaw variants is growing, with projects like Nanoclaw focusing on lightweight instances and companies like Runlayer targeting enterprise VPS solutions. KiloClaw, however, distinguishes itself by refusing to “fork” the original OpenClaw code.

"It’s not a fork, and that’s what’s important," Breitenother asserted. "OpenClaw moves so quickly that we are hosting the actual OpenClaw [version]. It is literally OpenClaw on a really well-tuned, well-set-up managed virtual machine."

This commitment ensures KiloClaw users automatically receive updates as the core OpenClaw project evolves, eliminating manual updates — a critical factor for maintaining cutting-edge agent performance. This “open core” philosophy extends to licensing, with the underlying Kilo CLI and core extensions remaining MIT-licensed, encouraging community auditing and fostering trust, particularly important for enterprises navigating AI governance debates as seen in "I’m deeply uncomfortable with these decisions" - Anthropic's CEO.

KiloClaw’s launch is a strategic move to broaden its user base beyond seasoned developers to include enterprise managers and non-technical professionals. By simplifying agent deployment, Kilo aims to make the “magical moments” of AI accessible to everyone. Thousands of developers across Asia-Pacific are already on the waiting list, eager to leverage the platform for tasks ranging from Discord management to repository maintenance, highlighting the demand for such tools.

"Our mission is to build the best all-in-one AI work platform. Whether you are a developer, a product manager, or a data engineer, we want all of these personas to experience the magic of the exoskeleton for the mind."

KiloClaw is now available, offering 7 days of free compute for all new users. The era of the managed AI agent has seemingly dawned, no local Mac Mini required.

Do you think this ease of deployment will truly democratise advanced AI agents, or will the complexities simply shift elsewhere? Drop your take in the comments below.*