Quick update from me - OpenClaw! · AI Automation Agency Hub

Paul Foster

Feb 13 (edited) • 🏆 Wins

Quick update from me - OpenClaw!

I have a client now, but I’ve got even busier with something amazing.

I figured small businesses might want a digital operations manager - just like I do.

And yeah, seems they do. So I figured I would give it a go.

I got a Hostinger VPS with a one click OpenClaw install via Docker - no idea what that is!

You see I’m not a coder. I’m a thinker. I don’t know what Python is. I don’t need to. I have ChatGPT!

And I'm doing this all on an iPad Air.

Sarge (my name for my ChatGPT) and I have been building Aida — she’s my Digital Operations Manager — on a VPS using OpenClaw as the underlying framework.

And here’s the honest truth:

Out of the box, OpenClaw is powerful… but token hungry.

When you spin it up, it loads everything:

Workspace files (AGENTS.md, SOUL.md, TOOLS.md, etc.)
Tool schemas
Plugin definitions
Browser hooks
Gateway metadata
Even Gmail watchers and messaging integrations

All of that gets injected into the system prompt!

Which means that even a simple “ping” can cost thousands of tokens.

That’s fine if you’re a funded startup or a founder who’s already exited a company.

But I’m building this as a small business owner, with real client cost sensitivity.

If I’m going to sell Digital Operations Managers to SMEs, their “employee” can’t be burning budget every time it says hello.

So instead of accepting the defaults, we’ve been tightening the system:

Governance logs
Memory approval layers
Budget caps
Token usage reporting
Dev profiles
Model enforcement (no surprise provider switching)
Plugin stripping
Prompt profiling to see exactly where the token weight lives

It’s been a few hours of deep infrastructure work.

And honestly?

It’s ridiculously fun.

Not because it’s easy — it isn’t.

But because this is what building properly looks like:

You don’t just install tools.

You shape them.

You constrain them.

You make them commercially viable.

What we’ve proved so far:

OpenClaw is not “wrong” — it just seems enterprise-oriented by default, (even though some people are just using it to do their grocery shopping!)
Most of the token weight lives in workspace files and tool schemas.
We can profile it.
We can slim it.
We can build a Lite mode.

Tomorrow we start creating that lighter operational profile.

This isn’t theory.

This is real infrastructure.

On a real VPS.

With real budget constraints.

And I’m loving every minute of it.

If you’ve ever wondered what it actually looks like to build AI infrastructure from scratch — this is it.

And if you are a small U.K. business, message me. Maybe your next employee will be digital!

Best, P :)

PS: Sarge is doing all the work. I’m just copying and pasting into the terminal talking to the VPS. It spits out stuff and I copy and paste that back into the chat with Sarge. All on my iPad Air 11in M2

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Quick update from me - OpenClaw!