The Relay Pattern

Here's a pattern that makes a lot of sense once you see it. Instead of your agent controlling a headless browser it spun up on its own (Puppeteer style), what if the agent could control your actual browser? The one you're already using. With your cookies, your sessions, your extensions, your everything.

Clawdbot, created by Peter Steinberger, does exactly this. It's a Chrome extension paired with a gateway server. The extension sits in your browser. The gateway sits between your agent and the extension. Your agent sends commands to the gateway, the gateway relays them to the extension, and the extension executes them in your real browser session.

The "relay" bit is the clever part. It can route control locally (agent on your machine, browser on your machine) or remotely (agent running somewhere else, still controlling your browser). Same protocol either way.

Why This Matters

Most browser automation tools create a parallel universe. They open a fresh browser with no state, no logins, no context. Then your agent has to log in, navigate to the right page, and reconstruct all the context that already exists in the browser tab you've got open.

Clawdbot skips all that. Your agent operates inside your existing session. It sees what you see. It can interact with pages you're already authenticated on. No credential passing, no cookie juggling, no "wait, why is it asking me to log in again?"

The Name Drama

Right, so about that name. It launched as Clawdbot. Then Anthropic's lawyers got involved because, well, "Clawd" is a bit on the nose. It got renamed to Moltbot, then settled on OpenClaw. By March 2026 it had racked up 247k stars on GitHub, making it one of the fastest growing repos in the space. Wild ride for a Chrome extension.

Getting Started

Install the Chrome extension from the repo, spin up the gateway server, and point your agent at it. The OpenClaw repo has the setup instructions. It's straightforward if you've ever installed a Chrome extension from source before.