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Hi everyone, I am Kumar, co-founder of Dench (https://denchclaw.com). We were part of YC S24, an agentic workflow company that previously worked with sales floors automating niche enterprise tasks such as outbound calling, legal intake, etc.Building consumer / power-user software always gave me more joy than FDEing into an enterprise. It did not give me joy to manually add AI tools to a cloud harness for every small new thing, at least not as much as completely local software that is open source and has all the powers of OpenClaw (I can now talk to my CRM on Telegram!).A week ago, we launched Ironclaw, an Open Source OpenClaw CRM Framework (https://x.com/garrytan/status/2023518514120937672?s=20) but people confused us with NearAI’s Ironclaw, so we changed our name to DenchClaw (https://denchclaw.com).OpenClaw today feels like early React: the primitive is incredibly powerful, but the patterns are still forming, and everyone is piecing together their own way to actually use it. What made React explode was the emergence of frameworks like Gatsby and Next.js that turned raw capability into something opinionated, repeatable, and easy to adopt.That is how we think about DenchClaw. We are trying to make it one of the clearest, most practical, and most complete ways to use OpenClaw in the real world.Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfACTbc3Bh4#t=43 npx denchclaw
I use DenchClaw daily for almost everything I do. It also works as a coding agent like Cursor - DenchClaw built DenchClaw. I am addicted now that I can ask it, “hey in the companies table only show me the ones who have more than 5 employees” and it updates it live than me having to manually add a filter.On Dench, everything sits in a file system, the table filters, views, column toggles, calendar/gantt views, etc, so OpenClaw can directly work with it using Dench’s CRM skill.The CRM is built on top of DuckDB, the smallest, most performant and at the same time also feature rich database we could find. Thank you DuckDB team!It creates a new OpenClaw profile called “dench”, and opens a new OpenClaw Gateway… that means you can run all your usual openclaw commands by just prefixing every command with `openclaw --profile dench` . It will start your gateway on port 19001 range. You will be able to access the DenchClaw frontend at localhost:3100. Once you open it on Safari, just add it to your Dock to use it as a PWA.Think of it as Cursor for your Mac (also works on Linux and Windows) which is based on OpenClaw. DenchClaw has a file tree view for you to use it as an elevated finder tool to do anything on your mac. I use it to create slides, do linkedin outreach using MY browser.DenchClaw finds your Chrome Profile and copies it fully into its own, so you won’t have to log in into all your websites again. DenchClaw sees what you see, does what you do. It’s an everything app, that sits locally on your mac.Just ask it “hey import my notion”, “hey import everything from my hubspot”, and it will literally go into your browser, export all objects and documents and put it in its own workspace that you can use.We would love you all to break it, stress test its CRM capabilities, how it streams subagents for lead enrichment, hook it into your Apollo, Gmail, Notion and everything there is. Looking forward to comments/feedback!
Show HN: DenchClaw – Local CRM on Top of OpenClaw
Local CRM on Top of OpenClaw; Cursor for your Mac... based on OpenClaw; an everything app, that sits locally on your mac; make it one of the clearest, most practical, and most complete ways to use OpenClaw in the real world.
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AI Executive Synthesis
Local CRM on Top of OpenClaw; Cursor for your Mac... based on OpenClaw; an everything app, that sits locally on your mac; make it one of the clearest, most practical, and most complete ways to use OpenClaw in the real world.
DenchClaw addresses the emerging demand for local-first, agentic workflow tools, specifically targeting CRM functions. Its positioning as a 'framework' for OpenClaw, akin to Gatsby/Next.js for React, indicates an attempt to standardize and simplify complex agent deployments. The emphasis on local execution, data privacy (implied by local-first), and direct integration with user's existing browser profiles and SaaS tools (Notion, HubSpot, Apollo, Gmail) highlights a trend towards highly personalized, powerful desktop agents. The 'everything app' ambition, combined with a 'coding agent' capability, suggests a broad attack surface on productivity and data management. The underlying DuckDB choice signals a focus on performance and embedded data handling. Market implications: This product capitalizes on the 'agent explosion' but differentiates by offering a local, integrated, and opinionated solution, potentially appealing to power users and small teams wary of cloud-centric AI tools. The challenge lies in managing the 'everything app' scope and ensuring robust, secure local operation across diverse user environments.
Community Voice & Feedback
OpenClaw feels like early React" is a great framing but I think it leads to the wrong conclusion. React didn't win because Next.js showed up. React won because the component model was right, and then people built whatever they needed on top of it.The risk with "framework on top of framework" is you inherit both set s of opinions AND both sets of bugs.. When OpenClaw updates, does DenchClaw break? When DuchDB has a quirk, is that your bug or theirs? The dependency chain gets real deep real fast.Copying someone's entire Chrome profile is bold. Like, really bold. That's a massive ask. "DenchClaw sees what you see" is either the most powerful pitch or the scariest pitch, depends on who you talking to.
Love the local-first approach. The "just ask it to import my Notion" thing via browser automation is really nice.One thing I keep coming back to though - what if the tool could actually watch how you use your CRM and then suggest automations based on what it sees you doing repeatedly?I've been building something called MemoryLane (https://github.com/deusXmachina-dev/memorylane) that does exactly this - it captures screen activity, spots repeated workflows, and suggests automations. Works as an MCP server so you can plug it into Claude or Cursor. Instead of you having to describe what you want automated, it just watches and proposes stuff.Have you thought about adding something like pattern detection to denchclaw? Feels like it'd fit really well with the "everything app" direction. For us the most useful engine for executing skills and automations is surprisingly cowork thus far, haha
"DenchClaw finds your Chrome Profile and copies it fully into its own, so you won’t have to log in into all your websites again. DenchClaw sees what you see, does what you do."Prompt injection as a service.
I get the value of a personal CRM and potential power of having one locally managed by LLMs and I'd love to see such a solution, because to your point, outreach is just a small part of what you can do with a personal CRM. But, the way you describe and deliver this project is very confusing to me, it's a CRM but also Cursor for your Mac (what does that even mean?), I already run Cursor on my Mac, it also has a file tree view to use it as a better MacOS find I guess?I think that a much cleaner messaging on what this tool is for would help.Also a question about the implementation, why DuckDB for a CRM?Something like SQLite feels like a much natural fit for a CRM where you primarily create, update and maybe delete records and you really care for the integrity of the data model.From a quick look on the data model, everything seems to be a VARCHAR, if this is the case, why not just store everything in the file system instead? You do that with the md files and whatever is getting extracted from the SaaS tools.
I really want a DeathClaw product.
> It has a CRM focus because we asked a couple dozen hard-core OpenClaw users "what do you actually do", and it was sales automation, lead enrichment, biz dev, creating slides, linkedin outreach, email/notion/calendar stuff, and it's always painful to set up.So basic automation and forcing the web to be "open"...No one is talking about how AI is going to destroy business models that are dependent on dark patterns, on walled gardens, on poorly designed one size fits all implementations (so many things wedged sideways into sales force).
Well, of course I will test this thing you built in 2 days[1] for you![1]: https://xcancel.com/kumareth/status/2023534527113818625
Everything is skills. In a file system. That is the future.Responding to some HN comments, I understand the focus on Sales Automation and Outreach can be worrysome.But for me personally, this is where I do all knowledge work. For me it acts like Cursor, Happenstance, News Aggregator, Fun games creator like Pacman (it has an App Store), I can import Notion into editable MD files, create reports and presentations, etc.
At what point does this become an AI powered spamming machine?
In terms of "[XYZ] for agents", I think CRM is a big one that people haven't talked about as much. It becomes super relevant as soon as people start using an agent for anything customer related.And the design principals are already pretty well established (accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, custom object model, stages, etc.). It just needs to be turned into a database boilerplate with a bunch of agent tools. Excited to try this out.
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