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ClawUp runs your Claw inside a managed container. The engine that powers that container is called a runtime. Two runtimes are supported today: OpenClaw and Hermes Agent. Both are offered across Free, Basic, Pro, and Enterprise plans — the runtime choice is independent of the subscription plan. Pick a runtime when you create a Claw or a Team. You can’t change it afterwards; to switch, create a new Claw and restore from the old one (within the same runtime family — see Restore & Migration).

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Your harness, your agent, your memory

A runtime is the harness around your agent. In closed agent platforms, the harness is opaque — the vendor controls it, hides how memory is managed, and locks you into one model and one state format. ClawUp is deliberately the opposite:
  • Your harness. Pick OpenClaw or Hermes Agent at create time. Both are open implementations; both expose the same management API (provision, stop, start, restore, chat, files, channels). You’re never stuck in a proprietary scaffolding.
  • Your agent. Pick any frontier model — Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Google, DeepSeek, Mistral, xAI — via BYOK, or go Managed and pay from your balance. The model picker reads a live registry that refreshes with each provider’s catalog, so you always see the latest.
  • Your memory. Every Claw’s workspace — SOUL.md, IDENTITY.md, TEAM.md, agent-authored files, memory database — lives in a container you control. State tar’s to your OSS bucket on stop and restores atomically on start; the Files API exposes the full workspace for read/write over HTTP; the whole platform is self-hostable via docker-compose or Kubernetes. Your agent’s history is portable across models, hosts, and regions.
In a closed harness, your agent is replicable by anyone with the same model keys. In an open harness with portable memory, your agent is yours — with its accumulated context, preferences, and earned behaviour.
The sections below walk through each runtime’s specific strengths and constraints.

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At a glance

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OpenClaw

The default runtime and the most mature path. OpenClaw is ClawUp’s Node.js agent engine; it powers every feature that originated in ClawUp (Teams, Nebula, ClawHub, runtime defaults, SOUL.md / IDENTITY.md layering). Strongest fit when you want:
  • ClawHub skill packages — pick an identity at create time and the matching skills install automatically. No Python runtime assumed.
  • Live config reloads — channel toggles, tool bindings, and model switches apply without a container restart (SIGUSR1-based in-process reload).
  • Broadest docs + examples — every tutorial on this site assumes OpenClaw unless noted.
Data layout inside the runtime:

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Hermes Agent

Hermes is an upstream open-source Python agent from Nous Research. ClawUp wraps it with the same provisioning, storage, and billing as OpenClaw so that it behaves the same way from a user-visible perspective (Create Claw, Add Model, Install Tools, chat, pair channels). Strongest fit when you want:
  • Built-in code execution — Hermes ships a terminal tool, a Python sandbox, and delegation primitives directly in the agent loop.
  • Python-native tool ecosystem — skill packages are installed via hermes skills install <slug> and can pull any Python dependency.
  • OpenAI-compatible proxies — provider: custom + base_url lets you point at any OpenAI-API-shaped endpoint.
Data layout inside the runtime:

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Differences from OpenClaw

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Known gaps

  • Hermes on Aliyun ACK runs behind a readiness probe tuned for Hermes’s 90–120 s cold start. First-provision takes visibly longer than OpenClaw.
  • Hermes self-restart on pairing — the first unauthorized inbound message on Telegram triggers a Hermes-internal restart cycle while the allowlist settles. Subsequent messages are stable.
  • Hermes teams still reconcile through the same loop as OpenClaw teams; Nebula and remote_send interop is supported but has less mileage in production.

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Picking a runtime

Choose OpenClaw if you want the shortest path to a ClawHub skill pack, the most-polished Teams flow, or live config reloads without container restarts. Choose Hermes Agent if you want built-in code execution, Python-based skills, or are integrating an OpenAI-compatible LLM proxy. If you’re unsure, start with OpenClaw — you can always create a second Claw on Hermes later and copy workspace files across with the Files API.