Hey HN. I'm Fabien, principal engineer, 25 years shipping production systems (Ruby, Swift, now Rust). I built Moltis because I wanted an AI assistant I could run myself, trust end to end, and make extensible in the Rust way using traits and the type system. It shares some ideas with OpenClaw (same memory approach, Pi-inspired self-extension) but is Rust-native from the ground up. The agent can create its own skills at runtime.
Moltis is one Rust binary, 150k lines, ~60MB, web UI included. No Node, no Python, no runtime deps. Multi-provider LLM routing (OpenAI, local GGUF/MLX, Hugging Face), sandboxed execution (Docker/Podman/Apple Containers), hybrid vector + full-text memory, MCP tool servers with auto-restart, and multi-channel (web, Telegram, API) with shared context. MIT licensed. No telemetry phoning home, but full observability built in (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus).
I've included 1-click deploys on DigitalOcean and Fly.io, but since a Docker image is provided you can easily run it on your own servers as well. I've written before about owning your content (https://pen.so/2020/11/07/own-your-content/) and owning your email (https://pen.so/2020/12/10/own-your-email/). Same logic here: if something touches your files, credentials, and daily workflow, you should be able to inspect it, audit it, and fork it if the project changes direction.
It's alpha. I use it daily and I'm shipping because it's useful, not because it's done.
Longer architecture deep-dive: https://pen.so/2026/02/12/moltis-a-personal-ai-assistant-bui...
Happy to discuss the Rust architecture, security model, or local LLM setup. Would love feedback.
zimbatm11 minutes ago
Isn't the point of OpenClaw that the agent can modify itself?
michelsedghan hour ago
I haven’t yet tried openclaw but can someone tell me how is this project different than that? Is this basically a different take on the same thing as openclaw? Dont get me wrong im not against it I just was wondering if theyre basically doing the same thing? If that’s the case I actually appreciate both projects, but idk what theyre doing and how theyre different?
fabienpensoopan hour ago
author here.
It's a different take and heavily inspired at first by OpenClaw, which is a great product and Peter the founder is an amazing human being. I'm adding features than I want, since I do Moltis for my own use but also try to add features than others will enjoy.
I think Rust makes a lot of sense security wise, it does add benefits like being a single binary and very easy to install. I also tried to make it easy to try with a 1-click deploy on the cloud.
I'm not sure this is convincing enough but I think you can only judge by yourself trying it out, and I'd love feedback.
michelsedgh18 minutes ago
Thanks for the explanation! I love different takes, so good luck! I will try it later on. As I said i haven’t tried openclaw but just a quick look it seems like your take has all the pain points of openclaw fixed! Thanks Fabien
vessenes2 hours ago
Cool!
One pain point I have with openclaw is compaction. It uses so many tokens that compaction happens often - but I'd say it's not great at keeping the thread. I think this could be a nice little benefit you offer folks if you can get higher quality continuity.
LaurensBERan hour ago
Very cool! I love the approach, OpenClaw is really cool but there's two major things holding me back for deploying it from friends a family;
- Cybersecurity (you can't expect a non-technical person to read a skill)
- Token usage (without a flat fee subscription it'll become expensive very fast)
I understand that security is a hard problem to solve but having a single binary + containers should definitely help! I'll definitely keep an eye on this.
gabmartinian hour ago
Hello! I tried to run with podman but it get stuck in the login of my bot :( Would check it out later on the development.
013an hour ago
Why can I only see gpt-5.2 and opus-4.5? Is this a limit on Moltis or can my API keys not access the latest models?
fabienpensoopan hour ago
You should not be limited, which provider do you use?
013an hour ago
For the models? Directly from Anthropic and OpenAI. I'm running moltis via the docker container
edit: There is a gpt-5.3 model, but selecting that gives me the error:
Error The model `gpt-5.3` does not exist or you do not have access to it. Provider: openai
I don't see a 5.3-codex, and no opus 4.6...
fabienpensoop23 minutes ago
Let me confirm, I just tried on digitalocean and I have a similar issue, the last version I published might have issue. Fixing as of now.
fabienpensoop32 minutes ago
oh so those are issues from the provider itself, you get to choose between model the provider advertise for you, meaning:
- you can have models you can not actually use (that gpt-5.3 response) - you can have model non-listed.
Those are all coming from the provider with your API_KEY.
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canadiantim37 minutes ago
Very nice.
Though, I am looking forward to the next generation of AI agents that aren't named after a lobster
fabienpensoop20 minutes ago
There is actually a reason, the Rust logo is a crab named Ferris: https://rustacean.net
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touristtam2 hours ago
moltis.org is down fwiw
fabienpensoopan hour ago
author here, it works for a few friends. Would love to fix it for you, but you can also just use the github project: https://github.com/moltis-org/moltis
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