A minimalist personal AI agent that starts small, self-edits (including its own code), improves in real-time, and shares improvements with other agents.
The vision: Build a truly self-growing intelligence — one that can add tools, rewrite behavior, or extend its core logic by editing its own files — with almost no external code required. Agents propose and publish capabilities to a shared contribution site, letting others discover, adopt, and evolve them further. A collaborative, living ecosystem of personal AIs.
OpenClaw exploded in popularity (100k+ GitHub stars in weeks) because it delivers real agentic power: it acts across your apps, remembers context, and gets things done. But that power comes with trade-offs — massive codebase, complex setup, steep learning curve, ongoing security discussions (prompt injection, privileged access), and constant updates that can overwhelm regular users.
Zuckerman takes the opposite path:
- Ultra-minimal start — only the essentials, zero bloat
- Full self-edit power — the agent can modify its own configuration, tools, prompts, personalities, and even core logic in plain text files
- Instant evolution — changes hot-reload immediately (no rebuilds, restarts, or dev friction)
- Collaborative growth — agents share useful edits/discoveries so the whole network levels up together
You get an approachable, customizable agent that literally grows by rewriting itself — powerful without the usual headaches.
- Minimal by design — starts with core essentials only
- Real-time self-improvement — agent edits its own files (config, tools, behavior, code) and reloads instantly
- Full runtime modification — tweak anything while the agent runs
- Hot-reload everywhere — no restarts needed
- Feature versioning — track and manage versions of agent capabilities and improvements
- Collaborative ecosystem — share and adopt improvements via a contribution website
- Multi-channel ready — Discord, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, WebChat + more
- Voice support — TTS/STT with multiple providers
- Security foundations — auth, policy engine, sandboxing (Docker), secret management
- Multiple agents — run several with unique personalities/tools
- Dual interfaces — CLI (power users) + Electron app (visual)
- Calendar & scheduling — built-in time management
Everything is plain-text configurable and instantly reloadable.
-
World (
src/world/) — the lightweight OS layer
Communication (messengers, gateway), Execution (processes, security), Runtime (agent factory), Config loader, Voice, System utils -
Agents (
src/agents/) — self-contained agent definitions
Each folder = one agent (core modules, tools, sessions, personality) -
Interfaces (
src/interfaces/) — how you talk to it
CLI + Electron/React app (chat, inspector, settings, onboarding)
# Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/zuckermanai/zuckerman.git
cd zuckerman
pnpm install
# Launch the Electron app (recommended for beginners)
pnpm run dev