zeptoclaw

Open source

Fast, small, secure, local-first personal AI assistant infrastructure: one Rust binary for tools, memory, channels, providers, and sandboxed autonomy.

645 stars0 likes0 views

Website GitHub

About

Fast, small, secure, local-first personal AI assistant infrastructure: one Rust binary for tools, memory, channels, providers, and sandboxed autonomy.

ZeptoClaw

Fast, small, secure, and local-first personal AI assistant infrastructure.

$ zeptoclaw agent --stream -m "Analyze our API for security issues"

 ZeptoClaw — Streaming analysis...

  [web_fetch]        Fetching API docs...
  [shell]            Running integration tests...
  [longterm_memory]  Storing findings...

→ Found 12 endpoints, 3 missing auth headers, 1 open redirect
→ Saved findings to long-term memory under "api-audit"

✓ Analysis complete in 4.2s

ZeptoClaw is one Rust binary for running personal AI agents locally, at the edge, or on a VPS — with tools, memory, channels, providers, and sandboxed autonomy built in. We studied the best AI assistants — and their tradeoffs: OpenClaw's integrations without the large TypeScript app footprint, NanoClaw's container-isolated simplicity without narrowing to a tiny assistant core, NemoClaw's OpenShell guardrails without the Docker/k3s footprint, and PicoClaw's edge efficiency with Rust's safety and runtime controls.

Why ZeptoClaw

We studied what works — and what doesn't.

OpenClaw proved a personal AI assistant can grow into a broad integration and skills ecosystem. NanoClaw proved container isolation can be simple enough to understand and customize. NemoClaw proved managed guardrails matter — policy-gated sandboxes, routed inference, credential injection, channel messaging, and digest-verified blueprints. PicoClaw proved edge assistants can run on $10 hardware with a Go binary under 10MB of RAM.

ZeptoClaw took notes. The integrations, the security, the governance, the size discipline — without the tradeoffs each one made. One 6MB Rust binary that starts in 50ms, uses 6MB of RAM, and ships with container isolation, prompt injection detection, and a circuit breaker provider stack.

	OpenClaw	NemoClaw	NanoClaw	PicoClaw	ZeptoClaw
Core shape	Broad TypeScript assistant + skills ecosystem	OpenClaw managed through OpenShell	Small TypeScript Claude assistant	Go edge assistant	Single Rust binary
Footprint focus	Integration breadth	Docker/k3s guardrails, ~2.4GB sandbox image	~500-line core	Full documentation — zeptoclaw.com/docs covers configuration, environment variables, CLI reference, deployment guides, and more.

Inspired By

ZeptoClaw is inspired by projects in the open-source AI agent ecosystem — OpenClaw, NemoClaw, NanoClaw, and PicoClaw — each taking a different approach to the same problem. NemoClaw's policy model, routed inference, credential boundary, and digest-verified blueprint flow influenced our security thinking. ZeptoClaw's contribution is Rust's memory safety, async performance, and configurable isolation for local-first, edge, and production multi-tenant deployments — all in a 6MB binary that runs where Docker containers can't.

Usage

…

Development

bash

# Build
cargo build

# Run all tests (~3,900 total)
cargo nextest run --lib

# Lint and format (required before every PR)
cargo clippy -- -D warnings
cargo fmt -- --check

See CLAUDE.md for full architecture reference, AGENTS.md for coding guidelines, and docs/ for benchmarks, multi-tenant deployment, and performance guides.

Zepto Stack

ZeptoClaw is part of the Zepto stack — a modular local-first system for running on-device AI agents in production.

ZeptoPM        — orchestration, supervision, retries, job lifecycle
    │
    │  create(spec) + spawn(worker, args, env)
    ▼
ZeptoCapsule   — capsule creation, process isolation, resource enforcement
    │
    │  fork/namespace/microVM + stdio transport
    ▼
ZeptoClaw      — LLM calls, tool use, artifact production
    │
    └── JSON-line IPC over stdin/stdout back to ZeptoPM

Layer	Repo	Role
ZeptoPM	qhkm/zeptopm	Process manager — config-driven daemon, HTTP API, pipelines, orchestration
ZeptoCapsule	qhkm/zeptocapsule	Sandbox — process/namespace/Firecracker isolation, resource limits, fallback chains
ZeptoRT	qhkm/zeptort	Durable runtime — journaled effects, snapshot recovery, OTP-style supervision
ZeptoClaw	qhkm/zeptoclaw	Personal AI assistant infrastructure — tools, memory, providers, channels, sandboxed autonomy

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for:

How to set up your fork and branch from upstream
Issue-first workflow (open an issue before coding)
Pull request process and quality gates
Guides for adding new tools, channels, and providers

License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE

Disclaimer

ZeptoClaw is a pure open-source software project. It has no token, no cryptocurrency, no blockchain component, and no financial instrument of any kind. This project is not affiliated with any token or financial product.

ZeptoClaw — Local-first personal AI assistant infrastructure in one Rust binary.

Built by Aisar Labs

For commercial licensing, enterprise support, or managed hosting inquiries: [email protected]