Setting up OpenClaw isn’t as straightforward as the internet wants you to think – running local AI on humble hardware

A reviewer tested OpenClaw on a Beelink SER10 MAX mini PC, choosing between cloud and local inference while tuning memory use and model size.

A large Gemma 31B model was too slow for practical use, so the setup switched to a smaller Gemma 12B model that performed much better.

OpenClaw relies on llama.cpp and includes setup steps for remote control and assistant configuration.

The hands-on test highlights the limits of autonomous AI agents on modest hardware and shows that usable local AI often requires smaller models and tradeoffs.