alt Hacker NewsShow HN: DenchClaw – Local CRM on Top of OpenClaw
Hi everyone, I am Kumar, co-founder of Dench (https://denchclaw.com). We were part of YC S24, an agentic workflow company that previously worked with sales floors automating niche enterprise tasks such as outbound calling, legal intake, etc.
Building consumer / power-user software always gave me more joy than FDEing into an enterprise. It did not give me joy to manually add AI tools to a cloud harness for every small new thing, at least not as much as completely local software that is open source and has all the powers of OpenClaw (I can now talk to my CRM on Telegram!).
A week ago, we launched Ironclaw, an Open Source OpenClaw CRM Framework (https://x.com/garrytan/status/2023518514120937672?s=20) but people confused us with NearAI’s Ironclaw, so we changed our name to DenchClaw (https://denchclaw.com).
OpenClaw today feels like early React: the primitive is incredibly powerful, but the patterns are still forming, and everyone is piecing together their own way to actually use it. What made React explode was the emergence of frameworks like Gatsby and Next.js that turned raw capability into something opinionated, repeatable, and easy to adopt.
That is how we think about DenchClaw. We are trying to make it one of the clearest, most practical, and most complete ways to use OpenClaw in the real world.
Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfACTbc3Bh4#t=43
npx denchclaw
On Dench, everything sits in a file system, the table filters, views, column toggles, calendar/gantt views, etc, so OpenClaw can directly work with it using Dench’s CRM skill.
The CRM is built on top of DuckDB, the smallest, most performant and at the same time also feature rich database we could find. Thank you DuckDB team!
It creates a new OpenClaw profile called “dench”, and opens a new OpenClaw Gateway… that means you can run all your usual openclaw commands by just prefixing every command with `openclaw --profile dench` . It will start your gateway on port 19001 range. You will be able to access the DenchClaw frontend at localhost:3100. Once you open it on Safari, just add it to your Dock to use it as a PWA.
Think of it as Cursor for your Mac (also works on Linux and Windows) which is based on OpenClaw. DenchClaw has a file tree view for you to use it as an elevated finder tool to do anything on your mac. I use it to create slides, do linkedin outreach using MY browser.
DenchClaw finds your Chrome Profile and copies it fully into its own, so you won’t have to log in into all your websites again. DenchClaw sees what you see, does what you do. It’s an everything app, that sits locally on your mac.
Just ask it “hey import my notion”, “hey import everything from my hubspot”, and it will literally go into your browser, export all objects and documents and put it in its own workspace that you can use.
We would love you all to break it, stress test its CRM capabilities, how it streams subagents for lead enrichment, hook it into your Apollo, Gmail, Notion and everything there is. Looking forward to comments/feedback!
Comments
Seems interesting, but I see it's a fork of Openclaw that's many commits behind. Do you think you'll be able to keep DenchClaw updated with Openclaw?
I think a better solution would be to bring in one of the many Openclaw alternatives like NullClaw, ZeroClaw, etc. The magic of Openclaw is the heartbeat and cron modules so bringing in that piece should not be too difficult? I'll fork and hack away at it as well but the less dependent you are on other projects, the longer the longevity.
Looking at that star graph: Since OpenClaw became a thing, I can't help but conclude that Github interest/popularity metrics have become useless signals.
In terms of "[XYZ] for agents", I think CRM is a big one that people haven't talked about as much. It becomes super relevant as soon as people start using an agent for anything customer related.
And the design principals are already pretty well established (accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, custom object model, stages, etc.). It just needs to be turned into a database boilerplate with a bunch of agent tools. Excited to try this out.
Everything is skills. In a file system. That is the future.
Responding to some HN comments, I understand the focus on Sales Automation and Outreach can be worrysome.
But for me personally, this is where I do all knowledge work. For me it acts like Cursor, Happenstance, News Aggregator, Fun games creator like Pacman (it has an App Store), I can import Notion into editable MD files, create reports and presentations, etc.
Watched the demo — the outreach pipeline is impressive technically, but you mentioned midway that the drafted emails came out "kind of robotic" and needed manual editing. If a human still reviews and rewrites each one, where does the actual time saving land — in the data gathering, or somewhere else?
Great, thanks for making me Google what CRM means in this context. Neither your post nor your website explains the acronym.
Not a biggie, but might want to update the reference to 'Ironclaw' in the Try Ironclaw link at the top of dench.com
One on hand, this is genuinely cool. On the other end, this is the final nail in cold outreach's coffin.
I find it amusing that one of the main things to do with OpenClaw and other similar tools is create a Web Interface on top of it so that users can click on buttons when the entire promise of the technology is that you don't have to do any of that because it transcends standard UI.
I mean, ultimately why would you even need a CRM if not to sell something? And if you are going to sell something ultimately you want to get that done without any additional layers of abstraction. So the interface is the definition of the goal and the output is measured in results.
"Hey claw, I want to sell my product. Go figure it out!"
You don't need a UI for that.
Can my agents (powered by NanoClaw or Claude Code) use the CRM without installing OpenClaw codebase?
the crm isnt the hard part, the hard part is that most sales teams have a workflow problem disguised as a tooling problem. local first is smart but id focus on opinionated defaults for pipeline stages because thats where 90% of founders building their own crm get stuck, they model their process wrong then blame the software.
Well, of course I will test this thing you built in 2 days[1] for you!
[1]: https://xcancel.com/kumareth/status/2023534527113818625
I really want a DeathClaw product.
I just use plain-text files for my CRM in Obsidian [1]. Works great if you are a solo founder only.
[1] https://www.ssp.sh/brain/managing-my-business-with-obsidian/
At what point does this become an AI powered spamming machine?
Combining OpenClaw with sensitive personal data is a recipe for disaster.
Wow, sorry, but given how incredibly insecure all the "claw" agent type things are right now, does this really sound wise at all?
It sees everything you do, really? What's it gonna do with that data? You don't know.
Put all your customer data in there, all your customer relationships. It's fine, it couldn't leak all that information, it couldn't screw up any sensitive business details I'm sure. This is gonna go great.
Sorry AFK everybody I'm gonna go get myself a VibeMBA.
Anyway, good luck, I'm really looking forward to the user stories in a few weeks! I'm sure this won't go badly at all.
> It has a CRM focus because we asked a couple dozen hard-core OpenClaw users "what do you actually do", and it was sales automation, lead enrichment, biz dev, creating slides, linkedin outreach, email/notion/calendar stuff, and it's always painful to set up.
So basic automation and forcing the web to be "open"...
No one is talking about how AI is going to destroy business models that are dependent on dark patterns, on walled gardens, on poorly designed one size fits all implementations (so many things wedged sideways into sales force).
[dead]
[dead]
In response maybe we should design TCPAclaw. It is specialized in honeypotting all of the random cold call spam, tracks down the source of unsolicited contacts; including registration state, legal contacts, and registered agent(s). It then drafts and sends a TCPA letter and waits for one of two things to happen: Either a $500-$1500 check arriving in your mailbox, or the demand deadline elapses. In case of demand deadline elapse, TCPAclaw files a small claims suit in the appropriate court of jurisdiction.
Fight fire with fire.
> sales automation, lead enrichment, biz dev, [...] linkedin outreach,
Sigh.
[dead]
> It has a CRM focus because we asked a couple dozen hard-core OpenClaw users "what do you actually do", and it was sales automation, lead enrichment, biz dev, creating slides, linkedin outreach, email/notion/calendar stuff, and it's always painful to set up.
Fuck me, it's going to get worse before it gets better, isn't it?
OpenClaw opens a wide attack surface on your digital life that cannot be remediated so long as hallucinations and prompt injection remain unsolved problems. Anything built on top of it is equally insecure and probably even more insecure.
I really don't want to yuck anybody's yums or step on dev work that I had nothing to do with, because I've been there and I know it sucks, but OpenClaw is barely secure enough to even play with in a sandbox. Giving it private information about your real business and real business contacts feels like an absolutely insane thing to do.
At best OpenClaw is like a toy... if the toy was a gun and it shot real bullets. This feels like playing Russian roulette with your livelihood.