OpenClaw is the agent runtime I use to build everything else. It’s deliberately small: a clear loop, a tool registry, and a state object you can step through with a debugger. Featured as the centrepiece of Episode 02 of The Agentic Engineer, where I walk through how the brain–hands–loop separation makes agents predictable and debuggable instead of magical and fragile.
Most agent tutorials demo a chat. Real agents need to *do*: call tools reliably, recover from errors, stay grounded in context. The gap between 'hello world agent' and 'agent that ships work' is enormous, and most frameworks hide it behind abstractions you can't debug.
A minimal, transparent agent runtime. A clean brain–hands–loop separation: the LLM decides, tools execute, the loop handles retries and state. Every layer is inspectable. Every tool is just a function. The same harness scales from a script you run locally to an agent embedded in production systems.
Engineers can read the entire framework in an afternoon, then ship a working agent the same day. Featured as the deep-dive subject of Episode 02, with a full walkthrough of how it works and why each piece matters.