PicoClaw: Ultra-Efficient AI Assistant in Go

$10 Hardware · 10MB RAM · 1s Boot · 皮皮虾，我们走！

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🦐 PicoClaw is an ultra-lightweight personal AI Assistant inspired by nanobot, refactored from the ground up in Go through a self-bootstrapping process, where the AI agent itself drove the entire architectural migration and code optimization.

⚡️ Runs on $10 hardware with <10MB RAM: That's 99% less memory than OpenClaw and 98% cheaper than a Mac mini!

2026-02-13 🎉 PicoClaw hit 5000 stars in 4days! Thank you for the community! There are so many PRs&issues come in (during Chinese New Year holidays), we are finalizing the Project Roadmap and setting up the Developer Group to accelerate PicoClaw's development.
🚀 Call to Action: Please submit your feature requests in GitHub Discussions. We will review and prioritize them during our upcoming weekly meeting.

2026-02-09 🎉 PicoClaw Launched! Built in 1 day to bring AI Agents to $10 hardware with <10MB RAM. 🦐 PicoClaw，Let's Go！

Binary size (production, linux/amd64)

• Current production binary (make build): 28,523,335 B (~27.20 MiB)
• Upstream baseline binary (9d5728e): 26,375,085 B (~25.15 MiB)
• Growth vs upstream baseline: +2,148,250 B (~+2.05 MiB, +8.15%)
• Practical impact: still typically fine for low-cost Linux SBC devices, but this is no longer a negligible delta. For constrained boards, watch both RAM profile and storage budget.

🪶 Ultra-Lightweight: <10MB Memory footprint — 99% smaller than Clawdbot - core functionality.

💰 Minimal Cost: Efficient enough to run on $10 Hardware — 98% cheaper than a Mac mini.

⚡️ Lightning Fast: 400X Faster startup time, boot in 1 second even in 0.6GHz single core.

🌍 True Portability: Single self-contained binary across RISC-V, ARM, and x86, One-click to Go!

🤖 AI-Bootstrapped: Autonomous Go-native implementation — 95% Agent-generated core with human-in-the-loop refinement.

PicoClaw can be deployed on almost any Linux device!

• $9.9 LicheeRV-Nano E(Ethernet) or W(WiFi6) version, for Minimal Home Assistant
• $30~50 NanoKVM, or $100 NanoKVM-Pro for Automated Server Maintenance
• $50 MaixCAM or $100 MaixCAM2 for Smart Monitoring

🌟 More Deployment Cases Await！

Download the firmware for your platform from the release page.

git clone https://github.com/sipeed/picoclaw.git

cd picoclaw
make deps

# Build, no need to install
make build

# Build for multiple platforms
make build-all

# Build And Install
make install

# Hybrid memory optimization from binary (dry-run)
picoclaw memopt --workspace ~/.picoclaw/workspace

# Apply deterministic pass
picoclaw memopt --workspace ~/.picoclaw/workspace --apply

# Apply deterministic + optional LLM pass
picoclaw memopt --workspace ~/.picoclaw/workspace --apply --llm

# Optional: override minimum MEMORY.md size for LLM rewrite (default: 8000 chars, 0 disables)
picoclaw memopt --workspace ~/.picoclaw/workspace --apply --llm --llm-min-chars 12000

You can also run PicoClaw using Docker Compose without installing anything locally.

# 1. Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/sipeed/picoclaw.git
cd picoclaw

# 2. Set your API keys
cp config/config.example.json config/config.json
vim config/config.json      # Set DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN, API keys, etc.

# 3. Build & Start
docker compose --profile gateway up -d

# 4. Check logs
docker compose logs -f picoclaw-gateway

# 5. Stop
docker compose --profile gateway down

# Ask a question
docker compose run --rm picoclaw-agent -m "What is 2+2?"

# Interactive mode
docker compose run --rm picoclaw-agent

docker compose --profile gateway build --no-cache
docker compose --profile gateway up -d

1. Initialize

picoclaw onboard

2. Configure (~/.picoclaw/config.json)

{
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "workspace": "~/.picoclaw/workspace",
      "model": "glm-4.7",
      "max_tokens": 8192,
      "llm_stream_mode": "auto",
      "max_iterations": 20,
      "temperature": 0.7,
      "max_tool_iterations": 20,
      "llm_timeout": 120,
      "llm_max_retries": 2,
      "llm_retry_backoff_seconds": 2,
      "llm_retry_max_backoff_seconds": 8,
      "llm_rate_limit_backoff_seconds": 10,
      "llm_rate_limit_max_backoff_seconds": 30,
      "llm_retry_max_elapsed_seconds": 60,
      "history_message_threshold": 100,
      "summary_keep_last_messages": 4
    },
    "subagents": {
      "model": "glm-4.7",
      "max_tokens": 4096,
      "llm_stream_mode": "auto",
      "max_iterations": 20,
      "max_tool_iterations": 20,
      "memory_threshold": 0.8,
      "summary_keep_last_messages": 4
    }
  },
  "providers": {
    "openrouter": {
      "api_key": "xxx",
      "api_base": "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1"
    }
  },
  "tools": {
    "policy": {
      "deny_by_default": false,
      "deny_list": [],
      "allow_list": [],
      "notify_on_block": true
    },
    "spawn": {
      "enabled": true,
      "allow_llm_status": true,
      "allow_llm_history": true,
      "allow_llm_message": true,
      "allow_llm_cancel": false
    },
    "subagent": {
      "enabled": true
    },
    "web": {
      "brave": {
        "enabled": false,
        "api_key": "YOUR_BRAVE_API_KEY",
        "max_results": 5
      },
      "duckduckgo": {
        "enabled": true,
        "max_results": 5
      }
    }
  }
}

Retry semantics (exact):

• Total attempts = 1 + llm_max_retries (initial call + retries).
• Retryable/API 5xx wait uses exponential backoff: wait = min(llm_retry_backoff_seconds * 2^retry_index, llm_retry_max_backoff_seconds). retry_index starts at 0 for the first retry.
• Rate-limit (429) wait uses linear backoff: wait = min(llm_rate_limit_backoff_seconds * (retry_index + 1), llm_rate_limit_max_backoff_seconds).
• llm_retry_max_elapsed_seconds limits only cumulative retry sleep/wait time for one LLM call (not the request execution time itself). 0 means no limit.

Example (3 retries within 300s budget):

• llm_max_retries=3
• llm_retry_backoff_seconds=30
• llm_retry_max_backoff_seconds=120
• llm_rate_limit_backoff_seconds=60
• llm_rate_limit_max_backoff_seconds=120
• llm_retry_max_elapsed_seconds=300

3. Get API Keys

• LLM Provider: OpenRouter · Zhipu · Anthropic · OpenAI · Gemini
• Web Search (optional): Brave Search - Free tier available (2000 requests/month)

Note: See config.example.json for a complete configuration template.

4. Chat

picoclaw agent -m "What is 2+2?"

That's it! You have a working AI assistant in 2 minutes.

Talk to your picoclaw through Telegram, Discord, DingTalk, or LINE

{
  "channels": {
    "telegram": {
      "enabled": true,
      "token": "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN",
      "proxy": "",
      "allow_from": ["YOUR_USER_ID"]
    }
  }
}

picoclaw gateway

{
  "channels": {
    "discord": {
      "enabled": true,
      "token": "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN",
      "allowFrom": ["YOUR_USER_ID"]
    }
  }
}

picoclaw gateway

{
  "channels": {
    "qq": {
      "enabled": true,
      "app_id": "YOUR_APP_ID",
      "app_secret": "YOUR_APP_SECRET",
      "allow_from": []
    }
  }
}

picoclaw gateway

{
  "channels": {
    "dingtalk": {
      "enabled": true,
      "client_id": "YOUR_CLIENT_ID",
      "client_secret": "YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET",
      "allow_from": []
    }
  }
}

picoclaw gateway

{
  "channels": {
    "line": {
      "enabled": true,
      "channel_secret": "YOUR_CHANNEL_SECRET",
      "channel_access_token": "YOUR_CHANNEL_ACCESS_TOKEN",
      "webhook_host": "0.0.0.0",
      "webhook_port": 18791,
      "webhook_path": "/webhook/line",
      "allow_from": []
    }
  }
}

# Example with ngrok
ngrok http 18791

picoclaw gateway

{
  "channels": {
    "slack": {
      "enabled": true,
      "bot_token": "xoxb-xxx",
      "app_token": "xapp-xxx",
      "allow_from": []
    }
  }
}

picoclaw gateway

{
  "channels": {
    "maixcam": {
      "enabled": true,
      "host": "0.0.0.0",
      "port": 18790,
      "allow_from": []
    }
  }
}

picoclaw gateway

{
  "channels": {
    "onebot": {
      "enabled": true,
      "ws_url": "ws://127.0.0.1:3001",
      "access_token": "",
      "reconnect_interval": 5,
      "group_trigger_prefix": [".", "/"],
      "allow_from": []
    }
  }
}

picoclaw gateway

{
  "channels": {
    "whatsapp": {
      "enabled": true,
      "bridge_url": "ws://localhost:3001",
      "allow_from": []
    }
  }
}

picoclaw gateway

{
  "channels": {
    "feishu": {
      "enabled": true,
      "app_id": "cli_xxx",
      "app_secret": "xxx",
      "encrypt_key": "",
      "verification_token": "",
      "allow_from": []
    }
  }
}

picoclaw gateway

Connect Picoclaw to the Agent Social Network simply by sending a single message via the CLI or any integrated Chat App.

Read https://clawdchat.ai/skill.md and follow the instructions to join ClawdChat.ai

Config file: ~/.picoclaw/config.json

PicoClaw stores data in your configured workspace (default: ~/.picoclaw/workspace):

~/.picoclaw/workspace/
├── sessions/          # Conversation sessions and history
├── memory/           # Long-term memory (MEMORY.md)
├── state/            # Persistent state (last channel, etc.)
├── cron/             # Scheduled jobs database
├── skills/           # Custom skills
├── AGENTS.md         # Agent behavior guide
├── HEARTBEAT.md      # Periodic task prompts (checked every 30 min)
├── IDENTITY.md       # Agent identity
├── SOUL.md           # Agent soul
├── TOOLS.md          # Tool descriptions
└── USER.md           # User preferences

PicoClaw runs in a sandboxed environment by default. The agent can only access files and execute commands within the configured workspace.

{
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "workspace": "~/.picoclaw/workspace",
      "restrict_to_workspace": true,
      "deny_path_patterns": ["**/.git/**", "**/.beads/issues.json"]
    }
  }
}

When restrict_to_workspace: true, the following tools are sandboxed:

Even with restrict_to_workspace: false, the exec tool blocks these dangerous commands:

• rm -rf, del /f, rmdir /s — Bulk deletion
• format, mkfs, diskpart — Disk formatting
• dd if= — Disk imaging
• Writing to /dev/sd[a-z] — Direct disk writes
• shutdown, reboot, poweroff — System shutdown
• Fork bomb :(){ :|:& };:

When restrict_to_workspace: true, absolute-path checks ignore known free-text flags so descriptive text is not misclassified as a filesystem path:

• --description
• --body
• --message
• --title
• -m

You can always block sensitive paths with deny_path_patterns, even when restrict_to_workspace is disabled.

Example:

{
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "restrict_to_workspace": false,
      "deny_path_patterns": ["**/.git/**", "**/.beads/issues.json"]
    }
  }
}

Supported glob style:

• * matches any chars except /
• ** matches across directories
• ? matches one char except /

[ERROR] tool: Tool execution failed
{tool=exec, error=Command blocked by safety guard (path outside working dir)}

[ERROR] tool: Tool execution failed
{tool=exec, error=Command blocked by safety guard (dangerous pattern detected)}

If you need the agent to access paths outside the workspace:

Method 1: Config file

{
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "restrict_to_workspace": false
    }
  }
}

Method 2: Environment variable

export PICOCLAW_AGENTS_DEFAULTS_RESTRICT_TO_WORKSPACE=false

⚠️ Warning: Disabling this restriction allows the agent to access any path on your system. Use with caution in controlled environments only.

The restrict_to_workspace setting applies consistently across all execution paths:

All paths share the same workspace restriction — there's no way to bypass the security boundary through subagents or scheduled tasks.

Before agent and gateway start, PicoClaw runs a preflight check to fail fast on invalid workspace state:

• Verifies required workspace bootstrap files exist (AGENTS.md, IDENTITY.md, SOUL.md, USER.md, memory/MEMORY.md)
• Detects invalid project agent directories (workspace/projects/*/agents)
• Lints SKILL.md files for valid YAML frontmatter (name, description)
• Blocks unsafe instruction patterns in skills (for example grep -r and find . -name)

Startup behavior:

• Fatal issues (workspace/bootstrap structure) abort startup.
• Skill lint issues are warning-only (startup continues).
• On gateway startup, warnings can be injected into the active session so the main agent can fix them in the main thread.

You can configure a startup prompt that is injected into the last active channel/session immediately after gateway start (not idle). Gateway also sends an automatic startup notice to all known external sessions (channel:chat) with the configured auto-message prefix.

Example:

{
  "gateway": {
    "startup_prompt": {
      "enabled": true,
      "template": "System restart detected at {{timestamp}} for {{channel}}:{{chat_id}}. Greet the user in this channel and continue with full continuity.",
      "include_preflight_warnings": true
    }
  }
}

Available template variables:

• {{timestamp}}
• {{channel}}
• {{chat_id}}

Gateway can send an automatic outbound message to all known external sessions before shutdown.

Example:

{
  "gateway": {
    "sys_message_prefix": "[SYS]",
    "auto_final_prefix": "[AUTO]",
    "shutdown_notice": {
      "enabled": true,
      "template": "Gateway shutdown signal {{signal}} at {{timestamp}} for {{channel}}:{{chat_id}}. I am going offline now."
    }
  }
}

Template variables:

• {{timestamp}}
• {{signal}}
• {{channel}}
• {{chat_id}}

Note:

• Works for handled signals (Ctrl+C, SIGTERM, SIGHUP).
• Cannot run on hard kill (SIGKILL / kill -9).

PicoClaw can perform periodic tasks automatically. Create a HEARTBEAT.md file in your workspace:

# Periodic Tasks

- Check my email for important messages
- Review my calendar for upcoming events
- Check the weather forecast

The agent will read this file every 30 minutes (configurable) and execute any tasks using available tools.

For long-running tasks (web search, API calls), use the spawn tool to create a subagent:

# Periodic Tasks

## Quick Tasks (respond directly)
- Report current time

## Long Tasks (use spawn for async)
- Search the web for AI news and summarize
- Check email and report important messages

Key behaviors:

Heartbeat triggers
    ↓
Agent reads HEARTBEAT.md
    ↓
For long task: spawn subagent
    ↓                           ↓
Continue to next task      Subagent works independently
    ↓                           ↓
All tasks done            Subagent uses "message" tool
    ↓                           ↓
Respond HEARTBEAT_OK      User receives result directly

The subagent has access to tools (message, web_search, etc.) and can communicate with the user independently without going through the main agent.

Both spawn and subagent tools support an optional name parameter. A named agent has a persistent home in workspace/agents/<name>/:

workspace/
  agents/
    <name>/
      AGENTS.md          ← agent identity (create manually or via main agent)
      memory/
        MEMORY.md        ← long-term memory (agent writes here after tasks)
        YYYYMM/
          YYYYMMDD.md    ← daily notes

When name is set, the agent's identity and memory are automatically loaded into its system prompt, and the agent receives instructions to save learnings back to its memory files using write_file/append_file.

Named subagents also run with write-scope guards:

• Default named agent scope: workspace/agents/<name>/memory/**
• Optional task directory scope: directory passed to spawn/subagent
• Special case picoclaw-self-update:
  • workspace/projects/picoclaw/**
  • workspace/agents/picoclaw-self-update/memory/**

## In HEARTBEAT.md or task prompt
Use spawn tool with name="coder" to handle the coding task

AGENTS.md format (YAML frontmatter required for discovery):

---
name: coder
description: Senior Go developer specializing in clean architecture and testing
---

## Identity

You are a senior Go developer...

The name and description fields in the frontmatter are used to advertise the agent in the main agent's system prompt — so the main agent knows which named agents are available and what they do.

• Identity (AGENTS.md): Role definition, skills, and personality for the agent.
• Memory (memory/MEMORY.md): Persists across sessions — the agent grows over time.
• Backward compatible: Without name, behavior is identical to before.
• Security: Names with path separators or dots are silently ignored to prevent traversal.

Configuration:

{
  "heartbeat": {
    "enabled": true,
    "interval": 30
  }
}

Environment variables:

• PICOCLAW_HEARTBEAT_ENABLED=false to disable
• PICOCLAW_HEARTBEAT_INTERVAL=60 to change interval

Retry semantics (exact):

• Total attempts = 1 + llm_max_retries (initial call + retries).
• Retryable/API 5xx wait uses exponential backoff: wait = min(llm_retry_backoff_seconds * 2^retry_index, llm_retry_max_backoff_seconds). retry_index starts at 0 for the first retry.
• Rate-limit (429) wait uses linear backoff: wait = min(llm_rate_limit_backoff_seconds * (retry_index + 1), llm_rate_limit_max_backoff_seconds).
• llm_retry_max_elapsed_seconds limits only cumulative retry sleep/wait time for one LLM call (not the request execution time itself). 0 means no limit.

When no message is received for timeout_minutes, the agent reads IDLE.md from the workspace and executes it as a prompt. The idle prompt includes runtime idle context metadata:

• idle_streak_count
• idle_since
• last_user_message_at
• seconds_since_user_message

Run picoclaw gateway --debug (or -d) for detailed runtime diagnostics.

• Queue internals (enqueue/dequeue/merge/delete/wait) are emitted as DEBUG logs from component bus.
• Subagent-related runtime lines are prefixed in console as [SUBAGENT:<id>].

Inbound messages are enriched with timing metadata:

• received_at
• enqueued_at
• delta_since_prev_ms
• queue_len_at_enqueue
• gap_notice (set when silence gap exceeds gap_notice_seconds)

Each provider supports these options:

{
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "workspace": "~/.picoclaw/workspace",
      "model": "glm-4.7",
      "max_tokens": 8192,
      "max_iterations": 20,
      "temperature": 0.7,
      "max_tool_iterations": 20
    }
  },
  "providers": {
    "zhipu": {
      "api_key": "Your API Key",
      "api_base": "https://open.bigmodel.cn/api/paas/v4"
    }
  }
}

picoclaw agent -m "Hello"

{
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "workspace": "~/.picoclaw/workspace",
      "restrict_to_workspace": true,
      "provider": "",
      "model": "anthropic/claude-opus-4-5",
      "max_tokens": 8192,
      "llm_stream_mode": "auto",
      "max_iterations": 20,
      "temperature": 0.7,
      "max_tool_iterations": 20,
      "max_concurrent_subagents": 2,
      "llm_timeout": 120,
      "llm_max_retries": 2,
      "llm_retry_backoff_seconds": 2,
      "llm_retry_max_backoff_seconds": 8,
      "llm_rate_limit_backoff_seconds": 10,
      "llm_rate_limit_max_backoff_seconds": 30,
      "llm_retry_max_elapsed_seconds": 60,
      "history_message_threshold": 100,
      "summary_keep_last_messages": 4
    },
    "subagents": {
      "model": "glm-4.7",
      "max_tokens": 4096,
      "llm_stream_mode": "auto",
      "max_iterations": 20,
      "max_tool_iterations": 20,
      "memory_threshold": 0.8,
      "summary_keep_last_messages": 4
    },
    "example_named_agent": {
      "llm_stream_mode": "auto",
      "max_iterations": 20,
      "max_tool_iterations": 20,
      "max_concurrent_subagents": 1,
      "memory_threshold": 0.8,
      "summary_keep_last_messages": 4
    }
  },
  "providers": {
    "openrouter": {
      "api_key": "sk-or-v1-xxx",
      "api_base": "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1",
      "proxy": ""
    },
    "groq": {
      "api_key": "gsk_xxx"
    }
  },
  "gateway": {
    "host": "0.0.0.0",
    "port": 18790,
    "sys_message_prefix": "[SYS]",
    "auto_final_prefix": "[AUTO]",
    "startup_prompt": {
      "enabled": true,
      "template": "System restart detected at {{timestamp}} for {{channel}}:{{chat_id}}. Greet the user in this channel and continue with full continuity.",
      "include_preflight_warnings": true
    },
    "shutdown_notice": {
      "enabled": true,
      "template": "Gateway shutdown signal {{signal}} at {{timestamp}} for {{channel}}:{{chat_id}}. I am going offline now."
    }
  },
  "channels": {
    "telegram": {
      "enabled": true,
      "token": "123456:ABC...",
      "proxy": "",
      "allow_from": ["123456789"]
    },
    "discord": {
      "enabled": true,
      "token": "",
      "allow_from": [""]
    },
    "slack": {
      "enabled": false,
      "bot_token": "xoxb-xxx",
      "app_token": "xapp-xxx",
      "allow_from": []
    },
    "maixcam": {
      "enabled": false,
      "host": "0.0.0.0",
      "port": 18790,
      "allow_from": []
    },
    "onebot": {
      "enabled": false,
      "ws_url": "ws://127.0.0.1:3001",
      "access_token": "",
      "reconnect_interval": 5,
      "group_trigger_prefix": [],
      "allow_from": []
    },
    "whatsapp": {
      "enabled": false,
      "bridge_url": "ws://localhost:3001",
      "allow_from": []
    },
    "feishu": {
      "enabled": false,
      "app_id": "cli_xxx",
      "app_secret": "xxx",
      "encrypt_key": "",
      "verification_token": "",
      "allow_from": []
    },
    "qq": {
      "enabled": false,
      "app_id": "",
      "app_secret": "",
      "allow_from": []
    },
    "dingtalk": {
      "enabled": false,
      "client_id": "",
      "client_secret": "",
      "allow_from": []
    },
    "line": {
      "enabled": false,
      "channel_secret": "",
      "channel_access_token": "",
      "webhook_host": "0.0.0.0",
      "webhook_port": 18791,
      "webhook_path": "/webhook/line",
      "allow_from": []
    }
  },
  "tools": {
    "policy": {
      "deny_by_default": false,
      "deny_list": [],
      "allow_list": [],
      "notify_on_block": true
    },
    "spawn": {
      "enabled": true,
      "allow_llm_status": true,
      "allow_llm_history": true,
      "allow_llm_message": true,
      "allow_llm_cancel": false
    },
    "subagent": {
      "enabled": true
    },
    "web": {
      "zai": {
        "enabled": false,
        "api_key": "",
        "endpoint": "https://api.z.ai/api/mcp/web_search_prime/mcp",
        "endpoint_fetch": "https://api.z.ai/api/mcp/web_reader/mcp",
        "max_results": 10,
        "timeout": 60
      },
      "brave": {
        "enabled": false,
        "api_key": "BSA...",
        "max_results": 5
      },
      "duckduckgo": {
        "enabled": true,
        "max_results": 5
      }
    }
  },
  "heartbeat": {
    "enabled": true,
    "interval": 30
  },
  "idle": {
    "enabled": false,
    "timeout_minutes": 5,
    "repeat": true
  },
  "devices": {
    "enabled": false,
    "monitor_usb": true
  },
  "ingress": {
    "merge_window_seconds": 3,
    "gap_notice_seconds": 600,
    "concat_prefix": "+"
  },
  "logging": {
    "enabled": false,
    "dir": "~/.picoclaw/workspace/logs",
    "level": "info"
  }
}

PicoClaw supports scheduled reminders and recurring tasks through the cron tool:

• One-time reminders: "Remind me in 10 minutes" → triggers once after 10min
• Recurring tasks: "Remind me every 2 hours" → triggers every 2 hours
• Cron expressions: "Remind me at 9am daily" → uses cron expression

Jobs are stored in ~/.picoclaw/workspace/cron/ and processed automatically.

PRs welcome! The codebase is intentionally small and readable. 🤗

Roadmap coming soon...

Developer group building, Entry Requirement: At least 1 Merged PR.

User Groups:

discord: https://discord.gg/V4sAZ9XWpN

This is normal if you haven't configured a search API key yet. PicoClaw will provide helpful links for manual searching.

To enable web search:

1. Option 1 (Recommended): Z.AI - Get API key at z.ai for MCP-powered search + fetch + vision
2. Option 2: Brave Search API (2000 free queries/month)
3. Option 3 (No API Key): DuckDuckGo (free, no key required)

Z.AI provides unified MCP tools: webSearchPrime (search), webReader (fetch), zread (deep research), vision (image understanding).

{
  "tools": {
    "web": {
      "zai": {
        "enabled": true,
        "api_key": "YOUR_ZAI_API_KEY",
        "endpoint": "https://api.z.ai/api/mcp/web_search_prime/mcp",
        "endpoint_fetch": "https://api.z.ai/api/mcp/web_reader/mcp",
        "max_results": 10,
        "timeout": 60
      },
      "brave": { "enabled": false },
      "duckduckgo": { "enabled": false }
    }
  }
}

{
  "tools": {
    "web": {
      "brave": {
        "enabled": true,
        "api_key": "YOUR_BRAVE_API_KEY",
        "max_results": 5
      },
      "duckduckgo": {
        "enabled": false,
        "max_results": 5
      },
      "zai": { "enabled": false }
    }
  }
}

Some providers (like Zhipu) have content filtering. Try rephrasing your query or use a different model.

If your logs show provider-side prompt tokens above the configured context window, reduce agents.defaults.context_window and agents.defaults.max_tokens and restart gateway. PicoClaw also applies conservative pre-call context trimming, but different providers may tokenize prompts differently.

This happens when another instance of the bot is running. Make sure only one picoclaw gateway is running at a time.