Why viral AI assistant Clawdbot was forced to become Moltbot

Clawdbot, the free open-source AI assistant that exploded across X (formerly Twitter) with praise from early adopters has officially shed its name.

The project is now called Moltbot.

The rebrand follows an email from Anthropic, the company behind Claude, whose models power Clawdbot's installations. Peter Steinberger, the creator of the project, said trademark concerns prompted the change, which he announced on X.

The project’s mascot, previously a space lobster named Clawd, has also been rebranded as Molty. 

“New shell, same lobster soul,” Steinberger wrote.

Steinberger has already renamed his GitHub repositories and the original clawd.bot website is being replaced by molt.bot.

Unlike typical chatbots, Moltbot is designed to act on a user’s behalf. It belongs to a category known as “agentic AI”, systems that can take actions automatically instead of only responding to questions. 

For example, Moltbot can monitor email, calendars and documents, remember past instructions, and alert users when important messages arrive.

Agentic AI has been one of the industry’s biggest ambitions. Many companies predicted 2025 would be the year these systems became mainstream. So far, most high-profile attempts have struggled.