chapter 0

The 888 KB Assistant

zclaw is an ESP32-resident AI agent written in C. It runs as a practical assistant over Telegram or host relay, with scheduling, GPIO control, memory, and a tight firmware budget.

Enjoy with zclaw

"Remind me in 20 minutes."
"Water the plants every day at 8:15."
"Set GPIO 5 high."
"Remember that my office sensor is on GPIO 4."

You send plain language, zclaw maps to tool calls, firmware executes on silicon.

You: In 20 minutes, check the garage sensor
Agent: Created schedule #7: once in 20 min -> check the garage sensor

Lobster soldering a Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-C3 — Tested targets: ESP32-C3, ESP32-S3, and ESP32-C6. Other ESP32 variants should work fine.

Read This Manual In Order

Chapter 1 · Getting Started Bootstrap install, flash, provision, and first successful boot. Chapter 2 · Tool Surface Current built-in tools and scheduling behavior, including one-shot jobs. Chapter 3 · Runtime Anatomy Task model, queues, LLM path, and practical constraints. Chapter 4 · Security & Ops Safety defaults, flash encryption, and production handling guidance.

Project Character

Language/runtime: C + ESP-IDF + FreeRTOS.
LLM backends: Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter.
Interface: Telegram and optional host web relay.
Philosophy: ship useful automation under strict resource bounds.