A lobster-shaped AI on a stick
Open-source recipe for stuffing an AI assistant framework onto a USB drive, plug-and-play style.

What it does
U-Claw (虾盘 / “shrimp drive”) is a build recipe and source kit for turning the OpenClaw AI assistant framework into a portable USB payload. Run a setup script, copy the portable/ directory to a flash drive, then double-click to launch on Mac or Windows without installing anything. There’s also a one-liner curl installer if you’d rather skip the U盘 ritual entirely.
The interesting bit The project is aggressively China-optimized: all scripts default to domestic mirrors (npm, Node.js, Electron), bundles DeepSeek/Kimi/Qwen out of the box, and integrates QQ, Feishu, and WeChat alongside Telegram and Discord. It even fingerprints your USB stick or motherboard to auto-generate a cloud API key locally—no login, no upload, though you’ll need to top up the balance yourself.
Key highlights
- ~2.3GB payload, fits on a 4GB drive; exFAT recommended to avoid symlink carnage
- Bootable Linux variant via Ventoy + Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for bare-metal machines
- Electron desktop app alternative with unsigned
.dmgand.exereleases - Multi-model switching through a
Config.htmlinterface, configs persist on the drive - Windows support marked 🚧 “in development”; Mac Apple Silicon and Intel fully covered
Caveats
- Unsigned binaries trigger SmartScreen/Gatekeeper warnings; the README documents the bypasses
- Node.js version conflicts are a recurring FAQ theme—v24 breaks things, v20/v22 required
- The QQ bot plugin ships uncompiled TypeScript in some bundles; releases are the safer bet
Verdict Worth a look if you need offline-portable AI tooling for Chinese platforms or want to hand someone a “just plug it in” AI stick. Skip it if you’re all-in on cloud-native deployments or allergic to manually managing Node runtimes.