Your coding agent's persistent, browser-based bunker

What it does PiClaw is a single-user, browser-based wrapper around the Pi Coding Agent. It bundles chat, code editing, a terminal, file viewers, VNC, and browser automation into one streaming web UI backed by SQLite. Everything persists in mounted volumes—chat history, media, tasks, token usage, and an encrypted keychain—so the agent remembers context across restarts.

The interesting bit Instead of treating the agent as a headless service, PiClaw gives it a literal workspace: a sidebar file explorer, drag-and-drop uploads, draw.io boards, kanban views, and even an embedded xterm.js terminal. It is essentially a desktop environment reconceived as a web app for an LLM.

Key highlights

• Ships as a single container with canonical volume paths for home state (/config) and projects (/workspace).
• Built-in viewers and tools cover Office/PDF/CSV files, draw.io, VNC, browser automation, MCP, and optional cross-instance IPC.
• Web UI streams over SSE, supports passkey/TOTP auth, mobile layouts, and optional WhatsApp integration.
• SQLite stores messages, media, tasks, and token usage; the README warns that deleting messages.db destroys all state.
• An experimental Electrobun desktop shell is available if you prefer a native window to a browser tab.

Caveats

• Windows is a secondary target with different shell process behavior; Unix-like hosts are the primary focus.
• Several features—the desktop shell, Microsoft 365 extension, and non-Docker install—are explicitly marked experimental.
• The workspace is strictly single-user, so team-shared deployments are out of scope.

Verdict Developers who want a private, persistent AI workspace in one container will find PiClaw immediately useful. If you need a multi-user SaaS, a headless API-only agent, or a fully supported Windows native experience, look elsewhere.