PicoClaw AI Assistant
Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection.
PicoClaw is an ultra-lightweight personal AI assistant written in Go. It runs on $10 hardware with under 10MB RAM and boots in under 1 second. It supports multiple LLM providers (OpenAI-compatible, Anthropic, Volcengine), optional web search tools, and deploys as a single self-contained binary on x86_64, ARM64, MIPS, and RISC-V Linux devices.
Installation
Precompiled Binary
Download from the releases page:
Build from Source
Docker Compose
Docker: Web Console (Launcher Mode)
Docker: One-shot Agent Mode
Docker: Expose Gateway to Host
If the gateway needs to be reachable from the host, set:
Or set PICOCLAW_GATEWAY_HOST=0.0.0.0 in docker/data/config.json.
Termux (Android)
Quick Start
1. Initialize
This creates ~/.picoclaw/config.json with a starter configuration.
2. Configure ~/.picoclaw/config.json
Never hard-code API keys. Reference environment variables using
$VAR_NAMEnotation in config, or set them in your shell environment before launch.
3. Run
Key CLI Commands
Configuration Reference
Model Entry Fields
Supported Provider Prefixes
Agent Defaults
Web Search Tools
Get free API keys:
- Tavily: https://tavily.com — 1,000 free queries/month
- Brave Search: https://brave.com/search/api — 2,000 free queries/month
Only enable one search provider at a time unless you want fallback behavior.
Common Patterns
Pattern: Minimal $10 Device Setup
For a LicheeRV-Nano or similar ultra-low-resource board:
Pattern: Full-Stack Dev Assistant with Web Search
Pattern: Docker with Environment Variables
Pattern: Build for a Specific Target in Go
Troubleshooting
Binary won't execute on device
"Permission denied" on Termux
Termux requires proot for some system calls:
API key not recognized
- Do not use
"api_key": "sk-..."literals in config — set env vars and reference them as"$OPENAI_API_KEY". - Verify the env var is exported in your current shell:
echo $OPENAI_API_KEY.
Docker gateway not reachable from host
Set PICOCLAW_GATEWAY_HOST=0.0.0.0 in the environment or in config.json before starting the container.
High memory usage in recent versions
The project notes that recent PRs may push RAM usage to 10–20MB. If this is a concern on ultra-low-memory devices, pin to an earlier release tag:
Config file location
Default: ~/.picoclaw/config.json
Override at runtime:


