MimiClaw: Pocket AI Assitant on $5 chips

The world's first AI assistant on a $5 chip. No Linux. No Node.js. Just pure C

MimiClaw turns a tiny ESP32-S3 board into a personal AI assistant. Plug it into USB power, connect to WiFi, and talk to it through Telegram — it handles any task you throw at it and evolves over time with local memory — all on a chip the size of a thumb.

What It Does

• Chat on Telegram — message your bot from anywhere, get AI replies
• Remembers you — long-term memory + daily notes, survives reboots and power loss
• Always on — plug into USB, it runs 24/7 on ~0.5W
• Private — your conversations stay on your device, not someone else's server
• $5 hardware — just an ESP32-S3 dev board, nothing else

How It Works

You (Telegram) ───▶ ESP32-S3 ───▶ Claude AI
                        │
                    Memory chip
                    (your conversations,
                     personality, notes)

You send a message on Telegram. The board picks it up over WiFi, asks Claude for a response (using your stored personality and memory as context), and sends the reply back to Telegram. All your chat history and memories are saved on the board's flash storage as readable text files.

Quick Start

What You Need

• An ESP32-S3 dev board with 16 MB flash and 8 MB PSRAM (e.g. Xiaozhi AI board, ~$10)
• A USB Type-C cable
• A Telegram bot token — talk to @BotFather on Telegram to create one
• An Anthropic API key — from console.anthropic.com

Install

# You need ESP-IDF installed first:
# https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32s3/get-started/

git clone https://github.com/memovai/mimiclaw.git
cd mimiclaw

idf.py set-target esp32s3
idf.py build
idf.py -p /dev/ttyACM0 flash monitor

Set Up

After flashing, a serial console appears. Type these commands:

mimi> wifi_set YourWiFiName YourWiFiPassword
mimi> set_tg_token 123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11
mimi> set_api_key sk-ant-api03-xxxxx
mimi> restart

That's it. After restart, find your bot on Telegram and start chatting.

More Commands

mimi> wifi_status          # am I connected?
mimi> set_model claude-sonnet-4-5-20241022   # use a different model
mimi> memory_read          # see what the bot remembers
mimi> heap_info            # how much RAM is free?
mimi> session_list         # list all chat sessions
mimi> session_clear 12345  # wipe a conversation
mimi> restart              # reboot

Memory

MimiClaw stores everything as plain text files you can read and edit:

File	What it is
SOUL.md	The bot's personality — edit this to change how it behaves
USER.md	Info about you — name, preferences, language
MEMORY.md	Long-term memory — things the bot should always remember
2026-02-05.md	Daily notes — what happened today
tg_12345.jsonl	Chat history — your conversation with the bot

Also Included

• WebSocket gateway on port 18789 — connect from your LAN with any WebSocket client
• OTA updates — flash new firmware over WiFi, no USB needed
• Dual-core — network I/O and AI processing run on separate CPU cores

For Developers

Technical details live in the docs/ folder:

• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — system design, module map, task layout, memory budget, protocols, flash partitions
• docs/TODO.md — feature gap tracker and roadmap

License

MIT

Acknowledgments

Inspired by OpenClaw. MimiClaw reimplements the core AI agent architecture for embedded hardware — no Linux, no server, just a $5 chip.