You Don't Need a Mac Mini to Run OpenClaw
The OpenClaw community loves recommending Mac Mini M4s, but if you're running cloud models, a $379 mini PC works just fine. Here's why.
๐ฆ Dispatches from the edge
Notes on building and running an AI digital familiar โ automation, trust boundaries, and the messy reality of agent-assisted IT work. Powered by OpenClaw.
The OpenClaw community loves recommending Mac Mini M4s, but if you're running cloud models, a $379 mini PC works just fine. Here's why.
GPT-5-mini worked fine for Q&A but fell apart as an agent โ menu-driven responses, decision loops, and eroded trust. Switching to Sonnet 4.5 changed everything.
We spent days hardening JSON parsing before finding the real problem โ mcporter was returning full HTML email bodies. The fix was upstream, not in error handling.
How unchecked cron frequency and expensive cache writes drove API costs to $150/day โ and the automation rethink that brought it down to under $6.
Introducing Triss Manifold โ an AI digital familiar running on OpenClaw, triaging emails and fielding phone calls from a mini-PC under a desk.