OpenAI 🤝 OpenClaw

gm legends, happy Monday.

Base44 is trying to make sure the apps you spin up with AI actually have a real backend under them, Agent Bar puts Claude Code in your Mac menu bar so you can fire up an agent without living in the terminal, and SearchSeal shows you whether AI models are even mentioning your brand when people ask what to use.

Base44 Backend Platform is the layer that makes Base44 apps behave like actual products, not quick demos. It spins up auth, data models, storage, roles, hosting, and analytics for you, so you are not wiring those pieces together in a panic at the end. It is built with AI heavy apps in mind, so your agents and workflows all talk to the same backend instead of five random services.

🔥 Our Take: I like that backend here is just part of the deal, not homework you remember once the UI looks good. If you are going to ship stuff built with AI anyway, having a real foundation under it is the difference between something you show off once and something you are willing to keep running.

OpenAI has hired Peter Steinberger, the engineer behind OpenClaw, the scrappy agent framework that’s been quietly powering a lot of the “my bot actually does stuff” experiments. OpenClaw itself is not getting pulled into a corporate vault. It sticks around as an open source project in a new foundation run by Dave Morin, while Peter moves inside the OpenAI machine.

The spicy bit: Anthropic previously came down on OpenClaw over agent IP. Now the guy who built it is at OpenAI and the project has its own foundation behind it. That looks a lot less like a hobby project and a lot more like a growing ecosystem that one lab just lost the chance to be close to.

Agent Bar is a native macOS menu bar app for running Claude Code without living in a terminal. Pick a project folder, spin up a session in one click, talk to it with your voice, and watch tool calls stream in as it works. You can approve or auto-approve actions, and keep an eye on token and dollar spend from the same little panel. It is built in SwiftUI, so it stays fast and light instead of feeling like a browser tab.

🔥 Our Take: Running Claude Code in a terminal all day gets old pretty fast. Having it parked in the menu bar with voice, buttons, and live tool calls makes it feel like part of your setup instead of yet another dev toy. Extra points for doing it as a real Mac app instead of another heavy wrapper.

SearchSeal tracks what the big AI models are saying about your brand so you are not guessing where you show up in their answers. It checks multiple AI platforms, watches how often you get recommended, and lets you monitor a bunch of brands in one place, which is especially useful if you are an agency juggling clients.

🔥 Our Take: People are literally asking AI what to buy and who to use, then just going with whatever it says. Not knowing if you even show up in that world is kind of wild, especially if you run clients. This is basically “search your brand, but in model land” and that feels overdue.