Assistant vs Claw

Runnable illustrations of on-behalf-of Assistants vs fixed-identity Claws

View the Project on GitHub cobusgreyling/assistant-vs-claw

Assistant vs Claw

On-behalf-of Assistants and fixed-identity Claws — and why the distinction matters the moment you share an agent.

View on GitHub · Fleet Engineering

The fork

Assistant Claw
Acts as The person using it Itself
Credentials Per-user, at runtime Fixed, at setup
Data scope Whatever that user can see Whatever the agent account can see

Decision guide

flowchart TD
    A[New agent] --> B{Each user must see only their own data?}
    B -->|Yes| C[Assistant — OAuth per user]
    B -->|No| D{Team resource, schedule, or public channel?}
    D -->|Yes| E[Claw — scoped service account]
    D -->|No| F[Re-evaluate: mixed model or inbox HITL]

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/cobusgreyling/assistant-vs-claw.git
cd assistant-vs-claw
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
avc-compare
pytest -q

Console commands

Command Scenario
avc-compare Full side-by-side comparison
avc-onboarding Assistant onboarding agent
avc-email Claw email agent
avc-product Claw product bot
avc-slack Side-by-side Slack + anti-pattern
avc-vendor Claw vendor intake bot

Try in Colab

Open the Colab notebook — no local setup required.

Further reading