Moltbot

Deploy your own personal AI assistant with Moltbot on a DigitalOcean Droplet® server, a powerful open-source platform that runs entirely on your infrastructure. Moltbot connects to the messaging platforms you already use - WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Signal, and more - giving you AI assistance wherever you communicate.

What is Moltbot?

Moltbot is an open-source framework for running autonomous, agentic AI systems that interact with APIs, tools, and messaging platforms in real time. With DigitalOcean’s hardened 1-Click deployment, developers can run Moltbot with secure defaults in their Droplet as an always-on AI assistant with strong security controls, usage-based inference, and predictable operations.

The Droplet 1-Click installation provisions Moltbot as a self-hosted, local-first AI assistant that runs entirely on the developer’s own infrastructure. The deployed Moltbot acts as a gateway control plane for managing sessions, channels, tools, and events, and integrates with the messaging platforms developers already use—including WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Signal, and more.

Why Moltbot on DigitalOcean?

DigitalOcean complements Moltbot’s open-source capabilities with Droplet’s security features including:

• Authenticated gateway tokens
• Firewall-level rate limiting
• Non-root execution
• Container sandboxing
• Private DM pairing

These protections limit blast radius, prevent unauthorized access, and ensure agents can run continuously and safely in production-like environments.

• Predictable inference for agent workloads

  DigitalOcean’s Inference Cloud is built for continuous, always-on inference—not just bursty API calls—making it ideal for long-running agents that rely on low-latency model responses and stable economics.

• Full control and privacy

Developers keep their own configuration, data, and runtime environment.

Key Features

• Multi-channel messaging gateway (WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Signal, iMessage, Google Chat, MS Teams, and others)
• Multi-agent routing with isolated sessions and configurations
• Flexible model support (Anthropic Claude, OpenAI GPT, local/open-source runtimes)
• Tool execution: web browsing, API calls, filesystem ops, voice, CLI actions
• Containerized sandboxing for safe skill execution
• Built-in web UI for configuration, logs, and monitoring
• Extendable via plugins and custom skills

System Requirements

Moltbot runs directly on Ubuntu 24.04 with Node.js 22 and Docker. Choose the appropriate Droplet size based on your usage:

Note: This 1-Click includes Docker for sandboxed execution. Additional resources may be needed if you enable multiple sandbox instances or browser automation.

Software Included

Creating an App using the Control Panel

Click the Deploy to DigitalOcean button to create a Droplet based on this 1-Click App. If you aren’t logged in, this link will prompt you to log in with your DigitalOcean account.

Creating an App using the API

In addition to creating a Droplet from the Moltbot 1-Click App using the control panel, you can also use the DigitalOcean API. As an example, to create a 4GB Moltbot Droplet in the SFO2 region, you can use the following curl command. You need to either save your API access token to an environment variable or substitute it in the command below.

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
         -H 'Authorization: Bearer '$TOKEN'' -d \
        '{"name":"choose_a_name","region":"sfo2","size":"s-2vcpu-4gb","image":"moltbot"}' \
        "https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/droplets"

Getting Started After Deploying Moltbot

🚀 Getting Started

Follow these steps to get your instance running as a Droplet on DigitalOcean (DO).

1. Deploy the Droplet

• Deploy the Moltbot / Clawdbot 1-Click App from the DigitalOcean Marketplace.
• Wait for the droplet to finish provisioning.
• Note: The DO dashboard may say “ready” before the SSH service is actually available.

2. Connect via SSH

Access your droplet using the terminal:

ssh root@your-droplet-ip

• If SSH fails initially, wait 60 seconds and retry.
• A welcome message will appear upon successful login.

3. Interactive Configuration

Follow the automated setup flow:

• LLM Provider: Choose Gradient, OpenAI (Coming Soon!), or Anthropic.
• API Key: Paste your provider’s API key when prompted.
• The clawdbot service will restart automatically to apply changes.

4. Manual Configuration (Optional)

If you need to update settings, edit the environment file directly:

# Edit configuration
nano /opt/clawdbot.env

# Restart service to apply changes
systemctl restart clawdbot

This file manages AI providers, gateway settings, and messaging channels.

5. Verify Installation

Launch the Terminal UI (TUI) to confirm the service and LLM are functioning:

/opt/clawdbot-tui.sh

6. Access the Web Dashboard

• Copy the Dashboard URL provided in the login welcome message.
• Open the URL in your browser to verify the web interface loads.

7.Proceed to configure messaging channels (Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, etc.)

Setting up WhatsApp as a Channel

1. Run /opt/clawdbot-cli.sh channels add
2. Go through the onboarding process in the CLI to add a channel. Select WhatsApp.
3. Eventually you’ll be presented with a QR code to scan. Scan the QR code with your phone in WhatsApp to pair.
4. Go through the pairing process on your phone.

Setting up Telegram as a Channel

1. Start the channel setup flow by running /opt/clawdbot-cli.sh channels add.

2. Go through the onboarding prompts in the CLI and select Telegram as the channel. 1. The CLI will pause and wait for a Telegram bot token.

3. Open Telegram and start a chat with @BotFather.

4. Create a new bot by typing /newbot and follow the prompts: 1. Choose a display name

   2. Choose a unique bot username (must end in bot)

5. Once the bot is created: 1. BotFather will confirm creation

   2. You’ll receive a bot token
   3. You’ll also receive a deep link like https://t.me/your_bot_name

6. Copy the bot token and paste it back into the waiting CLI prompt to complete the channel setup.

7. Open the deep link to start a chat with your new bot. 1. You’ll see a message like Clawdbot: access not configured

   2. This is expected.

8. Copy your Telegram user ID from the message.

9. Open the Clawdbot Gateway Dashboard (URL shown when you SSH’d into the droplet).

10. Add your Telegram user ID to the allow list in the dashboard.

11. Return to Telegram and send a message to the bot to confirm it’s working.

🛠 Troubleshooting & Commands

### **Security Configuration**

* Randomly generates a Moltbot gateway token so communication to your Moltbot is authenticated. This protects your Moltbot instance from unauthorized users.
* Hardens your server with default firewall rules that rate limit Moltbot ports to prevent inappropriate traffic from interfering with your Moltbot use and help prevent denial of service attacks.
* Runs Moltbot as a non-root user on the server, limiting the attack surface if an inappropriate command is executed by Moltbot.
* Runs Moltbot inside Docker containers on your server, which sets up an [isolated sandbox](https://docs.molt.bot/gateway/sandboxing) and further helps prevent any unintended commands from impacting your server.
* Configures [DM pairing](https://docs.molt.bot/start/pairing) by default, which prevents unauthorized users from talking to your Moltbot.

**Resources**
-------------

* Documentation: <https://docs.molt.bot/>
* GitHub Repository: <https://github.com/moltbot/moltbot>
* Local Configuration Reference: <https://docs.molt.bot/gateway/configuration>
* Channel Setup: <https://docs.molt.bot/channels>
* Security Guide: <https://docs.molt.bot/gateway/security>
* Discord Community: <https://discord.gg/molt>

**Support**
-----------

For issues and questions:

* Check the [documentation](https://docs.molt.bot/)
* Search [GitHub Issues](https://github.com/moltbot/moltbot/issues)
* Join the [Discord community](https://discord.gg/molt)
* Review the [FAQ](https://docs.molt.bot/start/faq)

**License**
-----------

Moltbot is open source software licensed under the [MIT License](https://github.com/moltbot/moltbot/blob/main/LICENSE).