Local OpenClaw & Ollama in 27 minutes

This tiny computer runs my Open Claw locally 24 hours a day. No cloud APIs, no token costs, and even if the internet goes down, it's still working. But

getting this system working was way harder than I thought. I had to test different local models, configure networking, and even split the system on two machines. In this video, I'm going

two machines. In this video, I'm going to show you how to run Local Claw locally, how to pick the right models for your computer, and a setup I'm using at home with a Jetson Nano and an old

gaming laptop. Why should you run Open

gaming laptop. Why should you run Open Claw locally? First of all, Open Claw is

Claw locally? First of all, Open Claw is expensive to run. It eats up a lot of tokens and before you know it, you run out of credits or you're spending $100, $200 on your Open Claw. Secondly, if

you're concerned with privacy, you don't want to send all your data to a public LLM.

Everything stays within your network and nobody else can see your data. Most

importantly, what I found was that my open claw keeps going down because either I'm out of credits or claw just went down the other day. The servers all

went down and I couldn't call anymore.

So when your cloud provider is not working for whatever reason, it's updated as model. You always have something running as long as your local server is running. So your open claw is available to you at all times. Another

thing that caught me by surprise is that when I first started using Open Claw, I was able to use it with my OpenAI subscription, my Claude code subscription, and my Gemini

subscription. And now Gemini and Claude

subscription. And now Gemini and Claude bans users who use the pro plan with their open claw. So now you don't have to worry about the policies of all the

different AI providers. You have full control. But I must also say that the

control. But I must also say that the concept of local AI is really good. But

getting it running locally, it's really hard. Complex setup, you have to

hard. Complex setup, you have to understand networking configurations.

You have to have the hardware. You need

to have a fast computer. Otherwise, it's

just super slow. And it's taken me more time to fix and configure things than I would like. Running Open Claw locally

would like. Running Open Claw locally gives you a lot of freedom, but you also become the system administrator. But

what does running open claw locally mean? Actually, I think there's two

mean? Actually, I think there's two components. Number one is where does

components. Number one is where does your open claw run? And then open claw needs to call an AI model to process the request. And where is that AI model

request. And where is that AI model running? You can have a cloud setup

running? You can have a cloud setup where your open claw is hosted on a server somewhere on Amazon on hosting wherever it is and then that open claw

calls open AAI or claude. That's a fully cloud setup or you can have a fully local setup where you have a machine and it runs open claw and on the machine

have a local llm model running so it can provide the responses to your open claw or you can have a hybrid setup where you buy a Mac mini and it's running openclaw

right in front of you in your house but it's calling open AI cloud gemini and that openclaw calls a cloud LLM. So,

we're going to cover how to run OpenClaw locally on your own device and hosting the AI model locally within your house.

We're going to go through two examples in this video. The first one is the beginner setup, which is everything on one machine. I'm going to show you how

one machine. I'm going to show you how to install OAMA and then using OAMA, install Open Claw, and then run a local model. So, that's the beginner setup and

model. So, that's the beginner setup and then we're going to go [clears throat] into my current setup. I have a Jetson Nano which is like a tiny computer almost like a Raspberry Pi running open

claw and then I have an old gaming laptop that's running Lama and serving the AI model. Why? Because number one, I don't want to run open claw on my MacBook because of security reasons. And

number two, my MacBook is really slow.

So when I talk to Open Claw, it takes a long time for it to respond. So, by

running it on a old gaming laptop, I get much better performance. And I'm going to go into how to set that up. And I

also want to show how you don't have to buy a super powerful computer like a Mac Mini to do this. You can do this on some computer you have lying around, an old

gaming laptop, and put them together and make your own local Open Claw setup.

Okay, enough talking. Now, let me show you step by step how to set up Open Claw on your own computer. The first thing we're going to do is go to alama.com and install Alama. There are two ways to do

install Alama. There are two ways to do it. Either you can run this terminal

it. Either you can run this terminal command or you can download a lama. So

you can press download and install it there. But the best way to use a lama is

there. But the best way to use a lama is through the terminal. I'm going to copy this command and then just run the command. And then I can run a lama by

command. And then I can run a lama by typing in a lama. And now I can run a model launch cloud code launch codeex

launch open claw. So, let's start with running a model. And then you're allowed to choose different models. And it's

giving me recommendations based on my specs. The recommended list is not the

specs. The recommended list is not the best. So, you can choose, you know, GLM

best. So, you can choose, you know, GLM 4.7 Flash if you wish just to get started. I already have a model

started. I already have a model downloader, so I'm going to use that.

And I'm going to show you how to pick the best one and update that later. And

I'm going to give it a test. Hi. All

right. And so, Alama is running. And now

let's download Quen 3.5. So I go to a llama. I click on models. I click on

llama. I click on models. I click on Quen 3.5 and I'm going to select Quen 3.59B latest. Copy this. And then I type

3.59B latest. Copy this. And then I type in OAMA run and then paste Quen 3.59B.

And it's going to start downloading the model. And let me run that model. Okay.

model. And let me run that model. Okay.

And it's done. So let's give it a test.

Hi. And it works. The next thing we're going to do is a new thing that open claw has enabled which is you can now use lama to install open claw. To

install open claw with lama all you need to do is copy this command. Alama launch

open claw. Copy it. Then go to your terminal and paste that in. And then

it's telling me to choose my model. I'm

going to choose quen 3.59b. I understand

the risk. Okay. So, it's finished installing and I just sent it a message saying, you know, I'm Keith and it responded, but it's taking a very long

time. So, the problem with Quen 3.59B is

time. So, the problem with Quen 3.59B is that it's got reasoning and it thinks a lot before it does that. So, I'm going to tell Open Claw to set it to no think

mode. It's taking too long to respond.

mode. It's taking too long to respond.

Okay, now it's set it to no thinking mode. So, it should be faster. Now, now

mode. So, it should be faster. Now, now

that you're set up, you also want to make sure your web interface is working.

So when you first installed it, you should have an address like 127.0.0.1 18789. So let's go to that. We've opened

18789. So let's go to that. We've opened

our browser and then we're going to paste in the address. Now it's going to say gateway token missing. When you

first install it, it should display a URL with a token equals something. And

in my case I need to come to overview go to open gateway token and my gateway token is a llama. I press connect click

refresh and once I click refresh I can see that on the top right the health is okay and I'm connected is all green. You can click on overview and see

green. You can click on overview and see stat is okay. Then if I come to chat, you're going to see that the messages that I've been sending earlier are

working. And I can also chat here. So

working. And I can also chat here. So

let's give it a try. And it's responded to my high. It's working.

Congratulations. You have local llm working with your open claw. I know that a lot of people already installed open claw. And if you're not using lama to

claw. And if you're not using lama to install open claw, how do you add lama to your existing open claw? Well, if I

come here in my web dashboard, I come to config and then I click on raw, you're going to see the configuration file. And

in the configuration file, you can change your configuration file to models, providers, or llama. And then it

sets it to quen 3.5 9b. But I have to be honest with you, I hate changing the config file. It's really hard. You keep

config file. It's really hard. You keep

making mistakes and it doesn't work. So,

what's the best way to do it? I'm going

to show you two ways to do it. Number

one, we're going to use any vibe coding tool you have, OpenAI codeex or Claude Code or Gemini, whatever you have, you can use that to add to your model list.

And then number two is to directly tell Open Claw to update your config file to include Lama in your model selection.

So, let's go back to our terminal interface. And if I select slash

interface. And if I select slash open model picker, it's going to allow me to search. I'm going to type in a lama. Right now, it's only got a llama

lama. Right now, it's only got a llama quen 3.5 9b. Now, let's say it's not even there. How do I add new models to

even there. How do I add new models to that? So, I'm going to exit this. And

that? So, I'm going to exit this. And

you can use whatever you like. I'm going

to use claude. And I'm going to bring up our llama. You can see I have GMA 3 4B

our llama. You can see I have GMA 3 4B which I downloaded a long time ago and it's not available in my model list. So

let's add that. I'm using open claw menu and new addama 3 to my config get as a model. So what

it's going to do is that it's going to search all the files on my computer find the config file and it's going to add to my config file so then they can find my model and it's done. So, it's found the

config file and it's added GMA 4B automatically without me manually going in and making a mistake. Let's go open model picker. Okay. And you can see that

model picker. Okay. And you can see that now it's added GMA 4B. And before this, I realized I needed to restart my gateway for it to recognize. So, what

you do is you need to type in open claw gateway restart and it will refresh and reload config. and then you'll be able

reload config. and then you'll be able to find the new model you just added. So

that's the easiest way to add your lama models to an existing open claw when you haven't installed it using. And the

other way is if you're already connected to a cloud platform and you can chat with open claw. What you can do is you can say can you add gamma 3 to my config

file so I can choose as a model. Now

that will work too but sometimes I realize it does funky things. The best

way is to use Claude Codeex or Gemini, whatever AI coding agent you have to do it, but this also works too. So you can try that. And then the last way is to

try that. And then the last way is to just go in into your config file and modify the configuration file manually.

Now that we have open claw installed, this is the hardest part, choosing the right LLM for Lama. And the trick is you have to download another software because in Olama it doesn't give you

much information. So download LM Studio,

much information. So download LM Studio, try out different model and then once you find the best model, run it in O Lama because Lama works better with Open Claw. It's got a smaller footprint and

Claw. It's got a smaller footprint and it just runs better. So go to lmstudio.ai and then download the app.

And once you have it, click on the search icon, click on the discover icon, and you'll see all this great information. Compared to Lama, which

information. Compared to Lama, which only gives you the model name, LM Studio gives you a lot more. Most importantly,

it gives you a best match. So, it

recognizes your computer's specifications and then recommends the best one for you. What you have to pay attention to is two things. Number one,

how big is the model? So, the larger the model size, the more powerful it is, but also the longer it takes to run. So,

it's recommending a lot of smaller models for me, like 9B, 1.2 billion. But

let's look at the most downloads. You

have ones are 20 billion, 30 billion, and that's just too much for my computer to run. The second thing you should look

to run. The second thing you should look for is you probably want to look for a model that is compatible with tool use because it means it's designed for agent

use like Open Claw. So, pick models that have this symbol on it and then just click download. And after you've

click download. And after you've selected it, you need to give it a test run to test it speed and its performance. So, let's give it a try.

performance. So, let's give it a try.

I'm going to load a model and right now I have Quen 4B and I'm going to type test. Okay, so it came back and you can see that this took

about 10 seconds and for me this is a little bit slow for me. I want something faster. So I'll test a different model.

faster. So I'll test a different model.

So keep testing to find the one where the speed is good for you and also you're happy with the results it's giving you. All right, I've been testing

giving you. All right, I've been testing a lot of models and I made another video on setting up your own local AI, but here's what I found. It's basically a balance between speed and performance.

So, with Open Claw, a lot of people say Kimmy K 2.5 is really good. It is really good. The results that it comes back

good. The results that it comes back with is really good, but my computer is not fast enough to run it. So, I get super slow response speeds. Then I tried

using LFM2, which is super fast and lightweight. is one of the smallest and

lightweight. is one of the smallest and fastest models out there. But the

results that it gives me are not very smart and I've switched to the current winner is Quen 3.59B. In terms of speed and performance is the best one so far

on the market. But the key is you have to keep constantly updating. I was using Quen 3 6 months ago and now the model

has improved so much. So, the key is to check for new models every month or two, play around with it in LM Studio, and then strike a balance between speed and

quality. And I'm excited because the

quality. And I'm excited because the open- source models you can download are getting much better very quickly. Okay,

now we're going to go into a more advanced setup. And this is my setup. I

advanced setup. And this is my setup. I

have a Jetson Nano, kind of like a Raspberry Pi, running my Open Claw. But

although it is a cheap device, it's not powerful enough to run AI models on it.

So I can only run open claw. So I use my old gaming laptop and on that I install llama and I run my AI model on that. Why

don't I just run open claw on my gaming laptop as well? Well, because my gaming laptop is not designed to be run 24/7.

And I do want it to run 24/7 because I want to message it at any time and I want it to run tasks overnight. is not

designed for that. The Jetson Nano is.

So, I have both computers running at home and this only turns on when I need to run AI models on it. And why the Jetson Nano? Well, I wouldn't recommend

Jetson Nano? Well, I wouldn't recommend it. It's just something that I have

it. It's just something that I have lying around. The best option is

lying around. The best option is actually a Raspberry Pi. So, you can get an $80, $150 option out there where you can buy a Raspberry Pi, buy a nice

little case, and you can leave it on running with low electricity costs 24/7, no problem. or you can get a Mac Mini.

no problem. or you can get a Mac Mini.

More expensive, but you can even run your LL models allin-one. So, it depends on your budget. Enough talk. I'm going

to show you my setup with a Jetson Nano running Open Claw and having my old gaming laptop as a Lama LLM server connecting to each other. Here's my

Jetson Nano. I bought a little case and it even shows the temperature, the CPU usage, the RAM.

That's my Jessen Nano running 24/7.

Here's my old gaming laptop. It's

running. It's on. And the screen isn't even on to conserve energy. And I'm

plugged it in so that it can wake on LAN. I'm on my Windows machine right

LAN. I'm on my Windows machine right now, which will act as a server to my JSON Nano. And I've gone to the website.

JSON Nano. And I've gone to the website.

I've copied the command, which is this command. And now I'm installing it on my

command. And now I'm installing it on my Windows machine. So, I typed in

Windows machine. So, I typed in terminal, open terminal, and now it's installing OAMA. And so, I've installed

installing OAMA. And so, I've installed it. And the next thing you need to do is

it. And the next thing you need to do is to download a model. So, all you need to do is put in this command, Alama run, and then copy the model name and put it

in. So, you can go to models. We're

in. So, you can go to models. We're

running Quen 3.59B. Copy that and then paste it in and then hit enter. And it

will download the model and also run it at the same time. Okay. And it's done.

So, let's give it test. And it's work.

Okay. And it's working. So, I'm going to just exit this for a little sec. I'm

going to exit this. Now, this is only running on my Windows, but in order for it to be a server, I need to allow other computers to access my Windows. So,

first of all, I need to type in IP config. And you'll see that my IP

config. And you'll see that my IP address is 1 192.168.68.62.

So I need to remember this address.

Going to copy it. Then you have to run a command calledama serve. Now you'll see that right now it's serving on what's called localhost 11434,

port 11434. And even though this is on,

port 11434. And even though this is on, it doesn't mean that my other devices on the network can access it. So, I'll need to set the IP to the IP we just

discovered earlier. So, I'm going to

discovered earlier. So, I'm going to come out of here and I'm need to type in this command dollar sign envah host equals and then we're going to put in the address we did earlier. Okay, I put

in the address and then now I type in serve and the host is now at this address. So from my other devices, my

address. So from my other devices, my Justin Ano, I can now call this address and it should be able to communicate with it and use this as my server for my

open call. But every time you turn off

open call. But every time you turn off the computer and you restart it, your IP address may change. So I'm going to show you how I set a static IP on my router.

And there's more. I'm gonna put this on wake on land. So then my computer can turn off when it's not being used and then only when it's being called by my open call, it'll wake up, turn on the

power and then run the llama. Every time

my gaming laptop shuts down and then powers on again, it will get a new IP address. And I don't want that because

address. And I don't want that because if my Justin Nano is calling it, we want a fixed address so it knows exactly where it is. So depending on your router

settings, this is my router. I use TP link. What I do is I can come to more. I

link. What I do is I can come to more. I

come to advanced.

I go to address reservation.

And basically I've reserved my device to always have a static IP on 192.168 6865.

And so it's fixed and that's reserved for my Alama server running on my gaming laptop. So depending on your router

laptop. So depending on your router settings, you need to set a static IP.

And that's how you set it. Now I'm going to show you how to set some settings. So

then you can have the computer turn off and then wake on land. So it only turns on when you actually need to use it. I'm

going to go and restart my Windows.

And then while it's restarting, just keep tapping the delete button to bring up the BIOS. Okay, now the BIOS is brought up. You want to go to advanced.

brought up. You want to go to advanced.

You want to enable USB power and sleep in hibernation. You want to disable

in hibernation. You want to disable fast boot and then you want to enable wake on land and then you save and reset. Now depending on your machine,

reset. Now depending on your machine, you might have a different BIOS. So

check with AI what settings you need, but generally that's what you need to enable wake on land. One more thing, just make sure you use an Ethernet cable

so you have a cable plugged in because it doesn't wake up if it's just on Wi-Fi. Now that I have Alama as a

Wi-Fi. Now that I have Alama as a server, there's a quick little tip. By

default, the context length might be too small. And so, you need to go and type

small. And so, you need to go and type in a command that says show and then quen 3.59B and it will show you your context length. So right now it's at

context length. So right now it's at 26,000 2,144.

So I've increased it, but you might just see 4,000 here. And if that's the case, you need to increase it to a recommendation of at least 16,000. The

way to set the context length is to enter run your model name dash context and then enter your number. Play around

with the number. Obviously, the larger the context length, the better. But

also, if you have a really long request, it might crash your computer. So, play

around with this number. I've set mine to 26,000. At the minimum you should set

to 26,000. At the minimum you should set it to is around 16,000. Another thing

that I did was that once I've got the llama running, I don't want my gaming computer to be on all the time because it's not designed that way and it'll overheat really quickly. So, what I've

done is I've gone into my system power and battery. I'm going to turn off my

and battery. I'm going to turn off my screen after 5 minutes of nothing going on. And then it will hibernate after 10

on. And then it will hibernate after 10 minutes. And if it goes to sleep, that's

minutes. And if it goes to sleep, that's fine. We're going to wake on land. So

fine. We're going to wake on land. So

then when my other devices call this device, it will wake up. So how do you do that? Well, you have to come to your

do that? Well, you have to come to your device manager and you have to look for your internet connection devices. So I

have my Wi-Fi and I also have a LAN connection where you plug in a cable. So

this is my Wi-Fi.

So if I want to wake my Wi-Fi, I can come to power management and allow this device to wake the computer and press okay. Enable that. And the other one is

okay. Enable that. And the other one is my LAN cable and I do the same. And you

can find this uh inside your network adapter. And once you do that, the last

adapter. And once you do that, the last remaining thing you can do is to restart your computer and in your BIOS set wake on land. And one final thing is that you

on land. And one final thing is that you don't have to set a static IP. There's

an even more advanced way to set this up and that's by using tail scale. By using

tails scale, not only is it more secure, but you can also access this server from any device even when you are outside of your house. In my current setup,

your house. In my current setup, everything has to happen in the same network and you have to be on the same Wi-Fi to work. But let's say I'm out and about and I want to access my Olama

server. I can do that using tail scale

server. I can do that using tail scale and tunnel in and it's even more secure, but that's for another video. So stay

tuned for my other video. I'm back on my Mac. I have open claw installed. And

Mac. I have open claw installed. And

then we have a lama set up on my old gaming laptop on a separate machine. So

the first thing we need to do is to check if it can connect to it. You can

do that by using a curl command in your terminal. So open your terminal, type in

terminal. So open your terminal, type in this command, curl http your IP address of your gaming machine/ ai/tags and it's

returned that it's got a model 3.59b. So

it's working. Okay, now that it's connected to it, let's see if it actually runs. So the next command is

actually runs. So the next command is curl API generate d choose a model. Say

my prompt is hello and I want to choose stream. So I'll include this prompt

stream. So I'll include this prompt inside the description and you can see that it's coming back with some response and it's thinking. It's thinking. Let's

check back in when it gives me a result.

Okay. And it's done and it's giving me a response. So it's working. So now we're

response. So it's working. So now we're ready to go to open claw. So let's go to open claw tui. So now that my MacBook can connect to the server. There's three

ways to change the configuration settings. So then open claw can use the

settings. So then open claw can use the model remotely. Number one, you can go

model remotely. Number one, you can go into config file and paste this into it and set your provider as a llama, your IP address and the model. You can do that manually, but every time I've done

that, it has not been successful. But if

you really want to do it, all you need to do is go to finder, go to your home directory, and then go command, shift, and period. And you're going to see all

and period. And you're going to see all the hidden files. And in there, I'm going to find open claw. So let's find open claw openclaw.json. Let's open it.

And here I can input my I can copy this the model provider and paste it into here. But so far every time I've done

here. But so far every time I've done it, it has not been successful. So I'm

going to do in my opinion the best option which is to use vibe coding to do it. So in this case I'm going to use

it. So in this case I'm going to use cloud code. You can use openai Gemini.

cloud code. You can use openai Gemini.

I'm going to choose a folder and I'm going to go back into the same folder.

I'm going to go back into open claw.

Okay. And then I'm just going to say modify the open claw config file. So

then it points to my remote or llama server. And then you plug in the

server. And then you plug in the details, your IP address and the model.

And then it should automatically make those changes. Okay, it says it's done.

those changes. Okay, it says it's done.

And so I need to come back. And then the thing I need to do is open call gateway restart. So, I need to restart the

restart. So, I need to restart the gateway to activate the change and then let's test it out. And there we have it.

It's returned a response. Hi there, I'm still awake. Let's start with the

still awake. Let's start with the basics. So, it's working right now. And

basics. So, it's working right now. And

the third option is a chicken and egg problem. You can ask open claw to update

problem. You can ask open claw to update the model similar to how I did it in cloud code. Just tell it that you have a

cloud code. Just tell it that you have a new remote server. Give it the IP and the model and it will update it. But the

chicken egg problem is that you need an AI LLM provider connected to do this. So

either connect to your cloud service to do this or you can run a really small model on your local computer just so then you can get the configuration done so then openclaw can set its own config

file. So those are the three options you

file. So those are the three options you can use to connect and change your model to point to a remote server. So that's

how you run open claw locally. We

started with the beginner setup where you're running openclaw on just one machine and then I showed you my current setup where a small computer runs open claw 24/7 and another machine runs AI

model. But the bigger question is should

model. But the bigger question is should you run open claw locally at all? If

you're an absolute beginner honestly the best option is to run open claw on a virtual private server. So, you rent a server somewhere and then call a cloud model like OpenAI, Gemini, or Claude

using their API. There are ton of one-click services out there for Open Claw and you'll spend much less time configuring things. But if privacy

configuring things. But if privacy matters to you or you're worried about the API cost, then running Open Claw could be a very powerful option. Your

data stays on your machine and your system keeps running even if the cloud goes down. And the number one

goes down. And the number one requirement is that you need a computer that's fast enough to run a local LLM.

In my case, I'm just using an old gaming laptop, and that works surprisingly well. The trade-off is that local setups

well. The trade-off is that local setups require more work, networking, hardware, testing different local LLM models until you find the right balance between speed

and quality. But once everything is

and quality. But once everything is running, you basically have your own AI infrastructure at home. And that's

pretty sweet. Local AI gives you the control, but it also makes you the system administrator. If you've liked

system administrator. If you've liked this video, please like and subscribe to my channel. If you want to learn more

my channel. If you want to learn more about AI, you can join my free AI community in the description. I look

forward to seeing you