"7 things I wish someone told me before I almost gave up on OpenClaw"
Especially #1 and #4 are the unlock.
And how I set up mine.
Bookmark this. π§΅π
1. "Don't run everything through your best model"
The post says: cheap model as primary, strong as fallback.
I do the opposite.
My setup:
β Opus 4.6 as my MAIN brain (strategy, decisions)
β Haiku for heartbeats ($0.001 per check)
β Sonnet for sub-agents (research, drafting, browser)
β Codex GPT-5.3 for all coding (for now)
Don't default to cheap and escalate to smart.
Default to smart where it matters and use cheap where it doesn't.
My heartbeat costs dropped 70% on Haiku. But my main brain is Opus 4.6 because that's where every important decision happens.
2. "Your agent needs rules. A lot of them."
Most underrated tip in the post.
My AGENTS .md is 4 pages:
β Identity, personality, boundaries
β 12 anti-patterns it must NEVER do
β Model routing table
β Memory rules (when to write, when to read)
β Platform-specific formatting (Signal = plain text, Discord = no tables)
"You are a conductor, so conduct."
Best line in the whole post. Your agent is only as good as the rules you write for it.