Clawbolt: AI assistant for contractors, not knowledge workers

https://blog.mozilla.ai/the-hardest-part-of-running-a-small-business-in-the-trades/

by river_otter • 4 months ago

7 6 4 months ago

blog.mozilla.ai

river_otter3• 4 months ago

Nathan here, MLE at Mozilla.ai. We wrote this because the AI productivity conversation has been almost entirely about desk workers, and we think that's a miss.

My buddy runs a general contracting business. He's good at what he does, but he spends a lot of evenings on a laptop chasing invoices and scheduling follow-ups instead of hanging outwith his family and friends. Most tools being built right now weren't built primarily for him.

Clawbolt is our attempt at a purpose-built AI assistant for people in the trades. It lives in messaging apps they already use, connects to things like QuickBooks and Google Calendar, and is proactive rather than waiting to be asked, just like OpenClaw. Following up on unpaid invoices, flagging material cost changes, that kind of thing. Open source core at github.com/mozilla-ai/clawbolt if you'd like to check it out and give it a star.

We're early and looking for input from people who actually work in the trades or run small trade businesses. Would love to hear what resonates and what we're missing.

ilikerashers• 4 months ago

I am building something similar in the UK. As a contractor, I have to manage tax, invoices, reconciliation, payroll, accountant emails.

I think software in the future will be general portals which roughly self manages via plugins and automation. Services like QuickBooks will eventually just be an MCP server and you can tailor the software as you wish.

Will follow!

river_otter3• 4 months ago

Very cool! Quickbooks is an interesting area because imo it's so important to be super super careful with how that interaction model works. Narrowing on a very specific vertical like small business contractors I think should help to make sure that we can nail the interaction model to make it easy and safe.

whattheheckheck2• 4 months ago

Can you guarantee information privacy for sensitive trade secret information and absolutely no risk of prompt injection vulnerabilities from a malicious email?

river_otter3• 4 months ago

The emails go through quickbooks/accounting software, Clawbolt doesn't have any direct email client. Use of tools is on a gradual permission basis like Claude code, and Clawbolt doesn't have any general code access or web access. I think you highlight an important point though that prompt injection continues to be a hazard of AI agent use, though tools continue to be developed to fight against it. The goal is to lock Clawbolt down as much as possible to help users avoid the security hazards of systems like openclaw, but this is definitely something that we'll need to watch and be careful about!

whattheheckheck2• 4 months ago

Thanks for the response, I have family in the construction industry and if i introduce a tool like this to them and they get hacked or some dumb stuff happen they will not be happy. But its very cool and I think a lot of the tickytacky computer work does get in the way of the business so this seems like a good direction to go

Clawbolt: AI assistant for contractors, not knowledge workers

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