AI makes its first appearance on the WeChat home page. Clawbot aims to secure a place in your workflow.
Author | Xiao Sijia
Editor | Qiao Qian
In March 2026, it might be named the "Internet Lobster Month".
The craze triggered by OpenClaw before the Spring Festival not only didn't cool down after the festival but became even more intense. Entering March, many Internet and technology companies either launched their own "lobster" products or opened interfaces to accelerate access. Even Tencent WeChat, which has always been cautious, made its first move, launching the Clawbot plugin on the home page as an access channel for various "lobster" products.
Although the technical capabilities of Clawbot currently have many deficiencies - for example, it can't actively push messages, the Markdown display effect is poor, and there is no plugin entry on the computer side. Some users even bluntly said that "it just moved OpenClaw into WeChat without solving any new problems". But in fact, this restrained approach of only providing a "connection channel" might be WeChat's core intention.
Ultimately, since the outbreak of the AI wave, the real anxiety of major Internet companies has always been only one: whether they still have control over the application entry. The "lobster craze" has further magnified this FOMO (fear of missing out) emotion. The potential concern is that if AI Agents can complete most operations for users in the future, the relationship between people and products will change from "individual - application software" to "individual - AI Agent". As a result, traditional applications may gradually move to the background and become service pipelines providing capabilities.
Facing this possible change, WeChat's choice is quite straightforward: by building an access channel, it ensures that it won't be bypassed in the AI era.
Therefore, rather than launching a perfect product, WeChat's more urgent task now is to occupy the entry as soon as possible and embed itself in users' daily usage scenarios. "The competition of AI applications is not just about the strength of the model, but about who enters the real workflow first," a Tencent employee quoted relevant internal documents as saying. "Once the entry is occupied, usage habits, collaborative relationships, and product opportunities will gradually emerge."
Just like more than a decade ago, no one knew what the "Scan" function in WeChat could do. But later, this unremarkable entry gave rise to the social connection methods and business ecosystem of the entire mobile Internet era.
01 WeChat's "Lobster" Plugin Arrives Late
For the first time in history, WeChat allows AI to enter the home page in the form of a chatbot.
On March 22, the WeChat team officially launched the official "ClawBot" plugin to access "lobster" agents such as Openclaw, which once again sparked heated discussions. Clawbot mainly exists in users' contact lists in the form of WeChat contacts, except that there is an additional "AI" logo in a gray frame with white characters in the upper - right corner to distinguish it from ordinary contacts. Currently, the plugin is still in gray - scale testing and has not been fully launched.
Before this, Tencent had comprehensively launched two agents, WorkBuddy and Qclaw, on March 9 and March 20 respectively, produced by the Tencent Cloud team and the Tencent PC Manager team.
The difference between Clawbot and the above products is that the latter are AI agents that can help users complete tasks, while Clawbot only serves as a connection entry, or the role of an "Agent assistant". After binding Clawbot with an agent, users can simply enter a task in the dialog box to call the agent on the computer to start working. "It's like a task dialog box or a tool to remotely issue instructions to your 'lobster', similar to the File Transfer Assistant," a technical engineer explained to 36Kr.
The connection between the two is also very simple: update WeChat to the latest version, find the WeChat Clawbot plugin in "Settings" - "Plugins", copy the instruction code and send it to Openclaw, and then you can scan the code to access it with one click. The whole process is a "fool - proof" operation, which greatly reduces the user - side experience cost.
In fact, WeChat's reaction to accessing Openclaw is not fast.
As early as when Openclaw was first released in November 2025, Telegram was already one of the officially supported control entrances and became the most commonly used AI Agent interaction interface for developers in early 2026. In China, Feishu was the first among instant messaging (IM) software to benefit: on February 6, Feishu officially released an article titled "Completely Understand OpenClaw (Clawdbot) with a Tutorial on Connecting to Feishu!"; on March 5, Feishu launched the Openclaw plugin and supported one - click deployment; from March 2 to March 6, Feishu hosted five live broadcasts named the "Lobster Play Conference" to popularize various information about Openclaw to ordinary users.
Although Enterprise WeChat also quickly followed and announced access to Openclaw on March 9, from the actual experience, its degree of openness is still relatively limited. Many users reported that its functions have many restrictions, such as the inability to reply to external contacts and weak file - processing capabilities, and the overall usage is still quite conservative.
The same restraint is also reflected in the Clawbot plugin launched by WeChat this time. As an IM software that also provides an entry for "lobsters", many users inevitably compare its usage experience with that of Feishu - the latter tends to deeply embed "lobsters" into the workflow system.
In Feishu, agents can access data such as chat records, documents, and schedules, thus achieving a higher degree of automation and intelligence. However, the corresponding price is higher permission opening and security risks. For example, when users deploy OpenClaw with one click, the system will default to granting it relatively high device permissions. The installation prompt even clearly reminds: "Although there is security protection, there is still a possibility that AI will perform unexpected operations." If users want to turn off some permissions, they need to manually adjust them after the installation is completed, which poses a certain threshold for ordinary users without a technical background.
In contrast, Clawbot plays a lighter role. It is just a pure access point and does not directly hold system permissions. The relevant capabilities are still determined by the agent accessed by the user. In other words, Clawbot only processes the input information from users in the chat window and will not actively call other data in WeChat.
To some extent, this can also be understood as a form of risk outsourcing. The platform does not directly bear the potential risks brought by the agent but returns the choice and corresponding responsibility to the user.
In fact, both the late arrival of the WeChat plugin and the relative technical closure are in line with the consistent style of WXG (WeChat Business Unit). As a national - level application product with over 1.4 billion monthly active users and a complex social ecosystem, security has always been WeChat's top strategic consideration. "If there is isolation in security, the obtained skill permissions will be less," the aforementioned engineer explained. A Tencent insider also said: "WeChat has always been very cautious. There are long reporting processes, many concerns, and different regulatory scales. Many capabilities can't be implemented as one wishes."
But on the other hand, this is precisely WeChat's absolute advantage: while major enterprises are busy creating new entrances, WeChat itself is already the super - entrance. As long as this entrance is opened, AI capabilities can quickly penetrate through the existing social network and usage habits.
For ordinary users, this means that in the future, the scenarios of using AI are likely to occur not in new Agent applications but in the chat windows they are most familiar with.
02 Hold on to the Strongest Entrance Instead of Attacking
Choosing to develop a plugin instead of an AI product is, to some extent, a second - best choice for WeChat: by turning itself into a connection pipeline, it aims to occupy a niche in the AI era.
On the one hand, it is difficult for WeChat to develop a heavy - weight product in the short term on the user side.
Although Tencent's AI product "Yuanbao", launched with the full strength of the company, did not achieve the expected results, the resource allocation tilt continues. 36Kr learned that Tencent's internal computing resources have always been given priority to Yuanbao, which has also restricted the R & D of the WeChat AI team due to objective conditions. On January 26, the official WeChat AI blog also published a paper discussing how to build a large - language model under the condition of limited computing power.
On the other hand, choosing to be a "connection entrance" is obviously a lighter path for WeChat: instead of investing heavily to build the strongest AI to compete with products on the market, it is better to make good use of its core asset advantage - the national - wide social relationship network, and hold on to its position as an entrance in the AI era.
Therefore, it chooses to actively integrate itself into this new link, forming a path of "individual - WeChat Clawbot - AI Agent". On the contrary, if this entrance is not in WeChat but in Feishu, DingTalk, or even a brand - new AI application, WeChat's position as a "super - entrance" may be weakened.
This is also why Clawbot is not limited to OpenClaw or Tencent's self - developed models. It also supports accessing other "lobster" models on the market that are compatible with OpenClaw. Some technical personnel have even tried to establish a calling path between Clawbot and Claude Code. This means that technically, users can freely choose different Agent assistants according to their preferences and usage habits and connect them to WeChat in the future.
This openness can reduce the risk of user outflow to a certain extent. No matter which Agent users choose and how they use it, they can still complete it through WeChat without migrating to other IM or independent AI applications.
In addition, 36Kr previously learned that the WeChat team is developing a self - owned model for future access to WeChat's mini - program ecosystem to support the development of various AI agents. Against this background, the introduction of the Clawbot plugin by WeChat at this time has a clearer strategic meaning: on the one hand, it gradually cultivates users' habit of calling agents in WeChat through Clawbot; on the other hand, it also lays the foundation for the future and gradually explores how to connect agents with mini - programs.
On March 18, Ma Huateng also mentioned this idea at the earnings communication meeting, saying that "lobster" - like applications have inspired the planned WeChat AI development. He also revealed that in the future, mini - programs may also be intelligentized and "lobsterized" for agents to call and interact.
However, the frequently mentioned security and privacy risks also exist.
For example, AI industry insider stain publicly pointed out that compared with the open ecosystem of OpenClaw, the Clawbot plugin runs within the WeChat system, and its underlying dependence is Tencent's own iLink private protocol. This means that when users use Clawbot to call an agent, all communications must be relayed through Tencent. From a purely technical perspective, the platform completely has the ability to review, modify, or even block content. This obviously goes against the original vision of technology idealists for AI Agents to be "decentralized" and not rely on the power of a single platform.
However, compared with these hidden risks, most users said that they are willing to exchange a part of control for efficiency and convenience in experience. This is almost a path that repeats itself in every technological wave. Although technology constantly promises to liberate individuals, history has repeatedly proven that the end of efficiency often leads to a more seamless system rather than real freedom.