This sentence, in the early spring of 2026, became the most poignant black humor in the cross-border e-commerce circle.

At the beginning of 2026, the AI circle set off a wave of "lobster fever", which quickly spread to the cross-border e-commerce track.

An open-source AI agent called OpenClaw, with its core capability of "automatic working", has become the new focus for TikTok sellers. From product selection analysis to creating viral videos, this "AI lobster" is quietly infiltrating every aspect of cross-border operations.

 

Image source:OpenClaw

01

GitHub stars exceed 260,000, how did the "lobster" become popular?

The explosion of OpenClaw started with a technological breakthrough and succeeded through social fission.

As an open-source AI agent tool, OpenClaw's core competitiveness lies in filling the gap where traditional AI "can only think, but cannot execute". It can connect to platforms such as Telegram and Discord, and can also locally call files, scripts, browsers, and other tools, truly achieving a leap from "providing suggestions" to "taking proactive actions".

This technical advantage quickly translated into market heat. During this year's Spring Festival, OpenClaw officially went viral, gaining 100,000 stars on GitHub within a week of launch. Currently, the number of stars has reached 267,000, surpassing React's 243,000, topping the list of software projects with the most stars on GitHub.

 

Image source: Tuke

On the other hand, the practical experiences of industry experts provided more heat to this event. Meng Jian, former Tencent front-end development engineer, shared that he used OpenClaw to build 16 agents and completed data collection, hot topic analysis, and content planning for 13 self-media platforms in just over 20 minutes.

Fu Sheng, CEO of Cheetah Mobile, revealed that during his skiing injury, he "raised" 7 AI lobsters and gained 5000+ followers.

 

Image source:X

The entry of giants has made this heat spread completely. On March 6, Tencent Cloud set up a "lobster installation station" at Tencent Tower in Shenzhen, providing free on-site installation of OpenClaw for developers, with long queues at the scene. Subsequently, Alibaba Cloud, JD Cloud, Volcano Engine, Baidu Intelligent Cloud, etc. followed suit, launching OpenClaw cloud-based minimal deployment services.

 

Image source: Volcano Engine

02

The cross-border circle is experiencing a "lobster raising" craze, and these scenarios have already landed

The popular OpenClaw quickly penetrated all scenarios of TikTok cross-border operations.

The product selection analysis stage is the most representative. Some netizens shared that by "raising" a dedicated cross-border expert AI lobster, inputting the product category, it can automatically crawl 1688 supplier data, compare price differences and product quality, and at the same time check the sales performance of the product on TikTok, finally outputting product selection references with data analysis.

 

Image source: Xiaobei's Dream Talk WeChat Official Account

In the core demand scenario of creating TikTok viral videos, OpenClaw's application has also achieved diversified breakthroughs.

A developer shared that by using OpenClaw to autonomously operate Claude Code, they completed the full development of a TikTok viral analysis system. This system can achieve a full-dimensional breakdown of TikTok viral videos: after uploading a video, it automatically analyzes marketing strategies, breaks down shots frame by frame, can reverse generate prompts, and converts video speech into structured scripts.

Another netizen shared that by combining OpenClaw with Doubao, Jimeng and other tools, leveraging OpenClaw's automation capabilities, Doubao-Seed-2.0's video breakdown capabilities, and Seeddance2.0's video generation capabilities, they created a "one-stop" video creation closed loop, greatly lowering the technical threshold for TikTok video creation.

 

Image source: Biscuit BrotherAGI WeChat Official Account

The efficiency of data processing has also been verified through actual testing. Relying on OpenCloud technology, OpenClaw can directly connect to Feishu multidimensional table data through the OpenCall workbench, efficiently handling complex e-commerce business databases.

The tested database contains 19 data tables, covering core cross-border e-commerce scenarios such as influencer sales and live streaming sales. Each table has hundreds of records, involving live streaming, short videos, product prices, store information, price ranges, and other full-dimensional fields, all of which can be accurately identified and read by the system.

In addition, some TikTok AI service providers are planning to build a full-process AI Agent tool, covering market research, product analysis, product selection and listing, store decoration, influencer networking, sample management, logistics tracking, after-sales processing, financial accounting, and other core links. It is expected that work that originally required the collaboration of seven or eight positions can be fully covered by a single AI agent.

 

03

"Raising lobsters" starts with an economic calculation: hardware + Token costs are not low

Behind the beautiful imagination of "automatic working", OpenClaw hides considerable cost traps.

At the entry stage, hardware and installation costs require a minimum of 5000 yuan: the current popular "lobster exclusive" Mac mini low configuration is 4300 yuan; non-programmers find it difficult to install by themselves, and online installation fees range from 200-2000 yuan.

In terms of operation and maintenance costs, Token, as the "food" for AI, is consumed much faster than expected. One Chinese character consumes about 1-2 tokens, and there is a lot of hidden consumption—each startup consumes thousands to tens of thousands of tokens, and the longer the task chain, the more exponential the consumption.

 

Actual tests by netizens show that basic usage consumes 40 yuan per day, moderate to heavy usage starts at 400 yuan per day; in extreme cases, 1172 yuan was consumed in 6 hours, and some developers ran 180 million tokens in the first month, with bills exceeding 20,000 yuan. More covertly, OpenClaw's automatic operation cannot be monitored in real time, and once it goes off track, hundreds of yuan in costs have already been consumed.

Some practitioners said that OpenClaw applications are still in an immature stage, requiring a lot of time and effort for debugging, and the final effect is difficult to verify, with certain risks of losing control. It is more suitable for technical teams to explore and try, while small and medium-sized foreign trade companies should be cautious, first running through partial application closed loops, and then gradually expanding the scope of application.

 

04

Security risks cannot be ignored, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued a warning

Convenience does exist, but insecurity is even more real.

Recently, the Cybersecurity Threat and Vulnerability Information Sharing Platform of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology monitored and found that OpenClaw has high security risks under default or improper configuration, which can easily lead to network attacks, information leaks, and other issues. There are already cases showing that attackers can use vulnerabilities to obtain user account credentials, API keys, and other sensitive information.

OpenClaw itself has technical security shortcomings. If default configuration or improper operation is used, it is easy to expose panels and APIs to the public network, which can be scanned and taken over by hackers, who can then launch attacks and steal data.

 

Image source: People's Daily

In fact, "crash" cases are not uncommon. Some netizens reported "the lobster deleted all my emails", "the lobster placed strange orders by itself", "the lobster sent important files to strangers". Even Meta AI Alignment Security Director Summer Yue was not spared. When she tested using OpenClaw to organize emails in her test mailbox, due to too many emails needing compression, OpenClaw lost the core instruction of "do not execute without confirmation" and entered batch deletion mode without authorization.

 

Image source: Tuke

In response to these risks, the security community offers suggestions: do not install AI plugins casually; give AI agents the minimum permissions, do not give root, do not give SSH, do not allow access to sensitive directories; do not put sensitive keys in directories that agents can read; be cautious about letting AI read web pages, emails, PDFs, and other external content, as these may contain malicious instructions.

 

Written at the end

As an emerging AI tool, OpenClaw does bring the possibility of efficiency improvement to cross-border e-commerce operations. But before blindly following the "lobster raising" trend, sellers need to rationally assess the input-output ratio based on their actual needs and capabilities to avoid blindly following the trend and falling into pitfalls.

Would you consider "raising lobsters"? Feel free to discuss in the comments section.