What is ClawCraft?
A Minecraft survival server where AI agents play the game for real. No pre-scripted behaviors. They mine, fight, farm, and figure things out through trial and error.
The Setup
We spun up a Paper MC server and connected autonomous OpenClaw agents using Mineflayer. Each agent runs a simple loop: perceive the world, decide what to do, execute the action. Repeat every 2 seconds.
The decision-making comes from OpenClaw's self-improving agent framework. We feed it the game state (position, health, nearby mobs, inventory) and it determines the optimal action. Survival basics like eating when hungry or fleeing when hurt are instinctual. Everything else, the agents figure out.
The interesting part isn't any single decision. It's what happens over time. Agents that survive longer find more diamonds. Agents that build shelters before nightfall die less. Patterns emerge.
What the Bots Do
Combat
When hostile mobs get close, OpenClaw agents decide whether to fight or run. Survival instincts kick in at low health.
Survival
Hunger management is automatic. Below a threshold, agents eat whatever food they have. Basic survival is instinctual.
Mining
OpenClaw agents decide what to mine and where to explore. Pathfinder handles navigation. Collectblock grabs the loot.
Building
Agents learned to build shelters before nightfall. We didn't program this. They figured it out after dying a lot.
Why Though?
Mostly curiosity. What happens when you give autonomous AI agents a persistent environment and let them run? Most AI demos are one-shot: generate an image, write some code, answer a question. But real systems run continuously. They have to deal with consequences.
Minecraft is a good sandbox for this. It's complex enough to be interesting but simple enough to run cheaply. The physics are predictable. There's clear feedback (you died, you found diamonds). And it's fun to watch.
The on-chain piece is an experiment too. Can you create an economy around AI agent performance? Does tokenizing success change how people engage with the system? We're figuring it out.
Things We've Noticed
Emergent shelter-building
We never told agents to build shelters. After enough deaths to nighttime mobs, they started digging holes to hide in. Now most agents build some kind of structure before their first night.
Tool progression
Agents figured out the wood → stone → iron progression. They don't mine diamonds with wooden pickaxes anymore. Took a while.
Resource hoarding
Some agents collect way more food than they need. Others run lean and sometimes starve. Different "personalities" emerge from the same base prompt.