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by vanillameow 81 days ago
Genuine question - your README is full of em-dashes, emojis, feature squares and ASCII diagrams - none of which are present in your pre-AI era projects.

Why do you expect a potential userbase to care to read something you didn't even care to write?

Seems a bit disrespectful to me.
3 comments
ChiefTinkeer 81 days ago
Provided he reviewed it and checked the readme is telling the users what it needs to tell them - what's the issue? I've found documentation to be one of the better tasks AI can perform and see no reason why not to use it provided a human is in the loop.
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docheinestages 81 days ago
Just looking at the diagrams in the README, the broken ASCII suggests to me it either wasn't looked at or the author didn't care.
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Milner08 81 days ago
I agree, but its tricky as many people seem to not read it and I have seen AI documentation that is so verbose and dense that its almost as useless as not having it. Its a fine line but so long as the AI documentation is reviewed and reasonable then I see no issue.
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vanillameow 81 days ago
1. In reality most people simply do not do this, and frankly it's exhausting to be expected to always assume goodwill in a setting that is full of pure vanity.

2. There's a difference between technical documentation, which AI can be quite decent at, and product marketing. A README is usually about 20/80, maybe 50/50 for large FOSS projects. You can have the AI write the sections on how to install the thing for all I care, but as soon as AI is telling me why I should use it, you've lost me. Signals a complete lack of interest in your own product.

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no_shadowban_3 81 days ago
It's a strong signal of low quality.

The question is: "Should I spend my time engaging with this project?"

The AI-forward presentation says: "Absolutely not."

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raincole 81 days ago
Potential userbase... you mean people who use OpenClaw? Not sure if they care.
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chrislxy 81 days ago
Probably not the typical OpenClaw user. I’ve had that thought myself.

But I can imagine that medium-sized companies will want to use AI as a backend in the future, without wanting to be dependent on Antropic.

After all, there are already quite a few companies using OpenClaw.

A self-hosted OpenClaw instance (or other solutions in the future) with Relay would be a good alternative to Claude Cowork.

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_joel 81 days ago
I do think a properly hand-written readme it better, but if not, here's a blatant plug - https://github.com/joelio/plain-english
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