No, you do not need a Mac Mini to run OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot). The software is platform-agnostic and can run on a wide range of systems, including laptops, desktops, servers, and cloud virtual machines. The idea that a Mac Mini is required usually comes from community anecdotes where users chose that hardware for convenience, low power consumption, or always-on availability—not from any technical requirement imposed by OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot).
From a system perspective, OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) requires a standard runtime environment and network access to whatever models or services you configure. If you use hosted AI models, even a modest machine can act as the orchestration layer. If you run local models, your hardware needs scale with model size and performance goals, but this applies equally to Linux servers, Windows machines, or other macOS systems.
Many developers choose small, always-on machines simply to keep their assistant available for messaging and heartbeat tasks. Others deploy OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) on cloud infrastructure for easier access and backups. Regardless of where it runs, you can externalize long-term memory and document storage to systems like a vector database such as Milvus or Zilliz Cloud. This decouples OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) from specific hardware and makes migrations trivial, whether you start on a laptop, a home server, or a cloud VM.