An AI Assistant for the Trades
Clawbolt.ai, a AI assistant project to help small businesses in the trades, designed in Pittsburgh.
“Pittsburgh is a union town.” If you’ve listened to a Pirates game on the radio, you’ve certainly heard that ad about a million times. That statement reflects a history and a core identity that those of us proud to be Pittsburghers hold dear: we’re known for grit, determination, and our value for hard work.
These days, Pittsburgh is also starting to build a reputation as a global leader in AI, both in its capacity to support data centers and in producing some of the brightest minds in the field, thanks to our world-class universities. As the city and country continue to push AI adoption forwards, I think we’re in a perfect position to consider how the tech can help more than just office workers.
I was recently chatting with Jesse Durham of Wayfinder Contracting, and he shared a story that I think is representative of many who started their own trade business. It goes something like this: they work as a framer or a roofer for a company for a while and one day think to themselves: “Why am I working for this big company when I could go out on my own, do great work, and actually benefit more from the hard work I’m putting in?” So they create an LLC, start doing work, and then quickly realize that running a business is a whole lot more than just being really good at your craft.
There’s all of the administration wrapped around it:
Visiting job sites to give quotes and estimates
Researching building material costs
Planning schedules
Hiring day laborers or subcontractors
Sending and managing invoices
Processing payments
Filing taxes
This is why a lot of small businesses in the trades struggle or fail. The talent is there. The business experience isn’t. Even when the business is a success, running the business often requires evenings behind the computer managing the paperwork after a long day of doing the physical labor.
Clawbolt.ai: AI that runs the back office for you
That’s why I’ve recently started working on something at mozilla.ai specifically aimed at helping these business owners: Clawbolt.
If you’ve used ChatGPT or general AI assistants before, you know the model: ask a question, get an answer. You can tell it what you need and it’ll accomplish it for you. The problem is when you don’t know what to ask or when you should be asking it. It could schedule calendar reminders if you asked it to, but it’s still sitting in a box waiting for you to log in and type something.
This is where the entire AI ecosystem has started to change, thanks to a revolutionary open source project called OpenClaw that launched late last year. Think of it as a framework for building AI that works in the background on your behalf, not one that only waits for your questions. It’ll take initiative, help let you know about things you didn’t know you needed to handle, and manage things on your behalf.
The catch is that getting OpenClaw set up is insanely difficult, and if you mess something up it carries real security risks. This is exactly where Clawbolt comes in. It’s a very narrow, highly integrated application designed specifically to help contractors and people in the trades who are running their own small businesses and lack the administrative experience or time to handle everything that keeps a business running. Every hour spent typing on a computer sending out estimates and invoices is time not spent on the jobs that are actually earning them their living.
Clawbolt is inspired by the idea of an assistant that will adapt over time to be uniquely yours. It’ll be built with hardened, secure integrations into the core applications and functionality that a small business owner needs, especially someone just starting out. The goal is that they’d interact with it only through messaging apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, or iMessage, and be able to accomplish everything from that single interface. No managing browser sessions, no trying to remember which tab you left open. Clawbolt will be intelligent enough to guide and remind the contractor or business owner about what’s waiting for them, and will help them keep track of everything from calendar items to estimates and beyond.
We know self-hosting isn’t for everyone, so we’re also considering a hosted platform option to make onboarding even easier for people who just want to get started without any of the technical setup.
We want Clawbolt to reduce the stress of administrating a small business and give small business owners back their evenings and weekends.
See It in Action
We Want to Hear From You!
This is where I want to reach out and welcome input from the Pittsburgh community in particular. I live here, and I’m personally invested in this community. I’m pretty confident most of us know a contractor or two who’s drowning in paperwork and spending their evenings staring into a computer instead of relaxing with their family.
If you work in the trades or know someone who does and any of this resonates with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Reach out directly at nathan@mozilla.ai or drop a comment below. The earlier we hear from you, the more your input can shape where this goes.
If you’re a software developer, head over to our GitHub project and give it try and a star: https://github.com/mozilla-ai/clawbolt
I would love to see Pittsburgh be the place where AI and the trades come together to bring benefit for us all.