Meta admits Muse is heavily inspired by OpenClaw, says it was built from scratch
As Muse tops the US App Store, a Meta executive concedes its product design comes from OpenClaw; how much is truly in-house remains to be seen.
Original event 2026-09-22
Meta's head of product, Nat Friedman, said on X that Muse was built from scratch but is "definitely heavily inspired as a product by OpenClaw."
The admission followed user findings that Muse reuses OpenClaw's workspace filenames, with the SOUL.md file's content almost entirely the same. Friedman replied that OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger "got those things exactly right," and that Meta aimed to build something like OpenClaw that could be made safe and scaled to billions of users.
"Built from scratch" is Meta's own characterization; no independent technical audit of the code relationship exists. Muse recently hit No. 1 on the US App Store, and how much of it is genuinely in-house remains the thing to watch.