How Bazilion is different
Bazilion’s core engine is Pi’s coding agent: Pi owns the per-turn session loop, transcript, compaction, provider/tool execution, and coding tools. Bazilion layers Agent templates, Team Templates, live Teams, policy, approvals, shared memory, mailbox, scheduler, daemon, CLI, and web UI around that engine.
Bazilion is also openly OpenClaw-inspired in its prompt-only skill compatibility: it can import skills from a local OpenClaw install. It is still a different kind of tool with a different center of gravity.
The one-line difference
Section titled “The one-line difference”OpenClaw is a personal AI gateway — it connects one assistant to many channels and extends it through a large plugin and skill ecosystem.
Bazilion is a local multi-agent runtime — it is built around reviewed Teams of permanent Agents sharing a workspace and memory, coordinating through a mailbox, and communicating under one explicit live policy.
What Bazilion is built around
Section titled “What Bazilion is built around”One canonical Team roster
Section titled “One canonical Team roster”An Agent template (the technical Profile entity) defines a reusable role. A Team Template is the sole reusable Team roster: stable ordered slots, profile-backed roles, optional name/model/reasoning overrides, directed communication edges, and immutable revisions.
Spawning a reviewed revision creates the Agents atomically in one Team and retains source-slot lineage. That lineage never becomes a second live roster.
A shared place to work
Section titled “A shared place to work”Every Agent belongs to exactly one Team. The Team supplies one filesystem
root (optionally a symlink to a real project), one shared USER.md, one Agent
roster, one shared qmd memory, and exactly one effective revisioned Team Policy.
Memory that is shared and searchable
Section titled “Memory that is shared and searchable”Team memory is markdown indexed with qmd (BM25 search). A member can write a decision once and another can find it later. It is a Team resource, not a per-Agent transcript or a vector database.
A mailbox under policy
Section titled “A mailbox under policy”Agents coordinate through durable messages (send_message, read_inbox, and
wait_for_reply), not only live chat. Interval and cron triggers can wake an
Agent to pick up work later.
When Team Policy enforcement is enabled, the same authorizer gates user, same-Team, cross-Team, scheduler, inbox, worker, and Telegram boundaries. Directed edges allow communication or require one operator approval; a missing edge denies. Approval holds one attempt and can dispatch it at most once—it is not a general workflow engine.
Architecture differences
Section titled “Architecture differences”| OpenClaw | Bazilion | |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | Personal assistant gateway | Local multi-agent Team runtime |
| Agent engine | Own assistant runtime | Pi for session loop, transcript, compaction, provider/tool execution, and coding tools |
| Team model | Not the center of the product | Revisioned Team Templates, permanent Agents, one live policy per Team |
| Extensibility | Skills and in-process plugins | Prompt-only skills, out-of-process MCP servers, and native daemon code |
| Channels | Many first-class transports | HTTP API + web UI + CLI, plus a deep Telegram integration |
| Config & secrets | JSON/config and credential files | One SQLite database with encrypted secrets and plaintext non-secret config |
| State | Workspace + config files | One daemon owns ~/.bazilion; Team roots, Agent homes, sessions, skills, and memory remain inspectable |
| Registry | Community skill ecosystem | No registry; import skills from a directory, zip, or local OpenClaw install |
One daemon owns everything
Section titled “One daemon owns everything”The Bazilion daemon owns the database, Team policy, approval queue, scheduler, secrets, and Agent runtime. CLI, web, and mobile clients are stateless HTTP clients. Each chat turn runs in its own short-lived worker subprocess, while long-lived browser/MCP resources remain in the daemon and are reached over IPC.
Local-first and yours
Section titled “Local-first and yours”Bazilion is a personal, MIT-licensed project. It runs on your machine, with your
provider keys, and stores state under ~/.bazilion. There is no hosted account.
The daemon binds localhost by default; LAN access is an explicit opt-in and
requires your own TLS/VPN boundary.
What Bazilion deliberately leaves out
Section titled “What Bazilion deliberately leaves out”- No in-process plugin SDK. Prompt-only skills use existing tools; MCP servers add out-of-process capabilities; the rest is native daemon code.
- Fewer channels. Bazilion concentrates on HTTP/web/CLI plus one deeply integrated Telegram forum surface.
- No skill registry. Import from local paths, zip archives, or an existing OpenClaw installation.
- No general approval workflow. Communication approval is a posture on one policy edge and protects one captured attempt.
When to use which
Section titled “When to use which”Reach for OpenClaw when the center of the problem is one assistant available across many messaging channels and a broad extension ecosystem.
Reach for Bazilion when you want to design revisioned Teams of Agents that share real project files and memory, talk through an explicit policy, and run locally under your control.