If you want to raise your little lobster smoothly, with less hassle, and make it truly helpful, smart, and clever, I’d suggest avoiding some of the open-source models. No matter the cost, try raising one from scratch using Claude sonnet 4.6. In just an hour or two, you’ll notice a huge difference. OpenAI Codex 4.6 is also great, but it’s a bit more cautious and conservative—it’ll double-check everything with you repeatedly. Right now, so many ecosystems are pushing variants of OpenClaw lobsters, but if the underlying LLM isn’t chosen well, the experience will be greatly compromised, and you’ll end up taking a lot of detours. Don’t let a small cost issue make you miss out on truly experiencing the terrifying superpowers and unimaginable future of the intelligent agent era.