The Hard Fork

Technical details of the OpenClaw → BrainstormRouter transition.

What changed

BrainstormRouter is a hard fork of OpenClaw. The consumer-facing product was removed. The infrastructure was kept and hardened for multi-tenant SaaS deployment.

Directories removed permanently

ui/              → Local gateway dashboard (Lit web components)
apps/            → Mobile apps (iOS, Android, macOS)
src/channels/    → Unified messaging abstraction layer
src/slack/       → Slack channel implementation
src/web/         → Web channel implementation
src/telegram/    → Already removed prior to fork
src/discord/     → Already removed prior to fork
src/signal/      → Already removed prior to fork
src/imessage/    → Already removed prior to fork

These directories do not exist in the repository and will not be recreated. BrainstormRouter is a headless API-first platform.

What replaced the local dashboard

The local Lit web components dashboard (ui/) was replaced by a SaaS dashboard at site/dashboard/, hosted on Vercel at brainstormrouter.com/dashboard. It's a vanilla TypeScript/Vite app that authenticates via Supabase and calls the production API at api.brainstormrouter.com.

Backward compatibility

Environment variables

The envVar() utility in src/infra/env.ts reads BRAINSTORMROUTER_ first, then falls back to OPENCLAW_:

// Reads BRAINSTORMROUTER_DATA_DIR first, falls back to OPENCLAW_DATA_DIR
const dataDir = envVar("DATA_DIR");

Roughly 700 files still contain OPENCLAW_* references. This is intentional — they're operational identifiers (filesystem paths, container names, systemd units) that would break existing deployments if renamed wholesale.

CLI binary name

The CLI binary remains openclaw for package compatibility. The npm package name is unchanged. Only the product name, documentation, and API surface use the BrainstormRouter name.

Package paths

Internal package paths under src/ retain their original structure. The rename was applied to:

• All TypeScript types (BRConfig, BRPlugin*, BRVersion)
• All public-facing function names
• All documentation and display strings
• All file names that appeared in imports

Infrastructure changes

Component	Before (OpenClaw)	After (BrainstormRouter)
Hosting	Self-hosted (single node)	AWS ECS Fargate (us-east-1)
Database	SQLite (local)	Postgres 16 (RDS) + pgvector
Cache	In-memory	ElastiCache Serverless (Redis)
Storage	Local filesystem	EFS persistent volume
Auth	Local config file	Supabase JWT + API keys
Dashboard	Local Lit app (port 3000)	Vercel SaaS (brainstormrouter.com/dashboard)
Memory	SQLite (local)	Postgres pgvector + durable extraction queue
Secrets	.env files	AWS Secrets Manager + 1Password

Multi-tenancy

The most significant architectural addition. OpenClaw was single-tenant by design. BrainstormRouter introduces:

• Row-Level Security on tenant-scoped tables via Drizzle pgPolicy (src/db/schema/tenants.ts:76-92)
• AsyncLocalStorage for implicit tenant propagation (src/db/tenant-als.ts)
• ltree hierarchy for MSP sub-tenant relationships
• System tables (api_keys, extraction queue) that intentionally skip RLS for cross-tenant worker operations

See Tenant Isolation for the full architecture.