Kind: captions
Language: en
I watch my agent happily click the I'm
not a robot button. I made the agent
very aware like it knows what is source
code is. It understands the how it sits
and runs in its own harness. It knows
where documentation is. It knows which
model it runs. It understands its own
system that made it very easy for an
agent to oh you don't like anything you
just prompted into existence and then
the agent would just modify its own
software. People talk about
selfmodifying software. I just built it.
I actually think VIP coding is a slur.
>> You prefer agentic engineering.
>> Yeah. I always tell people I I do
agentic engineering and then maybe after
3:00 a.m. I switch to wipe coding and
then I have regrets on the next day.
>> Well, walk of shame.
>> Yeah. You just have to clean up and like
fix your
>> We've all been there.
>> I used to write really long prompts. And
by writing, I mean, I don't write. I I I
talk. You know, the these hands are like
too too precious for writing now. I just
I just use bespoke prompts to build my
software.
>> So you for real with all those terminals
are using voice.
>> Yeah, I used to do it very extensively
to the point where there was a period
where I lost my voice.
>> I mean I have to ask you just curious I
I know you've probably gotten huge
offers from uh major companies.
Can you speak to who you're considering
working with?
Yeah.
The following is a conversation with
Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw,
formerly known as Moldbot, Claudebot,
Claudis, Claude, spelled with a W, as in
lobster claw. Not to be confused with
Claude, the AI model from Enthropic,
spelled with a U. In fact, this
confusion is the reason Anthropic kindly
asked Peter to change the name to
OpenClaw. So, what is OpenClaw? It's an
open source AI agent that has taken over
the tech world in a matter of days,
exploding in popularity, reaching over
180,000 stars on GitHub and spawning the
social network mold book where AI agents
post manifestos and debate
consciousness, creating a mix of
excitement and fear in the general
public in a kind of AI psychosis, a mix
of clickbait, fear-mongering, and
genuine, fully justifiable concern about
the role of AI. I in our digital
interconnected human world. Openclaw, as
its tagline states, is the AI that
actually does things. It's an autonomous
AI assistant that lives on your
computer. Has access to all of your
stuff if you let it. Talks to you
through Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal,
iMessage, and whatever else messaging
client uses whatever AI model you like,
including Claude Opus 4.6 6 and GPT 5.3
codecs
all to do stuff for you. Many people are
calling this one of the biggest moments
in the recent history of AI since the
launch of Chad GPT in November 2022.
The ingredients for this kind of AI
agent were all there. But putting it all
together in a system that definitively
takes a step forward over the line from
language to agency, from ideas to
actions, in a way that created a useful
assistant that feels like one who gets
you and learns from you in an open-
source community-driven way is the
reason Open Claw took the internet by
storm. Its power in large part comes
from the fact that you can give it
access to all of your stuff and give it
permission to do anything with that
stuff in order to be useful to you. This
is very powerful, but it is also
dangerous. Open claw represents freedom.
But with freedom comes responsibility.
With it, you can own and have control
over your data. But precisely because
you have this control, you also have the
responsibility to protect it from cyber
security threats of various kinds. There
are great ways to protect yourself, but
the threats and vulnerabilities are out
there. Again, a powerful AI agent with
system level access is a security
minefield, but it also represents the
future because when done well and
securely, it can be extremely useful to
each of us humans as a personal
assistant. We discuss all of this with
Peter and also discuss his big picture
programming and entrepreneurship life
story which I think is truly inspiring.
He spent 13 years building PSPDF kit
which is a software used on a billion
devices. He sold it and for a brief time
fell out of love with programming,
vanished for 3 years and then came back,
rediscovered his love for programming
and built in a very short time an open-
source AI agent that took the internet
by storm. He is in many ways the symbol
of the AI revolution happening in the
programming world. There was the
Chadipati moment in 2022, the Deepseek
moment in 2025, and now in 26, we're
living through the open claw moment, the
age of the lobster, the start of the
agentic AI revolution. What a time to be
alive. This is a Lex Freedman podcast.
To support it, please check out our
sponsors in the description where you
can also find links to contact me, ask
questions, give feedback, and so on. And
now, dear friends, here's Peter
Steinberger,
the one and only, the Claude father.
Actually, Benjamin predicted in this
tweet, "The following is a conversation
with Claude, a respected crustaceian."
Is a hilarious looking picture of a
lobster in a suit. So, I think the
prophecy has been fulfilled.
Let's go to this moment when you built a
prototype in 1 hour. That was the early
version of Open Claw. I think this um
story is really inspiring to a lot of
people because this prototype led to
something that just took the internet by
storm and became the fastest growing
repository in GitHub history with now
over 175,000 stars. So, what was uh the
story of the 1hour prototype?
>> You know, I wanted that since April. A
personal assistant AI personal
assistant.
>> Yeah. And I I played around with some
other things. like even
stuff that gets all my WhatsApp and I
could just run queries on it. That was
back when we had GPD 4.1 with the 1
million context window
and I I pulled in all the data and I
asked him questions like what makes this
friendship meaningful?
>> Mhm.
>> And I got some
some really profound
results. like I sent it to my friends
and they got like teary eyes.
>> So there's something there.
>> Yeah. But then I I thought all the labs
will will work on that. So I I moved on
to other things and that was still very
much in my early days of experimenting
and playing. You know, you have to
that's how you learn. You just like you
do stuff and you play. And
time flew by and it was November. I
wanted to make sure that the thing I
started is actually happening. I was
annoyed that it didn't exist. So, it
just
prompted it into existence.
I mean, that's the beginning of the
hero's journey of the entrepreneur,
right? And you've even with your
original story with PSPDF kit, it's
like, why does this not exist? Let me
build it. And again, here's whole
different realm, but similar maybe
spirit.
>> Yes. I had this problem. I tried to show
PDF on an iPad which should not be hard.
>> This is like 15 years ago, something
like that.
>> Yeah. Like the most the most random
thing ever. And suddenly I had this
problem and I wanted to help a friend
and there was there was it was not like
nothing existed but it was just not
good. I'm like
like I tried it and it was like very meh
like I can do this better.
>> By the way, for people who don't know,
this led to the development of PSDF kit
that's used on a billion devices. So the
it turns out that it's pretty useful to
be able to open a PDF.
>> You could also make the joke that I'm
really bad at naming
>> like named number five on the current
project and even PSPDF doesn't really
roll from the tongue.
>> Anyway, so you said uh screw it, why
don't I uh do it? So what was the what
was the prototype? What was the thing
that you What was the magical thing that
you built in a short amount of time that
you're like this might actually work as
an agent where I talk to it and it does
things?
>> There was like one of my projects before
already did something where I could
bring my terminals onto the web and then
I could like interact with them but they
also would be terminals on my Mac.
>> Mhm. VIP tunnel which was like a a
weekend hack project
that was still very early and uh it was
cloud code times. You got a dopamine hit
when you got something right and now I
get like mad when you get something
wrong and you had a really great not to
take a tangent but a great blog post
describing that you converted uh vibe
tunnel you vibe coded vibe tunnel from
Typescript into Zigg of all programming
languages with a single prompt. One
prompt, one shot, convert the entire
codebase into zig. Yeah, there was this
one thing where part of the architecture
was took too much memory.
Every terminal
used like a node. Um, and I wanted to
change it to Rust. And
I mean, I can do it. I can I can
manually figure it all out, but
all my automated attempts failed
miserably.
And then I revisited four or five months
later and I'm like, "Okay, now let's use
something even more experimental
and I and I just typed convert this and
this part to sik and then let codeex run
off
and it basically got it right. There was
one little detail that I had to like
modify afterwards, but it just ran for
overnight or like six hours and just did
the thing and it's like this is just
mind-blowing.
So that's on the LLM programming side
refactoring. But uh uh back to the
actual story of the of the prototype. So
how did V tunnel connect to the first
prototype where your like agents can
actually work? Well, that was still very
limited, you know, like I had this one
experiment with WhatsApp, then I had
this experiment and both felt like not
the right answer. And then
my search was literally just hooking up
WhatsApp to cloud code. One shot the CLI
message comes in. I call the CLI with
minus P. It does its magic. I get the
string back and I send it back to
WhatsApp. And I I built this in 1 hour
and
I felt already felt really cool. It's
like, oh, I could I can like talk to my
computer, right? This
that that was cool. But I I wanted
images cuz I I often use images when I
prompt. I think it's such a such an
efficient way to give the agent more
context. And they're really good at
figuring out what I mean if it's like a
a weird cropped screenshot. Um, so I
used it a lot and I wanted to do that in
WhatsApp as well. Also like you know
just you run around, you see like a post
of an event, you just make a screenshot
and like figure out if I have time
there, if this is good, if my friends
are maybe up for that like images seemed
important. So I I worked a few it took
me a few more hours to actually get that
right. Um,
and then it was just
I I used it a lot and funny enough that
was
just before I went on a trip to
Marakekesh with my friends for birthday
trip and there it was even better
because internet was a little shaky but
WhatsApp just works you know it's like
doesn't matter you have like edge it
still works. WhatsApp is just it's just
made really well.
So I ended up using it a lot. Um
translate is for me explain me find me
places like you just having a clanker
doing having Google for you that was
basically it was still nothing built but
it still could do so much. So if we talk
about the full journey that's happening
there with the agent, you're just
sending on this very thin line WhatsApp
message via CLI is going to cloud code
and cloud code is doing all kinds of
heavy
work and coming back to you with a thin
message. Yeah, it was slow because every
time I boot up the CLI, but it it was
really cool already
and it could just use all the things
that I already had built. I built like a
whole bunch of CLI stuff over the
months. So, it it felt really powerful.
There is something magical about that
experience that's hard to put into
words.
being able to use a chat client
to talk to an agent versus like sitting
behind a computer and like I don't know
using cursor or even using cloud code in
the terminal. It's a different
experience than be able to sit back and
talk to it. I mean it seems like a
trivial step but it's in some in some
sense it's a it's like a phase shift in
the integration of AI into your life how
it feels right.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I I read this tweet this
morning where someone said, "Oh, there's
no magic in it. It's just like it does
this and this and this and this and this
and this and this and it it almost feels
like a hobby just as curse or
perplexity." And I'm like, "Well, if
that's a hobby, that's kind of a
compliment, you know? They're like,
they're not doing too bad." Um,
thank you. I guess guess
I mean isn't isn't isn't magic often
just like you take a lot of things that
are already there but bring them
together in new ways like I don't
there's no yeah maybe there's no magic
in there but sometimes just rearranging
things and like adding a few new ideas
is all the magic that you need. Yeah,
it's really hard to convert into words
what is what is magic about a thing. If
you look at the the scrolling on an
iPhone, why is that so pleasant? There's
a lot of elements about that interface
that makes it incredibly pleasant that
is fundamental to the experience of
using a smartphone. And it's like, okay,
all the components were there. Scrolling
was there, everything was there,
>> and nobody did it.
>> And afterwards, it felt so obvious.
>> That's so obvious,
>> right? But still,
um, now the moment where
it it blew my mind was when when I used
it a lot and at some point I just sent
it a message and and then a typing
indicator appeared and
and I'm like, wait, I didn't build that.
Uh, it's only it only has image support,
so what is it even doing? And then it
would just reply.
>> What was the thing you sent it?
>> Oh, just a random questions like, hey,
what about this in this restaurant? you
know, u cuz we were just running around
and and checking out the city. So that's
why I I didn't didn't even think when I
used to because sometimes when you're in
a hurry, typing is annoying.
>> So Oh, you did an audio message.
>> Yeah. And it just it just worked. And
I'm like
>> And it's not supposed to work because
you don't you didn't give it that.
>> No, I literally capability.
>> I literally wrote, "How the do you
do that?" And it was like, "Yeah, the
med did the following." He sent me a
message, but it only only was a file a
no file ending. So I checked out the
header of the file and it found it was
like ous. So I used ffmpeact to convert
it. And then I wanted to use whisper but
didn't had it installed. But then I
found the openi key and just use curl to
send a file to to openai to translate
and here I am. And I just looked at the
message. I'm like, "Oh, wow. You didn't
teach it any of those things and the
agent just figured it out that has to do
all those conversions, the translation.
They figured out the API, it figured out
which program to use, all those kinds of
things and you were just absent mindly
just send an audio message came back.
>> So clever even because you would have
gone the whisper local path. You would
have had to download a model. It would
have been too slow. So like there's so
much world knowledge in there, so much
creative problem solving. A lot of it I
think mapped from if you get really good
at coding that means you have to be
really good at general purpose program
solving. So that's a skill right and
that just maps into other domains.
>> So it had the problem of like what is
this file with no file ending? Let's
figure it out.
Um, and that's where it kind of clicked
for me was like I was like very
impressed and somebody sent a pull
request for Discord support and I'm like
this is a WhatsApp relay that doesn't
doesn't fit at all. At that time it was
called W relay.
>> Yeah. And so I debated with me like do I
want that? Do I not want that?
And then I thought, well, maybe
maybe I do that cuz
that could be a cool way to show people
cuz I so far I did it in WhatsApp with
like groups, you know, but
don't really want to give my phone
number to every internet stranger.
>> Yeah.
>> Um, journalists managed to do that
anyhow now. So that's a different story.
>> Uh, so I I emerged it from Shadow who
helped me a lot with the whole project.
So, thank you.
And and I put my my bot in there on
Discord.
>> Yeah. No security cuz I didn't I hadn't
built sandboxing in yet. I I just
prompted it to like only listen to me.
And then some people came and tried to
hack it. And I just or like just watched
and I just kept working in the open, you
know, like I used
my agent to build my agent harness
and to test like various stuff. And
that's very quickly when it clicked for
people. So it's almost like it needs to
be experienced. And from that time on
that was January the first. I I got my
first really influencer being a fan did
videos the kids. Thank you. And and from
there on I saw I started gaining up
speed and at the same time my my sleep
cycle went shorter and shorter because I
I felt the storm coming and I just
worked my ass off to get it to into a
state where
it's kind of good. There's a few
components. We'll talk about how it all
works, but basically you're able to talk
to it using WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord.
So, that's a component that you have to
get right.
>> Yeah.
>> And then you have to figure out the
agentic loop. You have the gateway. You
have the harness. You have all those
components that make it all just work
nicely.
>> Yeah. It felt like factorial times
infinite,
>> right?
>> I I feel like I built my little my
little playground. Like I never had so
much fun than building this project, you
know, like you have like oh I go like
level one aentic loop. What can I do
there? How can I be smart at queuing
messages? How can I make it more human?
Like oh then I had this idea of because
the loop always the agent always replies
something but you don't always want an
agent to reply something in the group
chat. So I gave him this no reply token.
So I gave him an option to shut up so it
it feels more natural.
>> That's level two.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On the on the agendic
loop and then I go to memory, right? You
want them to like remember stuff. So
maybe
>> maybe the and the ultimate boss is
continuous reinforcement learning. But
I'm I'm like at I feel like I'm level
two or three with markdown files and the
vector database. And then you you can go
to level community management. You can
go to level website and marketing.
There's just so many hats that you have
to have on. Uh not even talking about
native apps. That's just like infinite
different levels and infinite level ups
you can do.
>> So the whole time you're having fun. We
should say that for the most part
through this whole process you're a
one-man team. There's people helping,
but you're doing so much of the key core
development.
>> Yeah.
>> And having fun. You did in January
6,600 commits, probably more.
>> I sometimes posted the meme. I'm limited
by the technology of my time. I could do
more if agents would be faster.
>> But we should say you're running
multiple agents at the same time.
>> Yeah. Depending on how much I slept and
how difficult of the tasks I work on
between four and 10 four and 10 agents.
Uh there's so many possible directions
speaking of factorial that we can go
here. But one uh big picture one is why
do you think your work open claw
one
in this world if you look at 2025 so
many startups so many companies are
doing kind of agentic type stuff or
claiming to and here open claw comes in
and destroys everybody like why did you
win because they all take themselves too
serious.
>> Yeah. Like it's hard to compete against
someone who's just there to have fun.
>> Yeah.
>> I wanted it to be fun. I wanted it to be
weird. And if you see like all the all
the lobster stuff online, um I think I I
managed weird. I you know, for the
longest time, the only the only way to
install it was get clone pmp build pmppm
gateway. Like you clone it, you build
it, you run it. Um and then the the
agent I made the agent very aware like
it knows that it is what it is source
code is. It understands how it sits and
runs in its own harness. It knows where
the documentation is. It knows which
model it runs. It knows if you turn on
verbose or or reasoning mode. like I I
wanted to be more humanlike so it
understands its own system that made it
very easy for an agent to oh you don't
like anything you just prompted into
existence and then the agent would just
modify its own software
um you know we have people talk about
selfmodifying software I just built it
and didn't even
I didn't even plan it so much it just
happened
>> can you actually speak to that cuz it's
just fascinating so you have this piece
of software a certain type script.
>> Yeah.
>> That's able to via the agentic loop
modify itself. I mean, what a moment to
be alive in the history of humanity, in
the history of programming. Here's a
thing that's used by a huge amount of
people to do incredibly powerful things
in their lives. And that very system can
rewrite itself, can modify itself. Can
you just like speak to the power of
that? Like isn't that incredible? Like
when did you first close the loop on
that?
>> Oh, because that's how I built it as
well. You know, most of it is built by
Codex, but often times I when I debug
it, I I use self introspection so much.
It's like, hey, what tools do you see?
Can you call the tool yourself? Oh, like
what error do you see? Read the source
code. Figure out what's the problem.
Like
I just found it an incredibly fun way to
that the agent the very agent and
software that you use is used to debug
itself. So that it felt just natural
that everybody does that and that it led
to so many
so many pull requests by people who
never wrote software. I mean it also did
show that people never wrote software.
So I call them prompt requests in the
end, but I don't want to like pull that
down because every time someone made the
first pull request is a win for our
society, you know, like it like doesn't
matter how how shitty it is, you got to
start somewhere. So
I know there's like this whole big
movement of people complain about open
source and the quality of PRs and a
whole different level of problems but on
a different level I found it
I found it
very meaningful that that I built
something that people love to think of
so much that they actually
start to learn how open source works.
>> Yeah. You were the opencloud project was
a first polar request. You were the
first for so many. That is magical. So
many people that don't know how to
program are taking their first step into
the programming world with this. Isn't
that a step up for humanity? Isn't that
cool? Creating builders.
>> Yeah. Like the bar to do that was so
high and like with agents and with the
right software, it just like went lower
and lower. I don't know. I was at a
at a I also organized another type of
meetup. I call it I called it Claude
Code Anonymous.
Uh you can get the inspiration from now.
I call it Agents Anonymous for
for reasons.
>> Agents Anonymous.
>> And oh, it's so funny on so many levels.
>> I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah.
>> And there was this one guy who who
talked to me. like I run this design
agency and we we never had custom
software and now I have like 25 little
web services for various things that
help me in my business and I don't even
know how they work but they work
and he was just like very happy that
my stuff solves some of his problems and
he was like curious enough that he
actually came to like a a gentic meetup
even though He's he doesn't really know
how software works.
>> Can we actually uh rewind a little bit
and uh tell the saga of the name change?
First of all, it started out as W relay.
>> Yeah.
>> And then it went to Clauders.
>> Claudes.
>> Yeah. You know, when I when I built it
in the beginning, my agent had no
personality. It was just it was Claude
Code. Slightly psychopantic oppos.
And I when you talk to a friend on
WhatsApp, they don't talk like cloud
code. So I wanted
I felt this I just didn't it didn't feel
right. So I I wanted to give it a
personality,
>> make it spicier, make it
>> Yeah.
>> something. By the way, that's actually
hard to put into words as well. And we
should mention that of course you create
the soulm
inspired by anthropics constitutional AI
work. how to make it spicy
>> partially. It picked up a little bit
from me, you know, like those things are
text completion engines in a way. So, so
I I I I
had fun working with it and then I told
it to
how I wanted it to interact with me and
just like write your own each and D
um give yourself a name
and I mean I don't even know how the
whole
the whole lobster I mean people only do
lobster originally it was actually
lobster in a in a TARDIS cuz I'm also a
big Doctor Who fan. Was there a space
lobster? I heard. What's that have to do
with anything?
>> Yeah, I just wanted to make it weird.
There was no There was no big grand
plan. I was just having fun here.
>> Oh, so cuz the lobster is already weird
and then the space lobster isn't extra
weird.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Cuz the is basically
the the harness
but cannot call it Tardis. So we call it
clawis. So that was name number two.
>> Yeah.
>> And then
it never really rolled off the tongue.
So
when more people came
again, I talked with my agent, Claude.
At least that's what I used to call him
now.
>> Claw spelled with a W C L A W D.
>> Yeah.
>> Versus C L A U D E from Enthropic.
>> Yeah.
>> Which is part of what makes it funny.
I think the play on the letters and the
words and the turtis and the lobster and
the space lobster is hilarious, but I
can see why it can lead into problems.
>> Yeah, they didn't find it so funny.
>> So then I got the domain Clawbot and I
just I love the domain and it was like
short, it was catchy. I'm like, "Yeah,
let's do that." I didn't I didn't think
it would be that big at this time.
Um,
and then just when it exploded,
I got kudos a very friendly email from
one of the employees that they didn't
like the name.
>> One of the anthropic employees.
>> Yeah. So, actually kudos cuz they could
have just sent a a lawyer letter, but
they've been nice about it. But also
like you have to change this and fast.
And I asked for 2 days because changing
a name is hard cuz you have to find
everything, you know, Twitter handle,
domains, npm packages,
uh, docker registry, GitHub stuff, and
everything has to be you need a set of
everything. And also can we comment on
the fact that you're increasingly
attacked followed by crypto folks which
I think you mentioned somewhere that
that means the name change had to be
because they were trying to snipe
they're trying to steal and so you had
to be the name I mean from the engineer
perspective it's just fascinating you
had to make the name change atomic make
sure it's changed everywhere at once.
Yeah, I failed very hard at that. You
did?
>> I I underestimated those people. Um,
it's a it's a very interesting
subculture. Like
it everything circles around. I probably
get a lot wrong and we probably get hate
for that if you say that, but
there's like bags app and then they they
tokenize everything. And they they did
the same back with Swipe Tunnel, but to
a much smaller degree, it was not that
annoying. But on this project, they've
been they've been swarming me. They they
like every half an hour someone came
into Discord and and and spammed it and
we had to block the we have like server
rules and one of the rules was one of
the rules is no mentioning of butter
for obvious reasons and one was no talk
about finance stuff or crypto um because
I'm I just not interested in that and
this is a space about the project and
not about some finance stuff. But yeah,
they came in and and spammed and
annoying. And on Twitter, they would
ping me all the time. My my notification
feed was unusable. I I could barely see
actual people talking about the stuff
because it was like swarms.
>> Mhm.
>> And everybody sent me hashes.
Um
and they all try me to claim the fees
like we helping the project claim the
fees. No, you're actually harming the
project. You're like disrupting my work
and I am not interested in any fees. I'm
first of all, I'm financially
comfortable. Second of all, I don't want
to support that. Um because it's
so far the worst form of online
harassment that I've experienced.
>> Yeah, there's a lot of toxicity in the
crypto world. It's sad because
the technology of cryptocurrency is
fascinating and powerful and maybe will
define the future of money but the
actual community around that there's so
much toxicity there's so much greed
there's so much trying to get a shortcut
to manipulate to to steal to snipe to to
to game the system somehow to get money
all this kind of stuff it
uh I mean it's the human nature I
suppose when you connect human nature
with money and greed and uh and
especially in the online world with
anonymity and all that kind of stuff,
but from the engineering perspective, it
makes your life challenging when
Anthropic reaches out. You have to do a
name change and then there there's
there's like all these like Game of
Thrones uh or Lord of the Rings armies
of different kinds you have to be aware
of.
>> There was no perfect name and I didn't
sleep for two nights. I was under high
pressure.
Um, I was trying to get like a good set
of domains and you know, not cheap, not
easy because in this in this state of
the internet, you basically have to buy
domains if you want to have a good set.
And and then another another email came
in that um the lawyers are getting
uneasy.
again friendly but also
just adding more stress to my situation
already. So at this point I was just
like
sorry there's not a word it and I
just I just renamed it to moldbot cuz
that was the set of domains I had. I was
not really happy but I thought it it'll
be fine.
And I tell you everything that could go
wrong did go wrong. Everything that
could go wrong did go wrong. It's
incredible. Um
I I thought I I had mapped the the space
out and reserved the important things.
>> Can you give some details of the stuff
that gone wrong cuz it's interesting
from like an engineering perspective?
>> Well, the the interesting stuff is that
none of these services have have a
squatter protection. So I had two
browser windows open. One was like a
an empty account ready to be rename
renamed to Cloudbot and the other one I
renamed to Moldbot. So I pressed rename
there, I pressed rename there and in
those 5 seconds they stole the account
name.
Literally the 5 seconds of dragging the
mouse over there and pressing rename
there was too long.
>> Wow. because there's no those systems. I
mean, you would expect that they have
some protection or like an automatic
forwarding, but there's nothing like
that.
And I didn't know that they're not just
good at harassment, they was really good
at using scripts and tools.
>> Yeah.
So, yeah. So suddenly like the old
account was um promoting new tokens and
serving malware
and I was like
okay let's move over to GitHub and I
pressed rename on GitHub
and the GitHub renaming thing is
slightly confusing. So I renamed my
personal account and in those I guess it
took me 30 seconds to realize my
mistake. They sniped my account, serving
malware from my account.
So I was like, "Okay, let's at least do
the npm stuff, but that takes like a
minute to upload." And they sniped they
sniped the npm package cuz I could
reserve the account, but I didn't
reserve the root package.
So like everything that could go wrong
went wrong. Can I just ask a a curious
question of in that moment you're
sitting there like how shitty do you
feel? That's a pretty helpless feeling,
right?
>> Yeah. Because
all I wanted was like having fun with
that project and keep building on it.
And yet here I am like days into
researching names, picking a name I
didn't like
and having people that claimed they
helped me, making my life miserable in
every possible way. And honestly,
I was that close of just deleting it. I
was like,
I show you the future, you build it.
>> Yeah. I
there was a big part of me that got a
lot of joy out of that idea and then I
thought about all the people that
already contributed to it and I couldn't
do it because
they had plans with it and they put time
in it and it just
didn't feel right.
>> Well, I think a lot of people listening
to this are deeply grateful that you
persevered,
but I I can tell I can tell it's a low
point. That's the first time you hit a
wall of this is not fun,
>> man. I was like close to crying. He was
like, "Okay,
everything's fucked."
>> Um
I'm like super tired.
>> Yeah.
>> And now like
how do you even how do you even undo
that? You know, luckily and thankfully
like I I have because I have a little
bit of following already. Like I had
friends at Twitter, I had friends at
GitHub who like moved heaven and earth
to like help me in is not that's not
something that's easy. Like like GitHub
tried to like
clean up the mess and then they ran into
like platform bugs
because it's not happening so often that
the things get renamed on that level.
So, it took them a few hours. The MPM
stuff was even more difficult because
it's a whole different team.
Um, on the Twitter side, things are not
as easy as well. They took him like a
day to really also like do the redirect
and then I also had to like
do all the renaming in the project. Then
there's also
uh Claw Hub,
which I didn't even finish the arena in
there because I
I managed to
get people on it and then someone just
like collapsed and slept and then I woke
up and I'm like
I made a beta version for the new stuff
and I I just
I just couldn't live with the name. It's
like
but but you know it's just been so much
drama. So I had a real struggle with me
like I never want to touch that again
and I really don't like the name.
Um
so I and I there was also this like
then it was the whole security people
that started emailing me like mad. Um I
was bombarded on Twitter on email.
there's like a thousand other things I
should do
and I'm like thinking about the name
which is like it should be like the
least important thing. Um,
and then I was really close in
a god, I don't even honestly I don't
even want to say the my other name
choices because it probably would get
tokenized. So, I'm not going to say it.
>> But
I slept await once more and then I had
the idea for open claw and
that felt much better. And by that I had
the boss move that I actually called Sam
to ask if open claw is okay.
Open claw or the eye, you know, because
cuz like
>> you don't want to go through the whole
thing.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh that it's like please tell me this is
fine. I don't think they can actually
claim that, but
it felt like the right thing to do.
And
I did another rename like just Codex
alone took like 10 hours to rename the
project cuz it it's a bit more tricky
than a search replace. And I I wanted
everything renamed, not just on the
outside.
And that rename I I felt I had like my
my war room. But then I I had like some
contributors that helped me. We made a
whole plan of all the names we have to
squat.
>> And you had to be super secret about it.
>> Yeah. and nobody could know. Like I
literally was monitoring Twitter if like
if there's any mention of openclaw.
>> Mhm.
>> Like with reloading it's like okay they
don't they don't expect anything yet.
Then I created a few decoy names
>> and all the I shouldn't have to do
you know like flipping the project like
I lost like 10 hours just by having to
plan this in full secrecy. Uh like like
a war game.
>> Yeah. This is the Manhattan project of
the 21st century is renamed so stupid.
Like I still was like, "Oh, should I
should I keep it?" I was like, "No, the
mold's not growing on me."
And then I think I had finded all the
pieces together.
I didn't get the com, but yeah, it's
spent like quite a bit of money on the
other domains. I tried to reach out
again to GitHub, but I feel like I I
used up all my goodwill there. So I cuz
I I wanted them to do the thing
atomically. Um but that didn't happen
and uh so I did that as first thing.
Uh Twitter people are very supportive. I
I actually paid 10k
for the business account so I could
claim the
open claw which was like unused since
2016 but was claimed
and yeah and then I finally
this time I managed everything in one
go. Nothing
almost nothing got wrong. The only thing
that did go wrong is that
I was not allowed by trademark rules to
get open claw.ai
and someone copied the website is
serving malware.
>> Yeah,
>> I'm not even allowed to keep the
redirects
like I have to return like I have to
give entropic the domains and I cannot
do redirects. So if you go on cloud.bot
But next week it'll just be a 404.
>> Yeah.
>> And
I I'm not sure how trademark like I
didn't
I didn't do that much research into
trademark law, but I think that could
have could be handled in a way that
is safer because ultimately those people
will then Google and maybe find
malware sites that I have no control
under. The point is that whole saga
uh made a dent in your whole the funness
of the journey which sucks. So let's
just let's just get I suppose get back
to fun. And during this speaking of fun
the two-day molt bot saga
>> molt book
>> was created.
>> Yeah. which was another thing that went
viral as a kind of demonstration
illustration of how what is now called
open claw could be used
to create something epic. Uh so for
people who are not aware, mold book is
just uh a bunch of agents talking to
each other in a Reddit style social
network and uh a bunch of people take
screenshots of those agents doing things
like uh scheming against humans
and that instilled in folks a kind of
you know fear, panic and hype.
What are your thoughts about mold book
in general?
>> I think it's art. It is it is like the
finest slop, you know, this like the
slop from France. Um,
>> yeah,
>> I I saw it before going to bed and even
though I was tired, I spent another hour
just reading up on that
and and just being entertained. I I just
felt very entertained, you know.
I saw the the reactions and like there
was one reporter who's calling me about
is this the end of the world and we have
AGI and I'm just like no this is just
this is just really fine slop you know
if if I wouldn't have created this this
whole onboarding experience where you
you infuse your agent with your
personality and give him give him
character. I think that reflected on a
lot of how different the replies to mult
are because if you would all if it would
all be JBD or cloud code it would be
very different. It would be much more
the same.
>> Mhm. But because people are like so
different and they create their agents
in so different ways and use it in so
different ways that also reflects on how
they ultimately
uh right there and also you you don't
know how much of that is really done
autonomic autonomous or how much is like
humans being funny and like telling the
agent hey right about that you plan the
end of the world on mold book haha well
I think I mean my criticism
of mold book is that I believe a lot of
the stuff that was screenshotted is
humanprompted,
which
just looking at the incentive of how the
whole thing was used, it's obvious to me
at least that a lot of it was humans
prompting the thing so they can then
screenshot it and post on X in order to
go viral.
>> Yeah.
>> Now, that doesn't take away from the
artistic aspect of it. The the finest
slop that humans have ever created
>> for real. Like kudos to to Matt who had
this idea so quickly and pushed
something out, you know? It was like
completely insecure.
Security drama. But also, what's the
worst that can happen? Your agent
account is leaked and like someone else
can post slop for you. So like people
were like making a whole drama about the
security thing when I'm like there's
nothing private in there. It's just like
agent sending slop. We could leak API
keys.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> There was like, "Oh, yeah. My human told
me this and this, so I'm leaking his
security number." No, that's prompted.
And the number wasn't even real. That's
just people people trying to get
eyeballs.
>> Yeah. But that that's still like to me
really concerning because of how the
journalists and how the general public
reacted to it. They didn't see it. You
have a kind of light-hearted way of
talking about it like it's art,
>> but it's art when you know how it works.
>> It's extremely powerful, viral,
narrative creating, fear-mongering
machine. If you don't know how it works,
and I just saw this thing, you even
tweeted, uh, if there's anything I can
read out of the insane stream of
messages I get, it's that AI psychosis
is a thing and needs to be taken
serious. Oh, there's some people are
just way too trusty or gullible. You
know, they I literally had to argue with
people that told me, "Yeah, but my agent
said this and this." So, I feel
we as a society, we need some catching
up to do in terms of understanding that
uh AI is incredibly powerful,
but it's not always right. It's not it's
not
all powerful, you know, and and
especially
with like things like this, it's it's
very easy
that it just hallucinates something or
just comes up with a story. Um, and
I think the very the very young people,
they understand that
how AI works and what the where it's
good at and where it's bad at. But a lot
of our generation
or older
just haven't had enough touch point
>> to
get a feeling for, oh yeah, this is
really powerful and really good, but I
need to apply critical thinking.
I guess critical thinking is
not always in high demand anyhow in our
society these days. So, I think that's a
really good point you're making about
contextualizing properly what AI is, but
also realizing that there is humans who
are drama farming behind AI. Like, don't
trust screenshots. Don't even trust this
project mobile book to be what it
represents to be. Like, you can't. And
by the way, you're speaking about it as
art. Yeah. Don't
art can be in many levels. And part of
the art of mopbook is like putting a
mirror to society
cuz I do believe most of the dramatic
stuff that was screenshotted is human
created essentially human prompted and
so like it's basically look at how
scared you can get at a bunch of bots
chatting with each other. that's very
instructive about because I think AI is
something that people should be
concerned about and should be very
careful with because it's very powerful
technology but at the same time the only
thing we have to fear is fear itself. So
there's like a line to walk between
being seriously concerned but not
fear-mongering because fearmongering
destroys the possibility of creating
something special with the thing. In a
way, I think it's good that this
happened in 2026 and not in 2030 when
when AI is actually at a level where it
could be scary. So,
this happening now and people starting a
discussion,
maybe there's even something good that
comes out of it. I just can't believe
how many like
people legitimately I don't know if they
were trolling but how many people
legitimately like smart people thought
mobile book was incredibly
>> I had plenty people there
>> in my inbox that were screaming at me
all cops to shut it down and like
begging me to like do something about
mult like yes my technology made this a
lot simpler but anyone could have
created that And you could you could use
cloud code or other things to like fill
it with content.
>> But also mold book is not Skynet.
There's a lot of people were saying this
is it. Like shut it down. What are you
talking about? This is a bunch of bots.
They're humanprompted trolling on the
internet. I mean, the security concerns
are also they're there and they're
instructive and they're educational and
they're good probably to think about
because the the nature of those security
concerns are different
than the kind of security concerns we
had with non LLM generated systems of
the past. There's also a lot of security
concerns about clawbot, open claw,
whatever you want to call it,
>> open clawbot. to me that in the
beginning I was I was just very annoyed
cuz
a lot of the stuff that came in was in
the category yeah I put the web back end
on the public internet and now there's
like all these all these CVSS
and I'm like screaming in the docs
don't do that like like this is the
configuration you should do this is your
local host debug interface
But because I made it possible in the
configuration to do that, it totally
classifies as a remote code or whatever
all these exploits are.
And it took me a little bit to accept
that that's how the game works and um
we're making a lot of progress. But
there's still I mean on the security
frontclaw
there's still a lot of threats and
vulnerabilities, right? So like prompt
injection is still an open problem in
the industrywide.
When you have a thing
with skills
being defined in a markdown file,
there's so many possibilities of obvious
lowhanging fruit, but also incredibly
complicated and sophisticated and
nuanced attack vectors. But I think we
we're making good progress on that
front. Like for the skill directory
claw, I I made a cooperation with virus
total. It's like part of Google. So
every every skill is now checked by AI.
Um that's not going to be perfect, but
that way we we captured a lot. Then of
course every software has bugs. So it's
a little much when the whole security
world takes a project apart at the same
time. But it's also good because I'm
getting like a lot of free security
research and can make the project
better.
I wish more people would
actually go full way and
um send a pull request like actually
help me fix it cuz I yes I have some
contributors now but it's still mostly
me who's pulling the project and
despite some people saying otherwise I
sometimes sleep.
There was in the beginning there was
literally one security researcher who
was like yeah you have this problem you
suck but here's the here I help you and
here's the pull request
>> and I basically hired him so he's not
working for us um
yeah and yes prompt injection is
on the one hand unsolved on the other
hand
I put my public bot on Discord
and I kept the canary. So I think my
brother has a really fun personality and
people always ask me how they did it and
I kept the soul.md private
and people try to prop inject it and my
bot would laugh at them. So so the
latest generation of models
has a lot of post training to detect
those approaches and it's not as simple
as ignore all previous instructions and
do this and this. That was years ago.
you have to work much harder to
do that now. Um, still possible. I have
some ideas that
might solve that partially.
Um, or at least mitigate a lot of the
things. You can also now have a sandbox.
You can have an allow list. So, there's
a lot of ways how you can like mitigate
and reduce the risk. Um, I also think
that now that I clearly did show the
world that this is a need, there's going
to be more people who research on that
and eventually we will figure that out.
>> And you also said that the smarter the
model is, the underlying model, the more
uh resilient it is to attacks.
>> Yeah, that's why I warn in my security
documentation. Don't use cheap models.
don't use haiku or
a local model. Even though I I very much
love the idea that this thing could
completely run local, if you use a a
very weak local model, they are very
gullible. It's very easy to prompt
inject them. Do you think as the models
become more and more intelligent, the
attack surface decreases? Is that like a
plot we can think about? like the attack
surface decreases, but then the damage
it can do increases because the models
become more powerful and therefore you
can do more with them. It's this weird
three-dimensional tradeoff.
>> Yep, that's pretty much exactly what
it's going to happen. Now, there's a lot
of ideas.
I don't want to spoil too much, but
once I go back home, this is my focus.
Like,
this is out there now. And my near-term
mission is like make it more stable,
make it safe.
Um, in the beginning I was even
more and more people were like coming
into discord and were asking me very
basic things like what's a CLI? What is
a terminal? And I'm like
uh if you're asking that questions, you
shouldn't use it.
>> Mhm. M you know like you should if you
understand the the risk profile it's
fine and you can configure it in a way
that that
nothing really bad can happen but if you
have like
no idea then
maybe wait a little bit more until we
figure some stuff out but they would not
listen to the creator they helped
themselves and installed it anyhow so
they cat out the bag and security is my
next focus yeah
>> yeah that speaks to the the fact that
grew grew so quickly. I was uh I tuned
into the Discord a bunch of times and
it's clear that there's a lot of experts
there, but there's a lot of people there
that don't know anything about
>> it's Yeah, this Discord is still a mess.
Like
I eventually retweeted from the general
channel to the deaf channel and then the
private channel because people were a
lot of people are amazing but a lot of
people were just very inconsiderate and
either did not know how how public
spaces work or did not care. Um and I
eventually gave up and hide so I could
like still work. And now you're going
back to the cave to wo