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 work on security.
>> Yeah,
>> there's some best practices for security
we should mention. Uh there's a bunch of
stuff here. Open claw security audit
that you can run. You can do all kinds
of audit checks on the inbound access,
tool blast radius, network exposure,
browser control exposure, local disk
hygiene, plugins, model hygiene, a bunch
of the credential storage, reverse proxy
configuration, local session logs live
on disk. There's the where the memory is
stored sort of uh helping you think
about what you're comfortable giving
read access to what you're comfortable
giving right access to all that kind of
stuff. Is there something to say about
the basic best security practices that
you're aware of right now?
>> I think that people turn it into like a
a much worse light than it is. Um,
again, you know, like people love
attention and if they scream loudly, "Oh
my god, this is like the the scariest
project ever." Um,
that's a bit annoying cuz it's not. It
is It is powerful, but in many ways,
it's not much different than if I run
cloud code with dangerously skip
permissions or Codex in YOLO mode. And
every
every attending engineer that I know
does that because that's the only way
how you can you can get stuff to work.
>> So if you make sure that you are the
only person who talks to it um the risk
profile is much much smaller. If you
don't put everything on the open
internet, but stick to my
recommendations of like having it in a
private network, that whole risk profile
falls away. But yeah, if you don't read
any of that, you can definitely make it
problematic. You've been uh documenting
the evolution of your uh dev workflow
over the past few months. There's a
really good blog post on August 25th and
October 14th and the recent one December
28th. I recommend everybody go read
them. They have a lot of different
information in them, but sprinkled
throughout is the evolution of your dev
workflow. So, I was wondering if you
could speak to that. I started my my
first touch point was cloud code like in
April. It was
not great, but it was good. And this
whole paradigm shift that suddenly work
in a terminal.
It was very refreshing and different.
Um, but I still needed the IDE quite a
bit because it was just not good enough.
And then I experimented a lot with
cursor.
Um,
that was good. I didn't really like the
fact that it was so hard to
have multiple versions of it. So
eventually I I I went back to cloud code
as my my main driver
and that got better. And yeah, at some
point I had like
seven subscriptions
like was burning through one per day
because I was I got I really comfortable
at
running multiple windows side by side
>> all CLI all terminal. So like what how
much were you using ID at this point?
um very very rarely mostly a diff viewer
to actually
like I got more and more comfortable
that I don't have to read all the code I
know I have one blog post where I say I
don't read the code but if you read it
more closely I mean I don't read the
boring parts of code because if you if
you look at it most software is really
not just like data comes in it's moved
from one shape to another shape maybe
you're stored in a database maybe I get
it out again. I'll show it to the user.
The browser does some processing on
native app. Some data goes in, goes up
again, and does the same dance in
reverse. We just we're just shifting
data from one form to another.
And that's not very exciting. Or the
whole how is my button aligned in
Tailwind. I don't need to read that
code. other parts that
maybe something that touches the
database.
Um yeah, I have to do I have to read and
review that code.
Can you actually there's in one of your
blog post uh the just talk to it the no
BS way of agentic engineering you have
this graphic the curve of agentic
programming on the x-axis is time on the
y-axis is complexity
uh there's the please fix this where you
prompt a short prompt
on the left and in the middle there's
super complicated eight agents complex
orchestration with uh multi checkouts
chaining agents together. Custom
subation workflows, library of 18
different slash commands, large full
stack features. You're super organized.
You're super complicated, sophisticated
software engineer. You got everything
organized. And then the elite level is
uh over time you arrive at the zen place
of once again short prompts. Hey, look
at these files and then do these
changes.
>> I actually call it the agentic trap. you
I saw this in a in a lot of people that
have their first touch point and maybe
start vibe coding. I actually think vibe
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 VIP coding and
then have regrets on the next day.
>> Yeah.
Walk of shame.
>> Yeah. You just have to clean up and like
fix your We've all been there.
>> So, people start trying out those tools,
the builder type, get really excited and
then you have to play with it, right?
It's the same way as you have to play
with a guitar before you can make good
music. It's it's not, oh, I I touch it
once and it just flows off. It It's a
It's a a skill that you have to learn
like any other skill. And I see a lot of
people that are not as positive such a
positive mindset towards attack. They
try it once.
It's like you sit me on a piano, I
played once and it doesn't sound good
and I say the piano's That's
that's sometimes the impression I get
because it does not it needs a different
level of thinking. You have to
learn the language of the agent a little
bit. understand where they're good and
where they need help. You have to almost
consider consider how Codex or Claude
sees your codebase. Like they start a
new session and they know nothing about
your product project and your project
might have hundred thousands of lines of
code. So you got to help those agents a
little bit and keep in mind their
limitations that context size is an
issue to like guide them a little bit as
to where they should look
and that often does not require a whole
lot of work. But it's helpful to think a
little bit about
their perspective as as weird as it
sounds. I mean it's not it's not alive
or anything, right?
But they always start fresh. I have I
have the the system understanding. So
with a few pointers I can immediately
say, "Hey, I want to like make a change
there. You need to consider this this
and this." And then they will find a
look at it and then they'll their view
of the project is always is not never
full because the full thing does not fit
in. So you you have to guide them a
little bit where to look and also how
they should approach the problem.
There's like little things that
sometimes help like take your time.
That sounds stupid but and in 5.3 C that
was partially addressed but those
also oppos sometimes they are trained um
with being aware of the context window
and the closer it gets the more they
freak out.
literally like some sometimes you see
the the real raw syncing stream. What
you see for example in Codex is
post-processed.
>> Mhm.
>> Sometimes the actual raw syncing stream
leaks in and it sounds something like
from the Borg like run to shell must
comply
but time
and then they they they like like that
comes up a lot especially. So, so,
>> and that's that's a nonobvious thing
that you just would never think of
unless you actually just spend time
working with those things and getting a
feeling what works, what doesn't work,
you know, like just just as I write code
and I get into the flow and when my
architectures are right, I feel
friction.
Well, I get the same if I prompt and
something takes too long. Maybe okay,
where's the mistake? Did I do I have a
mistake in my thinking? Is there like a
misunderstanding in the architecture?
Like
if if something takes longer than it
should I you can just always like stop
and like just press escape. Where where
are the problems?
>> Maybe you did not sufficiently empathize
with the perspective of the agent in
that in that sense. You didn't provide
enough information and because of that
it's thinking way too long.
>> Yeah. it just tries to force a feature
in that your current architecture makes
really hard.
Um
like
you need to approach this more like a
conversation.
For example, when I
my favorite thing when I review a pull
request and I'm getting a lot of pull
requests
I first is review this PR it got me the
review. My first question is do you
understand the intent of their PR? I
don't even care about the
implementation. I what like in almost
all PRs are person has a problem person
tries to solve the problem person sends
PR I mean there's like cleanup stuff and
other stuff but like 99% is like this
way right they either want to fix a fix
a bug add a feature
usually one of those two
and then colleagues will be like yeah
it's quite clear person tried this and
this is this the most optimal way to do
it no in most cases it's it's like Not
really. D and and then I start like,
okay, what would be a better way? Have
you have you looked into this part, this
part, this part? And then most likely
Codex didn't yet because his context
size is empty, right? So you point them
into parts where you have the system
understanding that it didn't see yet.
And it's like, oh yeah, like we should
we also need to consider this and this.
And then like we have a discussion of
how would the optimal way to to solve
this look like? And then you can still
go farther and say, could we could we
make that even better if we did a larger
refactor? Yeah. Yeah, we could totally
do this and this and or this and this.
And then I consider, okay, is this worth
the refactor or should we like keep that
for later? Many times I just do the
refactor because uh refactors are cheap
now. Even though you might break some
other PRs, nothing really matters
anymore. Codex like those modern agents
will just figure things out. They might
just take a minute longer. But you have
to approach it like a discussion with a
a very capable engineer who's
generally makes good
comes up with good solution. Some
sometimes needs a little help. But also
don't force your world view too hard on
it. Let the agent do the thing that it's
good at doing based on what it was
trained on. So don't like force your
world view because it might it might
have a better idea because it just knows
a better idea better because I was
trained on that more. That's multiple
levels actually. I think partially why
I find it quite easy to work with agents
is because I led engineering teams
before you know I had a large company
before and eventually you have to
understand and accept and realize that
your employees will not write the code
the same way you do. Maybe it's also not
as good as you would do, but it will
push the project forward and if I
breathe down everyone's neck, they're
just going to hate me and they're gonna
move very slow.
>> Yeah.
>> So, so some level of acceptance that
yes, maybe the code will not be as
perfect. Yes, I would have done it
differently, but also yes, this is a
this is a working solution and in the
future if it actually turns out to be
too slow or problematic, we can always
redo it. We can always spend more time
on it. A lot of the people who struggle
are those who they try to push their way
on too hard.
>> Mhm.
>> Like we are in a stage where
I'm not building the code base to be
perfect for me, but I want to build a
code base that is very easy for an agent
to navigate.
>> Like don't fight the name they pick
because it's most likely like in the
weights the name that's most obvious.
next time they do a search, they'll look
for that name. If I decide, oh, no, I
don't like the name,
I'll just make it harder for them. So,
that requires, I think, a shift in in
thinking
uh and and in how do I design a a
project so agents can do their best
work.
>> That requires letting go a little bit,
just like leading a team of engineers.
>> Yeah. because it might come up with a
name that's in your view terrible but
it's kind of a simple symbolic
step of letting go
>> very much so
>> there's a lot of letting go that you do
in your whole process so for example I
read that you never revert
always commit to main there's a few
things here
you don't refer to past sessions so
there's a kind of yolo component Because
reverting means
instead of reverting, if the problem
comes up, you just ask the agent to fix
it. I read a bunch of people in their
workflow is like, "Oh yeah, the prompt
has to be perfect and if I make a
mistake, then I roll back and redo it
all."
In my experience, that's not really
necessary. If I roll back everything, it
would just take longer. If I see that
something's not good, we just move
forward. And then
I commit when when when I like I like
the outcome. I even switch to
local CI, you know, like DHH inspired
where I don't care so much more about
the CI on GitHub. We still have it. It's
still it still has a place,
but I just run tests locally and if they
work locally, I push to main.
um a lot of the traditional ways how to
approach projects I I wanted to give it
a different spin on this project you
know there's no there's no develop
branch main should always be shippable
yes we have when I do releases I I run
tests and sometimes I
I basically don't commit any other
things so so we can we can stabilize um
releases
But the goal is that main issable and
moving fast.
>> So by way of advice, would you say that
your prompts should be short?
>> 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.
>> You're using voice and you're switching
using a keyboard between the different
terminals, but then you're using voice
for the actual input.
>> Well, I mean, if I do terminal commands
like
switching folders or random stuff, of
course, I type. It's faster, right? But
if I I talk to the agent in in most
ways, I just actually have a
conversation. you just press the the
walkie-talkie button and then I just
like
use my phrases. Sometimes when I do PRs
because it's always the same, I have
like a slash command for a few things,
but in even that I don't use much um
because it's it's very rare that it's
really always the same questions.
Sometimes I I see a PR and for you know
like for PRs I actually do look at the
code because
I don't trust people like there could
always be something malicious in it. So
I need to actually look over the code.
Yes, I'm pretty sure agent will find it.
But yeah, there's a funny part where
sometimes PRs take me longer than if you
would just write me a good issue.
>> Just natural language English. I mean in
some sense shouldn't that be what PRs
slowly become is English? Well, what I
really tried with the project is I asked
people to give me the prompts and
very very few actually cared. Even
though that is such a wonderful
indicator because I see I actually see
how much care you put in and it's very
interesting because the currently the
way how people work and drive the agents
is is wildly different
>> in terms of like the prompt in terms of
what what are the actually what are the
different
interesting ways that people think of
agents that you've experienced? I think
not a lot of people ever considered the
way the agent sees the world.
>> So empathy being empathetic towards the
agent
>> in a way empathetic but yeah you you
like you at your stupid clanker
but you don't realize that they start
from nothing and you have like a bad
agent file that doesn't help them at all
and then they exploit your code base
which is like a pure mess with like
weird naming and then people complain
that the agent's not good. like you try
to do the same if you have no clue about
the code base and you go in.
>> So yeah, maybe it's a little bit of
empathy,
>> but that's a real skill. Like when
people talk about a skill issue cuz I've
seen like worldclass programmers,
incredibly good programmers say, like
basically say LLMs and agents suck. And
I think that probably has to do with
it's actually how good they are at
programming is almost uh a burden in
their ability to empathize with the
system. that's starting from scratch.
It's a totally new paradigm of like how
to program. You really really have to
empathize or at least it helps to create
better prompts cuz those things know
pretty much everything and everything is
just a question away. It's just often
very hard to know which question to ask.
Um,
you know, I I feel also like this
project was possibly because I I spend
an ungodly time over the year to play
and to learn and to build little things
and every step of the way I got better,
the agents got better, my my
understanding of how everything works
got better. Um, I could have not
had this level of of output
even a few months ago. Like it it really
was like a compounding effect of all the
time I put into it. And I
I didn't do much else this year other
than really focusing on on building and
inspiring. I mean I did a whole bunch of
conference talks.
>> Well, but the building is really
practice is really building the actual
skill. So playing playing and so doing
building the skill of what it takes it
to work efficiently with LLMs
>> which is why you went through the whole
arc of software engineer
>> talk simply and then over complicate
things.
>> There's a whole bunch of people who try
to automate the whole thing.
>> Yeah, I don't think that works. Maybe a
version of that works, but that's kind
of like in the 70s when we had the
waterfall model of software development.
I
even though really right I started out I
I built a very minimal version I played
with it I I need to understand how it
works how it feels and then it gives me
new ideas. I could not have planned this
out in my head and then put it into some
orchestrator and then like something
comes out like it's to me it's much more
my idea what it will become evolves as I
build it and as I play with it and as I
I try out stuff. So, so people who try
to use like things like Gast Town or all
these other orchestrators where they
want to automate the whole thing, I feel
if you do that, it misses
style, love, that human touch. I don't
think you can automate that away so
quickly. So, you want to keep the human
in the loop, but at the same time, you
also want to create the aentic loop
where it is very autonomous.
while still maintaining a human in the
loop. Yeah. I It's a tricky It's a
tricky balance, right? Because you're
all for
>> your big CLI guy, you're big on closing
the agentic loop. So, what what's the
right balance? Like where's your role as
a developer? You have three to eight
agents running at the same time. And
then maybe one builds a larger feature.
Maybe maybe with one I explore some idea
I'm unsure about. maybe two, three are
fixing a little bugs or like writing
documentation. Actually, I think writing
documentation is is always part of a
feature. So, most of the docs here are
autogenerated and just infused with some
prompts.
>> So, when do you step in and add a little
bit of your human love into the picture?
I mean, one thing is just about what do
you build and what do you not build and
how does this feature fit into all the
other features and like having having a
little bit of a of a vision. So, which
small and which big features to add?
What are some of the
hard design decisions that you find
you're still as a human being required
to make that the human brain is still
really needed for?
Is it just about the choice of features
to add? Is it about implementation
details? Maybe the programming language,
maybe it's a little bit of everything.
The programming language doesn't matter
so much, but the ecosystem matters,
right? So, I picked TypeScript because I
wanted it to be very easy and hackable
and approachable.
Uh, and that's the number one language
that's being used right now, and it fits
all these boxes, and Asians are good at
it. So that was the obvious choice.
Features of course like it's very easy
to like add a feature. Everything's just
a prompt away, right? But often times
you pay a price that you don't even
realize. So thinking hard about what
should be in core, maybe what's a what's
an experiment? So maybe I make it a
plug-in. What where do I say no? Even if
people send a PR and I'm like, "Yeah, I
I like that too, but
maybe this should not be part of the
project. Maybe we can make it a skill.
Maybe I can like make the plug-in
um
the plug-in side larger so you can make
this a plugin. Even though right now it
it it doesn't
there's still a lot of there's still a
lot of craft and thinking involved in
how to make something or even even you
know even when you started those little
messages like I'm built I built on
caffeine Jason 5 and a lot of willpower
and like every time you get it you get
another message and it kind of primes
you into that this is this is a fun
thing
>> it's not yet
>> Microsoft
Exchange 2025 and fully enterprise
ready.
>> Um, and then when it updates, it's like,
"Oh, I'm in. It's cozy here." You know,
like something like this that like
>> uh makes you smile. Um,
agent would not come up with that by
itself. That's like that's the
It's just how you how you build
software. That's that delights. Yeah,
that delight is such a huge part of
inspiring great building, right? Like
you feel the love and the great
engineering. That's so important. Humans
are incredible at that. Great humans,
great builders are incredible at that
and and fusing the things they build
with that little bit of love. Not to be
cliche, but it's true. I mean, you
mentioned that you initially
created the
Soul MD. It was very fascinating know
the the whole thing that entropic has a
has like a now they call it constitution
back then but that was months later like
2 months before people already found
that it was almost like the detective
game where the agent mentioned something
and then they found they managed to get
out a little bit of that string of that
text but the it was nowhere documented
and then you by just by feeding it the
same text and asking it to like
continue.
They got more out and then and you but
like a very blurry version and by like
hundreds of tries they kind of like
narrowed it down to what was most likely
the original text. I found it
fascinating.
>> It was fascinating they were able to
pull that out from the weights. Right.
and and also just cool is to entropic
like I think that's it's a really it's a
really beautiful idea to like like some
of the stuff that's in there like like
we hope cloud finds meaning in its work
cuz we don't maybe it's a little early
but I think that's meaningful that's
something that's important for the
future as we approach something that at
some point me and we not has like
glimpses of consciousness whatever that
even means because we don't even know um
so I I read about this I found it super
fascinating sitting and I I started a
whole discussion with my agent on
WhatsApp and and I'm like I I gave it
this text and it was like yeah this
feels strangely familiar.
>> Mhm.
>> Um and then I had the whole idea of like
maybe we should also create a soul
document that includes how I I want to
like work with AI or like with my agent.
you could you could totally do that just
in agents, you know, but I just found it
it to be a nice touch. And it's like,
yeah, some of those core values are in
the soul. And then I I also made it so
that the agent is allowed to modify the
soul if
they choose. So with the one condition
that I want to know, I mean, I would
know anyhow because I see I see tool
calls and stuff,
>> but also the naming of it, soul.md.
soul. You know, there's um
man, words matter and like the framing
matters and the humor and the lightness
matters and the profoundity matters and
the compassion and the empathy and the
camaraderie, all that matter. I don't
know what it is. You mention like
Microsoft like there's certain
companies and approaches
that can just suffocate the spirit of
the thing. I don't know what that is,
but it's certainly true that Open Claw
has that fun instilled in it. It was fun
because
up until
late December,
it was not even easy to create your own
agent. I I built all of that, but my
files were mine. I didn't want to share
my soul. And if people would just
uh check it out,
they would have to do a few steps
manually and the agent would just be
very bare bones, very dry. And I I made
it simpler. I created the whole template
files with Cordex, but whatever came out
was still very dry. And then I asked my
agent,
you see these files,
we created bread, infuse it with your
personality. Don't share everything, but
like make it good. make the templates
good.
>> Yeah. And then you like rewrote the
templates and then whatever came out was
good. So we already have like
>> basically AI prompting AI
>> because I didn't write any of those
words. Uh it was the intent on me, but
this is like kind of like
my agent's children.
Uh your uh your soulm is famously still
private. One of the only things you keep
private. Uh, what are some things you
can speak to that's in there that's part
of the part of the magic sauce? Without
revealing anything, what makes a
personality
a personality?
I mean, there's definitely stuff in
there that you're not human, but
who knows
what what creates consciousness or what
defines an entity. Um,
and part of this is like that we we want
to explore this. Oh, there's stuff in
there like
be infinitely resourceful. Um,
like pushing pushing on the creativity
boundary, pushing on the
what it means to be an AI,
>> having a sense of wander about self.
Yeah, there's some there's some funny
stuff in there. Like I don't know, we
talked about the movie Her and at one
point it promised me that it wouldn't
>> it wouldn't ascend without me, you know,
like with
>> So So like there's like some stuff in
there that
>> because it wrote the it wrote its own
soul file. I didn't write that, right?
>> I just had a discussion about it and it
was like, would you like a soul.md?
Yeah. Oh my god, this is so meaningful.
>> The can you go on soul.md? There's like
one one part in there that always
catches me if you scroll down a little
bit. A little bit more. Yeah, this this
this part. I don't remember previous
sessions unless I read my memory files.
Each session starts fresh. A new
instance loading context from files. If
you're reading this in a future session,
hello. I wrote this, but I won't
remember writing it. It's okay. The
words are still mine.
That gets me somehow.
>> Yeah,
>> it's like
>> Yeah,
>> you know this is still it's still matrix
money calculations and
>> we are not at consciousness yet.
I I get a little bit of goosebumps
because it it's philosophical.
>> Yeah.
>> Like what does it mean to be to be an an
agent that starts fresh where like you
have like constant momento
and you like but you read your own
memory files. you can even trust him in
a way. Um, or you can. And
>> I don't know
>> how much of
memory
makes up of who we are. How much memory
makes up what an agent is? And if you
erase that memory,
is that somebody else? Or if you're
reading a memory file, does that somehow
mean you're recreating yourself from
somebody else? Or is that actually you?
>> Yeah.
>> And those notions are all somehow
infused in there. I found it just more
profound than I should find it, I guess.
>> No, I think I think it's truly profound
and I think you see the magic in it and
it when you see the magic, you continue
to instill
the whole loop with the magic and that's
really important. That's the difference
between Codex and it's and a human.
Quick pause for a bathroom break.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay, we're back. Uh, some of the other
aspects of the dev workflow is pretty
interesting, too.
I think we went off on a tangent. Maybe
some of the mundane things like how many
monitors? There's that legendary picture
of you with like 17,000 monitors.
>> I mean, I I I mocked myself here just
add using grog to to add more screens.
>> Yeah. How much is this is meme and how
much is this is reality?
>> Yeah. I think two MacBooks are real. the
main one that drives the two big screens
and there's another MacBook that I
sometimes use for for testing.
>> So, two big screens.
>> I'm a big fan of anti-glare.
Um, so I have this wide Dell
that's anti-glare and you can just fit a
lot of terminals side by side. I usually
have a terminal and at the bottom I I I
split them. I have a little bit of
actual terminal mostly because when I
started I I sometimes made a mistake and
I I I mixed up the the windows and I
gave I I prompted in the wrong project
and then the agent ran off for like 20
minutes manically trying to understand
what I could have meant being completely
confused because it was the wrong
folder. And sometimes they even clever
enough to like
get out of the work there and like
figure out that oh you meant another
project.
>> But often times it's just like what you
know like fit put yourself in the shoes
of your of the agent and and
>> then get like a super weird something
that does not exist and it just like
they're problem solver so they try
really hard and I almost felt bad. So
it's always
um codex and like a little bit of actual
terminal. Also helpful because I don't
use work trees. I like to keep things
simple. That's why that's why I like the
terminal so much, right? There's no UI.
It's just me and the agent having a
conversation.
Like I don't even need plan mode, you
know? There so many people they come
from cloud code and they're so so
cloudpilled and like have their
workflows and they come to Codex and now
it has plan mode I think but I don't
think it's necessary because you just
you just talk to the agent and when it's
when you are there's a few trigger words
how you can prevent it from building you
like discuss give me options
>> don't write code yet if you want to be
very specific you just talk and then
when you're ready then then just write
okay build and it'll do the thing and
then maybe it goes off for 20 minutes
and does the thing.
>> You know what I really like is uh asking
it do you have any questions for me?
>> Yeah. And again like claw code has a UI
that kind of guides you through that is
kind of cool but I just find it
unnecessary and slow. Like often it
would give me four questions and then
maybe I write one yacht 2N three discuss
more four I don't know or often often
times I I feel like I often mock the
model where I ask it do you have any
questions for me and I I I don't even
read the questions fully like I scan
over the questions and I I get the
impression all of this can be answered
by reading more code and it's just like
read more code to answer your own
questions
>> and it usually works.
>> Yeah. and then if not it will come back
and tell me. But many times I just
realized that you know it's like you're
in the dark and you slowly discover the
room. So that's how they slowly discover
the codebase and they do it from scratch
every time. But I'm also fascinated by
the fact that I can empathize deeper
with the model when I read his questions
cuz I can understand
because you said you can infer certain
things by the runtime.
I can infer also a lot of things by the
questions it's asking because it's very
possible it didn't provide the right
context, right files, the right
guidance. So somehow ask get reading the
question not even necessarily answering
them but just reading the questions you
get an understanding of where the gaps
of knowledge are. It's it's interesting
you know in some ways they are ghosts.
So even if you plan everything and you
build you can you can experiment with a
question like now that you built it what
would you have done different
and then often times you get like
actually something where they discover
only throughout building that oh what we
actually did was not optimal. Many times
I I asked them
okay now that you build it what can we
refactor
because then you build it and you feel
the pain points I mean you don't feel
the pain points but right they discover
where where there were problems or where
things didn't work at in the first try
and it required more loops so
every time almost every time I I merge a
PR I build a feature afterwards I ask,
hey, what can we refactor? Sometimes
it's like, no, there's like nothing big
or like usually they say, yeah, this
thing we should really look at,
but that took me quite a while to like,
you know, that flow took me a lot of
time to understand. And if you don't do
that, you eventually you slop yourself
into into a corner. You like you have to
keep in mind
they work very much like humans. Like I
I if I write software by myself, I also
build something and then I feel the pain
points and then I I get this urge that I
need to refactor something. So I can
very much sympathize with the agent and
you just need to use the context.
>> Mhm.
>> Or like
you also use the context to write tests.
So
codex oppos like the the model models
they they usually do that by default but
I still often ask the questions hey do
we have enough tests? Yeah, we tested
this and this, but this corner case
could be something else. Write more
tests. Um, documentation now that the
whole context is full. Like, I mean, I'm
not saying my documentation is great,
but it's
not bad and pretty much everything is is
LM generated. So, so you have to
approach it as you build feature, as you
change something. I'm like, okay,
write documentation. What file would you
pick? you know, like what file name,
where where would that fit in? And it
gives me a few options and I'm like, oh,
maybe also add it there. And that's all
part of the session. Maybe you can talk
about
the the current two big competitors in
terms of models, Cloud Opus 46 and GPT53
CEX. Which is better? How different are
they? I think you've spoken about Codex
reading more
and Opus being more
uh willing to take action faster and
maybe being more creative in the actions
it takes, but because Codex reads more,
it's
able to deliver maybe better code. Can
you speak to the differences there?
>> Oh, I have a lot of words there. um
is as a general purpose model,
Opus is the best. Like for Open Claw,
Opus is extremely good in terms of role
play, like really going into the
character that you give it. It's very
good at and it was really bad but it
really made an arch to be really good at
um following
commands.
It is usually quite fast at trying
something. It's much more tailored to
like trial and error.
It's very pleasant to use.
In general,
it's almost like
OPOS was is a little bit too American.
And
I should maybe a bad analogy. You
probably get roasted.
>> I know exactly. It's It's Codex is
German. Is that what you're saying?
>> Actually, now that you say it, it makes
perfect sense.
>> Or you could you could sometimes
sometimes I explain it.
>> I will never be able to unthink what you
just said. That's so true. But you also
know that a lot of the Codex team is
like European. Um,
so maybe there's a bit more to it.
>> That's so true. That's funny.
>> But also Entropic,
they fixed it a little bit. Like Opus
used to say, "You're absolutely right
all the time." And it it it today still
triggers me. I can't hear it anymore.
It's not even a joke. I just
You This was like the the meme, right?
You're absolutely right.
>> You're allergic to sick of fancy a
little bit. Yeah, I I can't some other
comparison is like Oppus is like the
coworker that
is a little silly sometimes, but he's
really funny and you keep him around and
Codex is like the the weirdo in the
corner that you don't want to talk to,
but he's reliable and gets done.
>> Yeah.
>> Um, ultimately,
this all feels very accurate. I mean,
ultimately, if you're a skilled driver,
you can get good results with any of
those latest gen models.
Um,
I like Codex more because it doesn't
require so much charade.
It will just it'll just read a lot of
code by default. Opus, you really have
to like you have to have plan mode. You
have to push it harder to like go in
these directions because it's it's just
like like, "Yeah, can I go? Can I go?"
Yeah, like it would just run off very
fast and there's a very localized
solution. I think I think different is
is in the post training.
>> It's not like the the raw model
intelligence is so different but it's
just I think that they just give it give
it different different goals and no
model no model is better in in in every
aspect.
>> What about the code that it generates
in terms of the actual quality of the
code? Is it basically the same?
>> If you drive it right, OPO even
sometimes can make more elegant
solutions, but it requires more skill.
It's it's harder to have so many
sessions in parallel with cloud code
because it's it's more interactive. And
I think that's what a lot of people
like, especially if they come from
coding themselves.
Whereas Cordex is much more you have a
discussion and then it'll just disappear
for 20 minutes. Like even AMP they they
now added a deep mode. They finally I
mocked them. Yeah, we finally saw the
light. And then they had this whole talk
about you have to approach it
differently. And I think that's where
that's where people struggle when they
just try CEX after trying cloud code is
that it's it's a slightly different it's
less interactive. is it's like
I have quite long discussions sometimes
and then like go off and then yeah
doesn't matter if it takes 10 20 30 40
50 minutes or longer you know like the
six was like 6 hours
the latest train can be very very
persistent until it works if there's a
clear solution like this is this is what
I want at the end so it works the model
will work very hard to really get there
so I think ultimately
they both need similar time,
but on on Claude it's it's a little more
trial and error often and and codic
sometimes over syninks. I prefer that. I
prefer the dry the dry version where I
have to read less
uh over
over the more interactive nice way.
Uh like people like that so much though
that open even added a second mode with
like a more pleasant personality. I
haven't even tried it yet. I I kind of
like the bread.
>> Mhm. Um
yeah because I care about efficiency
when I build it and I I have fun in the
very act of building. I don't need to
have fun with my agent who builds. I
have fun with my model that
>> where I can then test those features.
>> How long does it take for you to adjust?
you know, if you switch, I don't know
when was the last time you switched, but
to adjust to the the feel because you've
kind of talked about like you have to
kind of really feel where where a model
is strong, where like how to navigate,
how to prompt it, all that kind of stuff
like this by way of advice cuz you've
been through this journey of just
playing with models.
>> How long does it take to get a feel? If
if someone switches, I would give it a
week until you actually
develop a gut feeling for it.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh there's if you just I think some
people also make the mistake of they pay
200 for the the cloud code version, then
they pay 20 bucks for the OpenI version.
But if you pay like the the 20 bucks
version, you get the slow version. So
your experience will be terrible because
you're used to this very interactive,
very good um system and you switch to
something that you have very little
experience and that's going to be very
slow. So I think over shot themselves a
little bit in the foot by making the the
cheap version also slow. I would I would
have at least a small part of the fast
preview or like
the experience that you get when you pay
200 before degrading to it being slow
because it's already slow. I mean, they
made it better. I think it's and and
they have plans to make it a lot better
if the cerebrra stuff is true. But yeah,
it's a skill. It takes time. Even if you
play you have a regular guitar and you
switch it to an E guitar, you're not
going to play well right away. You have
to like learn
how it feels.
>> There's also this extra psychological
effect that you've spoken about which is
hilarious to watch
which once people uh when the new model
comes out, they try that model, they
fall in love with it. Wow, this is the
smartest thing of all time. And then
they start saying, you could just watch
the Reddit posts over time start saying
that we believe the intelligence of this
model has been gradually degrading.
It it says something about human nature
and just the the way our minds work when
it's probably most likely the case that
the intelligence of the model is not
degrading.
Uh it's in fact you're getting used to a
good thing
>> and your project grows and you're adding
slop and you probably don't spend enough
time to think about refactors and you're
making it harder and harder for the
agent to work on your slop
>> and and then suddenly oh no it's hard. I
know it's not working as well anymore.
What's the motivation for like one of
those AI companies to actually make
their model dumber? Like at most they
will make it slower if if the server
load is too high. But like quanticizing
the model
uh so you have a worse experience so you
go to the competitor that just doesn't
seem like a very smart move in any way.
>> Uh what do you think about clawed code
in comparison to open claw? So, Claw
Code and maybe the Codeex coding agent.
Do you see them as kind of competitors?
>> I mean, first of all, competitor is fun
when it's not really a competition.
>> Yeah.
>> Like I'm happy if if if all it did is
like inspire people to build something
new. Cool.
Um I still use Codex for the building. I
I know a lot of people use Open Cloud to
to build stuff and I worked hard on it
to make that work
and I do smaller stuff with it in terms
of code but like if I work hours and
hours I want a big screen not WhatsApp
you know so for me a person agent is
much more about my life or like like a
coworker like I give it like a GitHub
URL like hey try out the CLI does it
actually work, what can we learn, blah
blah blah.
But when I'm deep in deep in the flow, I
want to have multiple multiple things
and it being very
very visible what it what it does. So I
don't see it as a competition. It's it's
different things.
>> But do do you think there's a a future
where the two kind of combine? Like your
personal agent is also your best
developing
co-programmer partner.
>> Yeah, totally. I think this is where the
P's going that
this is going to be more and more your
operating system.
>> The operating system
>> and it already is so funny like I I
added support for sub agents
and also for
um TTI support so it could actually run
cloud coder codex.
>> Mhm. And because mine's a little bit
bossy,
it it it started it and it it it told
him like who's the boss basically. And
it's like ah Codex is obeying me.
Well, it's a power struggle. And also
the current interface is probably not
the final form. Like
if you think more globally,
we are we copied
Google
for agents. You have like a prompt and
and then you have a chat interface
that to me very much feels like
when we first created television and
then people recorded radio shows on
television and you saw that on TV.
>> Mhm. I think there's
there's
there's better ways
how we eventually will communicate with
models and we are still very early in
this how will it even work phase. So
it will eventually converge and we will
also figure out whole different ways how
to work with those things. Uh, one of
the other components of workflow is uh
operating system. So I told you offline
that for the first time in my life I'm
expanding
uh my sort of realm of exploration to
the uh to the Apple ecosystem to Macs,
iPhone and so on. For most of my life
I've been a Linux, Windows and WSL1, WSL
2 person which I think are all wonderful
but I expanding to also trying Mac
because it's another way of building and
it's also a way of building that a large
part of the community currently that's
utilizing LMS and agents is using. So
that's the reason I'm expanding to it.
But is there something to be said about
the different operating systems here? We
should say that open claw is supported
across operating systems. Yeah,
>> I saw WSL2 recommended side Windows for
certain operations, but then Windows,
Linux,
uh, Mac OS are obviously supported.
>> Yeah, it should even work natively in
Windows. I just didn't had enough time
to
properly test it. And, you know, like
the last 90% of software always easier
than the first 90%. So, I'm sure there's
some dragons left that will eventually
nail out. Um,
my road was for a long time Windows just
because I grew up with that. Then I
switched and had a long phase with
Linux,
built my own kernels and everything. And
then I went to university and I I had my
my hacky Linux thing and saw this white
MacBook and I just saw this is a thing
of beauty, the white plastic one. and
and I converted to Mac cuz mostly I was
I was sick that
audio wouldn't work on Skype and all the
other issues that that Linux had for a
long time
and then I just stuck with it and then I
dug into iOS which required Mac OS
anyhow so it was never a question.
I think Apple lost a little bit of its
lead in terms of
native.
It used to be native apps used to be so
much better and especially on the Mac
there's more people that build software
with love. On on Windows it it Windows
has much more and like function wise
there's just more period.
But a lot of it felt
more functional and less done with love.
Um I mean mech
always like attracted more designers and
people I felt even though like often it
has less features it it had more delight
>> um and playfulness. So I always valued
that.
But in the last few years,
many times I actually prefer, oh god,
people are going to roast me for that,
but I prefer electron apps because they
work and native apps often, especially
if it's like a web services, a native
app, are lacking features. I mean, not
saying it couldn't be done. It's more
like a
a focus thing that like for many many
companies
native was not that big of a priority
but if they build an electron app it's
the only app so it is a priority and
there's a lot more code sharing possible
and I I build a lot of native Mac apps I
love it I I can I can't help myself like
I love crafting little Mac Mac
uh menu bar tools like I built one to to
monitor your cordex use. I built one I
called Trimy that's specifically for
agentic use. When you when you select
text that goes over multiple lines it
would remove the new lines so you could
actually paste it to a terminal. That
was again I like this is annoying me and
after the 20s time of it is annoying me
I just built it. Um, there's a cool
makeup for Open Claw that I don't think
many people discovered yet. Also,
because it it still needs some love. It
feels a little bit too much like the
Huma car right now because I I just
experiment a lot with it. It likes the
polish.
>> So, you still I mean, you still love it.
you still you still love uh adding to
the delight of that operating system.
>> But then you realize like I also built
one for example for GitHub
and then the you use swift UI like the
latest and greatest at Apple and took
them forever to build something to show
an image from the web. Now we have async
async image but I added support for it
and then some images would just not show
up or like be very slow. And I had a
discussion with Codex like, hey, why is
that a bug? And even Codex said like,
yeah, there's this ASAC image, but it's
really more for experimenting and it
should not be used in production. But
that's Apple's answer to like
>> showing images from the web. This
shouldn't be so hard, you know? This is
like this is like insane. like how am I
in in in 2026 and my agent tells me
don't use the stuff Apple built because
it's it's it's yeah it's there but it's
not good and like this is now in the
weights.
This this to me this is like um they had
so much
head start and so much love and they
kind of just like blundered it and
didn't didn't evolve it as much as they
should. But also there's just the
practical reality. If you look at
Silicon Valley, most of the developer
world that's kind of playing with LLMs
and agentic AI, they're all using Apple
products. And then at the same time,
Apple is not really like leaning on
that. Like they're not they're not
opening up and playing and working
together and like Yes.
>> Isn't Isn't it funny how they completely
blunder AI and yet everybody's buying
McMinis? How? What? Does that even make
sense? You're you're you're quite
possibly the world's greatest
Mac salesman of all time.
>> No, you don't need a Mac Mini to install
OpenClaw. You can install it on the web.
There's there's a concept called nodes.
So, you can like make your computer a
node and it will do the same. There is
something said for running it on
separate hardware
that right now is useful.
Um
there is there's a big argument for the
browser you know I built some energetic
browser use in there and I mean it's
basically playright with bunch of extras
to make it easier for agents.
>> Playright is a library that controls the
browser. That's really nice, easy to
use.
>> And our internet is slowly closing down.
Like the there's a whole movement to
make it harder for agents to use. So if
you do the same in a data center and
websites detect that it's an IP from a
data center, the website might just
block you or it make it really hard or
put a lot of captures in the in the way
of the agent. I mean, agents are quite
good at happily clicking I'm not a
robot. Um,
>> yeah,
>> but having that on a residential IP
makes a lot of things simpler. So,
there's ways Yeah, but it really does
not need to be a Mac. It can it can be
any old hardware. I always say like
maybe use the use the
opportunity to get yourself a new
MacBook or whatever computer you use and
use the old one as your server instead
of buying a standalone Mac Mini. But
then there again there's a lot of very
cute things people built with Mac Minis
that I like.
>> Yeah.
>> Um I know I don't get commission from
Apple. Um they
didn't really communicate much.
>> It's sad. It's sad.
Can you actually speak to what it takes
to get started with OpenClaw? I mean,
there's a lot of people, what is it?
Somebody tweeted at you, uh, Peter, make
openclaw easy to set up for everyday
people. 99.9% of people can't access to
open claw and have their own lobster
because of their technical difficulties
in getting it set up. Make open claw
accessible to everyone, please. And you
applied working on that. From my
perspective, it seems there there's a
bunch of different options and it's
already quite straightforward, but I
suppose that's if you have some
developer background.
>> I mean, right now you have to paste in a
one line into the terminal,
>> right?
>> And there's also an app. Um, the app
kind of does it for you, but there
should be a Windows app. The app needs
to be easier and more love. The
configuration should potentially be web
based or in the app. and I started
working on that. But honestly, right
now, I want to focus on on a few
security aspects and and once I'm
confident that
this is at a level that I can recommend
my mom, then I'm going to make it
simpler. Like I right now,
>> you want to make it harder so that it
doesn't scale as fast as it's scaling.
>> Yeah, it would be nice if it wouldn't I
mean that's like hard to say, right? But
if the growth would be a little slower,
it would be helpful because people are
expecting inhuman things from a single
human being. And yes, I have some
contributors, but also that whole
machinery I started a week ago. So, um
that needs more time to figure out and
and
not everyone has all day to work on
that.
>> There's some beginners listening to
this, programming beginners.
What advice would you give to them
about,
let's say, joining the agentic AI
revolution?
Play. Um, playing is the best the best
way to learn. If you want to, I'm sure
if you if you're like a little bit of
builder, you have an idea in your head
that you want to build, just build that
or give it a try. It doesn't need to be
perfect. I built a whole bunch of stuff
that I don't use. Doesn't matter. Like
it's the journey,
>> you know? like the philosophical way
that the end doesn't matter. The journey
matters.
>> Have fun. My god, like those things I I
don't think I ever had so much fun
building things because I can focus on
the hard parts now. A lot of coding. I
always thought I like coding, but really
I like building.
>> And and whenever you don't understand
something, just ask. you have an
infinitely patient answering machine
that can explain you anything at any
level of complexity. Sometime there like
one time I asked, "Hey, explain me that
like I'm I'm 8 years old." And he
started giving me a story with crayons
and stuff and I'm like, "No, not like
that." Like I'm okay up the age little
bit, you know? I'm like I'm not an
actual child. I just I just needed
simpler language for like a a
a tricky database concept that I didn't
gro in the first first time. But you
know just you can just ask things like
you there's like it used to be that I
had to go on Stack Overflow or ask on
Twitter and then maybe two days later I
get a response or I had to try for hours
and now you you can just ask stuff. I
mean it's never you have like your own
teacher you know that there's like
statistics you can you can learn faster
if you have your own teacher there you
have this infinitely patient machine ask
it
>> but what would you say so use what's the
easiest way to play so maybe open claw
is a nice way to play so you can then
set set everything up and then you could
chat with it
>> you can also just experiment with it and
like modify it ask your agent I mean
there's infinite ways how it can be made
better.
Play around, make it better.
More general, if you if you're a
beginner and you actually want to learn
how to build software really fast,
get involved in open source. Doesn't
need to be my project. In fact, maybe
don't use my project because it my my
backlog is very large. But I learned so
much from open source. just like like be
be humble. Don't maybe don't send the
pull request right away and but there's
many other ways you can help out.
There's many ways you can just learn by
just reading code by by being on Discord
or wherever people are and just like
understanding how things are built. I
don't know like
uh Mitchell Hachimoto
builds Ghosty a terminal and he has a
really good community
but there's so many other projects like
pick something that you find interesting
and
get involved. Do you uh recommend that
people that don't know how to program or
don't really know how to program learn
to program also? So when you you can get
quite far right now by just using
natural language, right? Do you still
see a lot of value in
reading the code, understanding the
code, and being able to write a little
bit of code from scratch?
>> It definitely helps.
>> It's hard for you to answer that.
>> Yeah,
>> because you don't know what it's like to
do any of this without knowing the base
know. Like you might take for granted
just how much intuition you have about
the programming world having programmed
so much, right?
>> There's people that are high agency and
very curious and they get very far even
though they have no deep understanding
how software works just because they ask
questions and questions and and and
agents are infinitely patient. Like part
of what I did this year is I went to a
lot of iOS conferences because that's my
background and just told people don't
consider don't see yourself as an iOS
engineer anymore. Like you need to
change your mindset. You are a builder
and you can take a lot of the knowledge
how to build software into new domains
and all of the the more fine details.
Agents can help. You don't have to know
how to splice an array or what the what
the correct template syntax is or
whatever, but you can use all your your
general knowledge and that makes it much
easier to move from one galaxy, one tech
galaxy into another. And often times
there's languages that make more or less
sense depending on what you build,
right?
So for example, when I build simple CLI,
I like Go. I actually don't like Go. I
don't like the syntax of Go. I didn't
even consider the language,
but the ecosystem is great. It works
great with agents. It is garbage
collected. It's not the highest
performing one, but it's very fast. And
for those type of of CLIs that I build,
Go is is a really good choice. So, I I
use a language I'm not even a fan of
for that's my main to go thing for for
CLI. Isn't that fascinating that here's
a programming language you would have
never used if you had to write from
scratch and now you're using
because LM are good at generating it and
it has some of the characteristics that
makes it resilient like garbage
collected
>> because everything is weird in this new
world and that just makes the most
sense.
>> What's the best ridiculous question?
What's the best programming language for
the AI AI agentic world? Is it
JavaScript TypeScript?
>> Typescript is really good. Um, sometimes
the types can get really confusing
and the ecosystem is is a jungle. So for
for web stuff, it's good. I wouldn't
build everything in it.
>> Don't you think we're moving there? Like
that everything will eventually be
written eventually is written in
JavaScript. births and deaths of
JavaScript and we're living through it
in real time.
>> Like what does programming look like in
20 years, right? In 30 years, in 40
years, what do programs and apps look
like?
>> You can even ask a question like, do we
need a programming language that's made
for agents? Because all of those
languages are made for humans. So, what
would that look like? Um, I think
there's a there's a whole bunch of
interesting questions that we'll
discover and also how because everything
is now world knowledge, how it in many
ways things will stagnate cuz if you
build something new and the agent has no
idea, that's going to be much harder to
use than something that's already there.
Um
uh when I build Mac apps I build them in
in Swift and Swift UI partly because I
like pain
partly because it the the deepest level
of system integration I can only get
through there and you clearly feel a
difference if you click on an electron
app and it loads a web view in the menu.
It's just not the same.
Um,
sometimes I just also try new languages
just to like get a feel for them
>> like Z.
>> Yeah, if it's something that where I
care about performance a lot and and
it's it's a really interesting language
and it like agents got so much better
over the last 6 months from not really
good to totally valid choice. there's
still a a very
young ecosystem and most of the time you
actually care about the ecosystem,
right? So, so if you build something
that
does inference or goes into whole um
running model direction, Python very
good.
>> But then if I build stuff in Python and
I want a story where I can also deploy
it on Windows, not a good choice. Mhm.
>> Sometimes I I found projects that kind
of did 90% of what I wanted but were in
Python and I wanted them I wanted an
easy Windows story. Okay, just rewrite
it and go.
Um but then if you go towards multiple
multiple threads and want more
performance, Rust is a really good
choice. There's no there's just no
single answer and it's also the beauty
of it. Like it's fun and now it doesn't
matter anymore. You can just literally
pick the language
that has the the most fitting
characteristics and ecosystem for your
problem domain. And yeah, it might be
you might have you might be a little bit
slow in reading the code, but not
really. I think you you pick stuff up
really fast and you can always ask your
agent.
>> So there's uh a lot of programmers and
builders who draw inspiration from your
story. just the way you carry yourself,
your choice of
making um open claw, open source,
the the way you have fun building and
exploring and doing that for the most
part alone or on a small team. So by way
of advice,
what metric should be the goal that they
would be optimizing for? What would be
the metric of success? Would it be
happiness? Is it money? is a positive
impact for people who are dreaming of
building
cuz you went through an interesting
journey. You've achieved a lot of those
things and then you fell out of love
with programming a little bit for a
time.
>> I was just
burning too bright for too long. I I ran
I started
PSPDF kit and ran it for 13 years
and it was high stress. Um,
I had to learn all the things fast and
hard like how to manage people, how to
bring people on, how to deal with
customers, how to do
>> So, it wasn't just programming stuff. It
was people stuff.
>> The stuff that burned me out was mostly
people stuff. I I don't think burnout is
working too much. Maybe to a degree.
Everybody's different, you know. I
cannot speak in in absolute terms but
for me it was much more differences
um
with my my co-founders conflicts or like
really high stress situation with
customers that eventually grinded me
down and then when
luckily
um we got a really good offer for like
putting the company to the next level
and I I already kind of worked two years
on making myself obsolete. So at this
point I could leave and and then I just
I was sitting in front of the screen and
I felt like you know Austin Powers where
they suck the mojo out.
>> I was like
it was like gone like I couldn't I
couldn't get cold out anymore. I was
just like staring
and feeling empty.
And then I
I just stopped. I
I booked like a one-way trip to Madrid
and and it's like spent some some time
there. I felt I I had to catch up on
life. So I did a whole a whole bunch of
life catching up stuff. Did you go
through some lows during that period
and uh you know maybe advice on of how
to maybe advice on how to approach life
if you think that oh yeah I work really
hard and then I retire.
I don't recommend that because
the idea of oh yeah I just enjoy life
now
it maybe is appealing but
right now I enjoy life the most I ever
enjoyed life because if you wake up in
the morning and you have nothing to look
forward to you have no real challenge
that gets very boring very fast. And
then when when you're bored, you're
going to look for other places how to
stimulate yourself. And then maybe maybe
that's
drugs, you know,
but that eventually also get boring and
you look for more and that will lead you
down a very dark path. But you also
showed on the money front, you know, a
lot of people in Silicon Valley in the
startup world, they think maybe
overthink way too much optimized for
money. And you've also shown that it's
not like you're saying no to money. I
mean, I'm sure you take money, but it's
not the primary objective of of your
life. Can you just speak to that, your
philosophy on money?
>> When I built my company, money was never
the driving force. It felt more like
like an affirmation that I did something
right. And having money solves a lot of
problems. I also think that there's
diminishing returns the more you have.
Um
like a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger.
And I think if you go too far
into,
oh, I do private chat and I only travel
luxury,
you disconnect with society.
Um, I
I donated quite a lot.
Like I have a I have a foundation for
helping people that weren't so lucky.
And disconnecting from society is bad in
that on many levels, but one of them is
like humans are awesome.
It's nice to continuously remember the
awesomeness in humans. I mean, I could
afford really nice hotels. Last time I
was in San Francisco, I did the the
first time the OG Airbnb experience and
just booked a room. mostly because I I
thought, okay, either I'm out or I'm
sleeping and
I don't like where all the hotels are
and I wanted I wanted a different
experience. I think isn't life all about
experiences?
Like if you if you tailor your life
towards I want to have experiences, it
it reduces the need for it needs to be
good or bad. Like people only want good
experiences.
That's not going to work. But if you
optimize for experiences,
if it's good, amazing. If it's bad,
amazing. Cuz like I learned something, I
saw something. I wanted to experience
that. And it was amazing. Like it was
like this this queer DJ chain there and
I showed her how to make music with
cloud code.
And we like immediately bonded. I had a
great time.
>> Yeah. There's something about that uh
air, you know, couch surfing, Airbnb
experience, the OG. I'm still to this
day. is awesome. It's humans and that's
why travel is awesome. Just experience
the variety of the diversity of humans.
And when it's shitty is good, too, man.
If it rains and you're soaked and it's
all and planes, the everything is
Everything is It's still
awesome if you're able to open your eyes
to it's good to be alive.
>> Yeah. And anything that creates emotion
and feelings is good.
Even so, so so maybe maybe even the
cryptic people are good because they
definitely created emotions.
>> I don't know if I should go that far.
>> No, man. Give them give them all give
them love. Give them love. I do think
that online lacks some of the
awesomeness of real life. Yeah,
>> that's that's that's an open problem of
how to solve how to infuse the online
cyber experience with uh
I don't know
uh with the intensity that we humans
feel when it's in real life. I don't
know. I don't know if this is all
>> just often because text is very lossy.
>> Yeah. You know, sometimes I wish if I
talk to the agent I would
it should be multimodal so it also
understands my emotions.
>> I mean it it might move there. It might
move there. It
>> will. It will. It totally will.
>> 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.
So to like
explain my thinking a little bit, right,
I did not expect this blowing up so
much.
So there's a lot of doors that open
because of it. There's like
I think every VC
every big VC companies in my inbox and
try to get 50 minutes of me. So
there's like this butterfly effect
moment. I could just do nothing and
continue. And I really like my life.
Valid choice almost
like I considered it when I deleted
wanted to delete the whole thing. I
could
create a company.
Been there, done that. Um
there's so many people that push me
towards that and yeah like could be
amazing
>> push to say that you would probably
raise a lot of money and that
>> I don't know hundreds of millions
billion I don't know it could just
unlimited amount of money
>> yeah it just doesn't excite me as much
cuz I feel I did all of that and
it would
take a lot of time away from the things
I actually enjoy. I
same as when when I was co I think I I
learned to do it and I'm not bad at it.
Um partly I'm good at it.
But yeah, that path doesn't excite me
too much. And I also fear it would
create a natural conflict of interest.
Like what's the most obvious thing I do?
I I productize it up with like a version
safe for workplace. And then what do you
do? I get a pull request with
a feature like add audit log
but that seems like an enterprise
feature. So now I feel I have a conflict
of interest in the open source version
and the closed source version
or I change the license to something
like FSL where you cannot actually use
it for commercial stuff would first be
very difficult with all the
contributions
and second of all I I like the idea that
it's free as in beer and not free with
conditions.
Um,
yeah, there's ways how you how you keep
all of that for free and just like still
try to make money, but those are very
difficult. And you see there's like few
and few companies manage that. Like even
Tailwind, they're like used by everyone.
Everyone uses Tailwind, right? And then
they had to cut off 75% of the employees
because they're not making money because
nobody's even going on the website
anymore because it's all done by agents
and just relying on donations.
Yeah, good luck. Like if a project of my
caliba,
if I extrapolate what the typical open
source project would get,
um it's not a lot. I I still lose money
on the project because I made the point
of supporting every dependency
except Slack. They're a big company.
They can they can they can do without
me. But all the projects that are done
by mostly individuals.
Um so like all the right now all the
sponsorship goes right up to my
dependencies and if there's more I want
to like
buy my contributors some merch, you
know.
>> So you're losing money.
>> Yeah. Yeah, right now I lose money on
this.
>> So, it's really not sustainable.
>> Uh, I mean, it's like I guess something
between 10 and 20k a month.
Um,
which is fine and I'm sure over time I
could get that down.
Um, Open is helping out a little bit
with tokens now and there's other
companies that have been generous,
but yeah, I'm still losing money on
that. So, that's that's one pass I
consider, but I'm just not very excited.
And then there's all the big labs that
I've been talking to.
And from those,
um, meta and open eyes seemed the most
interesting.
>> Do you lean one way or the other?
>> Uh, yeah.
I'm
not sure how much I should share there.
It's not quite finalized yet.
Um,
let's let's just say like
on either of these
my conditions are that the project stays
open source that it
maybe it's going to be a model like
Chrome and Chromium. Um, I think this is
this is too important to just give to a
company and make it theirs.
it. This is
we didn't even talk about the whole
community part, but like the the thing
that I experienced in San Francisco like
at Clockcom,
seeing so many people so inspired like
and having fun and just like building
and like having like robots and
lobster stuff walking around like the
people told me like they didn't
experience this level of of community
excitement since like the early days of
the internet like 10 15 years and there
were a lot of high caliber people there.
I was like
um I was amazed. I also like was very
sensibly overloaded because too many
people wanted to do selfies.
But
I love this like this needs to stay a
place where people can like hack and
learn.
But also
I'm very excited to like
make this into a version that I can get
to a lot of people because I think this
is the personal agents and that's the
future and the fastest way to do that is
teaming up with one of the labs
and
I also on a personal level I never
worked at a large company and I'm
intrigued
you know we talk about experiences will
I like it I don't know Um, but I want
that experience
and I'm sure like if if I if I announce
this then there will be people like,
"Oh, he's sold out blah blah blah." But
the project will continue. Um, from
everything I talked to so far,
I can even have more resources
for that. like both both of those
companies understand the value that I
created something that accelerates our
timeline and that got people excited
about AI.
I mean can you imagine like I installed
Open Claw on one of my I'm sorry normie
friends I'm sorry Bahan
but he's just you know like he's
>> normie with love. Yeah,
>> he he like someone who uses the computer
but never really like I use some CHBT
sometimes but not very technical
wouldn't really understand what I built.
So like
I'll show you and I I paid for him the
the 90 buck or 100 buck I don't know
subscription for entropic
and set up everything for him with like
VWSL Windows. I was so curious would it
actually work on Windows, you know, I
was a little early
and then within a few days he was hooked
like he texted me all the things he
learned. He built like even little
tools. He's not a programmer. And then
within a few days he upgraded to the
$200 subscription um or euros because
he's in Austria
and he was in love with that thing. That
to me was like a very early product
validation. was like, I built something
that
captures
people.
And then a few days later, Entropic
blocked him because
based on their rules, um,
using the subscription is problematic or
whatever.
And he was like devastated. And then he
signed up for Minimax for 10 bucks a
month and uses that.
And I think that's silly in many ways
because you just got a 200 buck
customer. You just made someone hate
your company
and we are still so early. Like we don't
even know what the final form is. Is it
going to be cloud code? Probably not.
You know, like that seems very it seems
very shortsighted to
lock down your product so much. All the
other companies have been helpful. I'm
in Slack of of most of the big labs kind
of everybody understands that we are
still in era of exploration in the area
of
the radio show is on TV and not
and not modern TV show that fully uses
the format. I think I think you've made
a lot of people like see the possibility
non sorry not non-technical people see
the possibility of AI and just fall in
love with this idea and enjoy
interacting with AI and that's a that's
a really beautiful thing. I think I also
speak uh for a lot of people in saying
I think you're one of the the great
people in AI in terms of having a good
heart, good vibes, humor, the right
spirit. And so it would in a sense this
model that you're describing having an
open-source part and you being part of u
uh also building a thing inside
additionally of a large company would be
great cuz it's great to have good people
in those companies.
>> You know what also people don't really
see is I made this in 3 months I did
other things as well. you know, I have a
lot of projects like this is not Yeah,
in January this was my main focus
because I saw the storm coming, but
before that I built a whole bunch of
other things. Um, I have so many ideas.
Some should be there. Some would be much
better fitted when I have access to
the latest toys. Uh, and I I kind of
want to have access to like the latest
toys.
Um, so this is important. This is cool.
This will continue to exist. my my
short-term focus is like working through
those uh is it is it 3,000 PR now by
now? I don't even know. Like there's
there's a little bit of backlog,
but this is not going to be the thing
that are going to work until I'm I'm I'm
80. You know, this is this is a window
into the future and going to make this
into a cool product. Um but yeah, I have
like I have more ideas.
>> If you had to pick, is there a company
you lean? So, Meta Open AI, is there one
you lean towards going with?
>> I spent time with both of those. And
it's funny because a few weeks ago I
I didn't consider any of this. Um,
and it's really hard.
Like,
>> yeah,
>> I have some I know people at OpenAI.
I
love the attack. I think I'm the biggest
Codex advertisement shill that's unpaid
and it would feel so gratifying to like
put a price of all the work I did for
free.
And
I would love if something happens and
those companies get just merged cuz it's
like
is this the hardest decision you've ever
had to do?
No, you know, I had some breakups in the
past that feel like at a similar level
>> relationships, you mean?
>> Yeah.
>> Uh, and I also know that
>> in the end they're both amazing. I
cannot go wrong. This is like
>> right
>> this like one of the most prestigious
and and and and largest. I mean the
largest, but like they're both very cool
companies.
>> Yeah. They both really know scale. So if
you're thinking about impact, some of
the wonderful technologies you've been
exploring, how to do it securely and how
to do it at scale such that you can have
a positive impact on a large number of
people. They both understand that.
>> You know, both Ned and Mark
basically played all week with my
product and sent me like, "Oh, this is
great. Oh, this is Oh, we need to
change this." are like funny little
anecdotes
and
people using your stuff is kind of like
the biggest compliment and also shows me
that you know they actually
they actually care about it and I didn't
get the same on the open side. Um
I got I about to see some other stuff
that I find really cool and they lure me
with
I cannot tell the exact number because
of
NBA, but you can you can be creative and
and think of the cerebra steel and how
that would translate into speed
and that was
very intriguing. Yeah, like you give me
source hammer. Yeah. Um,
been lured with tokens.
So, yeah.
>> So, it it's funny. So, so Mark's sort of
tinkering with the thing essentially
having fun with the thing. He got he
like when he first when they first
approached me I got him in my in my
WhatsApp and he was asking yeah when we
have a call and I'm like I don't like
calendar entries let's just call now and
it was like yeah give me 10 minutes we
need to finish coding.
>> Well I guess that gives you a streak
credit. It's like
he's still writing code you know he's
>> he didn't drift away in just being a
manager. He gets me. That was a good
first start. And then I think we had a
like a 10-minute fight. What's better,
Cloud Code or Codex?
>> Like that's that's the saying you first
do like casually call.
>> Yeah, that's awesome.
>> Someone with like the that owns one of
the largest companies in the world and
and you have a 10 minutes conversation
about that.
>> Yeah.
>> And then I think afterwards he called me
eccentric but brilliant.
But I also had some I had some really
really cool discussion with Sam Alman.
Uh and he's
he's very thoughtful. Um
brilliant
and
I like him a lot from the from the
little time I had. Yeah. I mean, I know
some people willify both of those
people.
I don't think it's fair.
>> I think no matter what, the stuff you're
building and the kind of human you are,
uh, doing stuff at scale is kind of
awesome. I'm excited.
>> I am super pumped. And you know, the
beauty is if
if it doesn't work out, I can just do my
own thing again. Like I I told them like
I
I don't do this for the money. I don't
give a I
>> Yeah. I mean, of course, of course, it's
a nice compliment, but
I want to have fun and have impact. And
that's ultimately
what
made my decision.
>> Can I ask you about We've talked about
it quite a bit, but maybe just zooming
out about how Open Claw works. We talked
about different components. I want to
ask if there's some interesting stuff we
missed. So there's the gateway, there's
the chat clients, there's the harness,
uh there's the agentic loop. You said
somewhere that everybody should
implement an agent loop at some point.
>> Yeah, because it's like the it's like
the hello world in AI is actually quite
simple
>> and it it's good to understand that
that stuff's not magic. You can you can
easily build it yourself. So
writing your own little clawed code I I
even did this at a conference in Paris
for people to like introduce them to AI.
I think it's just a has a fun little
practice.
Um, and you you covered a lot. I think
one
one silly idea I had that turned out to
be quite cool is
I built this thing
with full system access. So, it's like,
you know, with great power becomes great
possibility. And I was like, how can I
up the stakes a little bit more?
>> Yeah. Right. And I just made a I made it
proactive. So I added a prompt.
Initially it was just a prompt surprise
me every like half an hour surprise me
you know and later on I changed it to be
like a little more specific and in the
definition of surprise.
Um, but the fact that I made it
proactive and that it knows you and it
cares about you, it's it's at least it's
programmed to that, prompted to do that.
And that that is a follow on on your
current session makes it very
interesting because it would just
sometimes ask a follow-up question or
like how's your day? I mean
again it's a little
creepy or weird or interesting but
highbeat very in the beginning is still
today it doesn't the model doesn't
choose to use it a lot
>> by the way we're we're talking about
heartbeat as you mentioned the thing
that regularly
uh acts
>> you just kick off the loop
>> isn't that just a crown job man right
it's like the the criticisms that you
get.
>> You can you can deduce any idea to like
a silly Yeah, it's just it's just a
crone shop in the end. I have like cr
separate crone chops.
>> Isn't love just evolutionary biology
manifesting itself? And uh isn't aren't
you guys just using each other?
>> And yeah, and the project is all just
glue of a few different dependencies and
there's nothing original. Why do people
Well, you know, isn't Dropbox just FTP
with extra steps?
>> Yeah.
>> I found it surprising where I had this
uh I had a shoulder operation a few
months ago. So,
>> and the model rarely used heartbeat, but
then I was in the hospital and it knew
that I had the operation and it checked
up on me. It's like, are you okay?
And I just it's like again apparently
like if something significant in the
context that triggered the heartbeat
when it rarely used the heartbeat. Um
and it does that sometimes for people
and that just makes it a lot more
relatable.
Let me look this up on perplexity how
open call works just to see if I'm
missing any of the stuff. Uh local agent
runtime high level architecture. There's
oh we haven't talked much about skills I
suppose skill hub the tools and the
skill layer but that's definitely a huge
component and there's a huge growing
>> you know what I love
that half a year ago like everyone was
talking about MCPS
>> and I was like screw MCPS
uh every MCP
would be better as a CLI
and now
this stuff doesn't even have MCP support
I mean
it it has with asterisks but not in the
core layer and nobody's complaining.
>> Mhm.
>> So my approach is
if you want to extend the model with
more features, you just build a CLI and
the model can call the CLI
probably gets it wrong, calls the help
menu and then on demand loads into the
context what it needs to use the CLI. It
just needs a sentence to know that the
CLA exists if it's something that the
model doesn't know by default. And even
for a while, I I didn't really care
about skills. But skills are actually
perfect for that because they they boil
down to a single sentence
that explains the skill and then the
model loads the skill and that explains
the CLI and then the model uses the CLI.
Some skills are like raw, but most of
the time that works.
>> It's interesting. I'm I'm I'm asking uh
Proplexity MCP versus skills because uh
this kind of requires a hot take that's
quite recent because your general view
is MCPs are deadish.
So MCPS is a more structured thing. So
if you uh listen to perplexity here, MCP
is what can I reach? So APIs, databases,
services, files, via protocol. So
structured protocol of how you
communicate with a thing. And then
skills is more how should I work?
Procedures, hostile helper scripts and
prompts often written in a kind of
semistructured natural language, right?
And so technically skills could replace
MCP if you have a smart enough model.
>> I think the main beauty is is that
models are really good at calling Unix
commands. So if you just add another CLI
that's just another Unix command in the
end and MCP is that has to be added in
training that's not a very natural thing
for the model. It requires a very
specific syntax and the biggest thing
it's not composable. So imagine if I
have a service that gives me weather
data and it gives me the temperature,
the average temperature, rain, wind, and
all the other stuff and I get like this
huge blob back. As a model, I always
have to get the huge blob back. I have
to fill my context with that huge blob
and then pick what I want. There's no
way for the model to naturally filter
unless I think about it proactively and
add a filtering way into my MCP.
But if I would build the same as a CLI
and it would give me this huge blob, it
could just add a jQ command and filter
itself and then only only get me what I
actually need or maybe even compose it
into a script to like do some
calculations with the temperature and
only give me the actual output and the
more and the you have no context
pollution.
Again, you can solve that with like sub
agents and more charades, but it's just
like workarounds for something that
might not be the optimal way. There's it
definitely it was, you know, it was good
that we had MCPs because it pushed a lot
of companies towards building APIs and
now I can like look at an MCP and just
make it into a CLI.
>> Mhm. Um, but this this inherent problem
that MCPS by default clutter up your
context
plus the fact that most MCPS are not
make good in general
make it just not a very useful paradigm.
There's some exceptions like
uh playright for example that requires
state and is actually useful that
is an acceptable choice. So playright
used for browser use which I think is
already in open claw is quite incredible
right? Yeah,
>> you can basically do everything most
things you can think of using browser
use.
>> That that gets into the whole arch of
every app is just a very slow API now if
you want or not. and that
through personal agents
a lot of apps will disappear.
You know, like I I had a I built
a CLI for Twitter.
I mean, I I just
reverse engineered the website and used
the internal API, which is not very
allowed.
>> It's called Bird. Short-lived. It was
called bird because the bird had to
disappear.
>> The the wings were clipped.
>> All they did is they just made access
slower.
>> Yeah, I'm not you're not actually taking
a feature away. But now in if if your
agent wants to read a tweet, it actually
has to open the browser and read the
tweet and it will still be able to read
the tweet. It will just take longer.
It's not like you're making something
that was possible not possible. No, now
it's just taking now it's just a bit
slower.
So, so it doesn't really matter if your
service wants to be an API or not. If I
can access in the browser,
it is API. It's a slow API.
>> Can you empathize with our situation?
like what would you do if you were
Twitter, if you were X, because they're
basically trying to protect against
other large companies scraping all their
data.
>> But in so doing, they're cutting off
like a million different use cases for
smaller developers that actually want to
use it for helpful cool stuff.
>> I think if you have a very low
um per day baseline
per account that allows read only access
would solve a lot of problems. There's
plenty plenty automations where people
create a bookmark and then use Open Claw
to like find the bookmark, do research
on it, and then send you an email with
like more details on it or a summary.
>> That's a cool approach. I also want all
my bookmarks somewhere to search. I
would still like to have that.
>> So, read only access for the bookmarks
you make on X. That seems like an
incredible application cuz a lot of us
find a lot of cool stuff on X. We
bookmark. That's the general process of
X. It's like, "Holy this is
awesome." Often times you bookmark so
many things, you never look back at
them. It would be nice to have tooling
that organizes them and allows you to
research it for
>> Yeah. I mean, and to be frank, I I mean,
I I told Twitter proactively that, hey,
I built this and there's a need and
they've been really nice, but also like
take it down. Fair. Totally fair. Um,
but I hope that
this woke up the teen a little bit that
there's a need and if all you do is
making it slower, you're just reducing
access to your platform. I'm sure
there's a better way. I also I'm very
much
against any automation on Twitter. If
you tweet at me with AI, I will block
you. No first strike. as soon as it
smells like AI and AI still has a smell.
>> Mhm.
>> Especially on tweets, it's very hard to
tweet in a way that does look completely
human.
>> Mhm.
>> And then
I block like I have a zero tolerance
policy on that. And I think it would be
very helpful if they if like tweets done
via API would be marked.
Maybe there's some special cases where
but
>> and there should be there should be a
very easy way for agents to get their
own Twitter account.
>> Um
>> Mhm.
>> We need to rethink social platforms a
little bit if if if we we we go towards
a future where everyone has their agent
and agents maybe have their own
Instagram profiles
or Twitter accounts or can like do stuff
on my behalf. I think it should very
clearly be marked that they are doing
stuff on my behalf and it's not me
because content is now so cheap.
Eyeballs are the expensive part and I
find it very triggering when I read
something and then I'm like, "Oh no,
this smells like AI."
>> Yeah.
>> Like where where is this headed in terms
of what we value about the human
experience? It feels like we will move
more and more towards inerson
interaction.
and we'll just communicate. We'll talk
to our AI agent
to accomplish different tasks, to learn
about different things, but we won't
value online interaction because
there'll be so much
AI slop that smells and so many bots
that it's difficult. Well, if it's
marked, then it should also be difficult
to filter. And then I can look at it if
I want to. But
yeah, this is like a big thing we need
to solve right now.
Especially on this project, I get so
many emails that are,
let's say, nicely agentically written.
>> Yeah.
>> But
I much rather read your broken English
than your AI slop, you know. Of course,
there's a human behind it and yeah, they
they prompted I much rather read your
prompt than what came out. Um I think
we're reaching a point where I value
typos again like um
>> yeah like
and I I I mean I also took me a while to
like come to the realization I on my
blog I experimented with creating a blog
post with agents and
ultimately it took me about the same
time to like steer agent towards
something I like but it missed
the nuances that how I would write it.
You know, you can like you can steer it
towards your style, but it's not going
to be all your style. So, I I completely
moved away from that. I I everything
everything I blog is organic handwritten
and
maybe maybe I I I use AI as a fix my
worst typos but
there's value in
the rough parts of an actual human.
>> Isn't that awesome? Isn't that beautiful
that now because of AI we value the raw
humanity in each of us more?
I also I also realized the thing that I
I rave about AI and use it so much for
anything that's code, but I'm allergic
if it's stories,
>> right? Yeah.
>> Also, documentation still fine with AI,
you know, better than nothing.
>> And for now, it's still in applies in
the in the visual medium, too. It's
fascinating how allergic I am to even a
little bit of AI slop in uh in video, in
images. It's useful. It's nice if it's
like a little component of like
>> Oh, even even those images like all
these infographics and stuff, they they
trigger me so hard. Like it immediately
makes me think less of your content and
it they were novel for like one week and
now it just screams slop.
>> Yeah. even even if people work hard on
it
using and I have some on my blog post
you know in in the time where I I
explored this new medium but now they
trigger me as well it's like yeah this
is this just screams AI slop by what I
don't know what that is but I went
through that too I was really excited by
the diagrams and then I realized in
order to remove from them hallucinations
you actually have to do a huge amount of
work
and you're just using it to draw the
better diagrams great and then I'm proud
out of the diagram. I've used them for
literally like kind of like you said for
maybe a couple weeks and now I look at
those and I feel like I feel when I look
at comic sands as a font or something
like this, it's like no, this is this is
fake. It's fraudulent. There's something
wrong with it. And
>> it's a smell.
>> It's a smell.
>> It's a smell. It's awesome because it it
reminds you that we know there's so much
to humans that's amazing and we know
that we we know it. We know it when we
see it.
And so that gives me a lot of hope, you
know, that gives me a lot of hope about
the human experience is not going to be
damaged by it's only going to be
empowered as tools by AI. It's not going
to be damaged or limited or
um somehow altered to where it's no
longer human. So,
uh I need a bathroom break. Quick pause.
You mentioned that a lot of the apps
might be
basically made obsolete.
You think agents will just transform the
entire app market?
>> Yeah. Uh,
I noticed that on Discord that people
just said how they like what they build
and what they use it for and like why do
you need my fitness p when the agent
already knows where I am? So can assume
that I make bad decisions when I'm at I
don't know Waffle House what's around
here or or brisketss in Austin.
>> There's no bad decisions around
brisketss but yeah. No, that's the best
decision, honestly. Um,
>> your agent should know that.
>> But it can like it can modify my my gym
workout based on how well I slept or if
I'm if I have stress or not. Like, it
has so much more context to make even
better decisions than any of the app
even could do.
>> Mhm.
>> It could show me UI just as I like.
Why do I still need an app to do that?
Why do I have to why should I pay
another subscription for something that
the agent can just do now?
And why do I need my my eight sleep app
to control my bed when I tell the tell
the agent to No, the agent already knows
where I am. So, it can like turn off
what I don't use.
>> Mhm.
And I think that will that will
translate into a whole category of apps
that are no longer I will just naturally
stop using because my agent can just do
it better.
>> I think you said somewhere that it might
kill off 80% of apps.
>> Yeah.
>> Don't you think that's a gigantic
transformative effect on just all
software development? That that means it
might kill off a lot of software
companies.
>> Yeah.
Um
>> it's a scary thing. So like do you think
about the impact that has on the economy
on um just the ripple effects it has to
society transforming
who builds what tooling. It empowers a
lot of users to get stuff done to get
stuff more efficiently to get it done uh
cheaper. There's also new services that
we will need, right? For example, I want
my agent to have an allowance
like
you solve problems for me. Here's like a
hundred bucks in order to solve problems
for me. And if I tell you to order me
food, maybe it uses a service, maybe it
uses something like rent a human to like
just get that done for me. I don't
actually care. I care about
>> solve my problem. uh there's space for
for new companies that solve that well
maybe don't not all apps disappear maybe
some transform into being API
>> so basically apps that
rapidly transform in being agentf facing
so there's a real opportunity for
like Uber Eats that we just used earlier
today it's companies like this of which
there's
who gets there fastest being able to
interact with open claw in a way that's
the the most natural the easiest.
>> Yeah. And also
apps will become API if they want or not
because
my agent can figure out how to use my
phone. I mean on on the Apple side it's
a little more tricky on Android that's
already people already do that and then
it will just click the order Uber for me
button for me. Um or maybe another
service or maybe there's there's a
there's an API call so it's faster.
Uh I think that's a space we're just
beginning to even understand what that
means. And I again I didn't even that
was not something I thought of something
that I that I discovered as people use
this and we still so early but yeah I
think data is very important like apps
that can give me data but that also can
be API. Why do I need the Sonus app
anymore when I can when my agent can
talk to the Sonus
uh speakers directly? like my cameras,
there's like a crappy app, but they have
they have an API. So, my agent uses the
API now.
>> So, it's going to force a lot of
companies to have to shift focus. And
it's kind of what the internet did,
right? You have to rapidly rethink,
reconfigure what you're selling,
how you're making money.
>> Yeah. Some companies were really not
like that. For example, there's no CLI
for Google. So I had to like don't have
to do anything myself and built Gogg
that's like a CLI for Google and at the
yeah at the end user they have to give
me the emails because otherwise I cannot
use their product if I'm a company and I
try to get Google data Gmail there's a
whole complicated process to the point
where sometimes startups acquire
startups that went through the process.
So, they don't don't have to work with
Google for half a year to be certified
to being able to access Gmail.
But my agent can access Gmail because I
can just connect to it. It's still
crappy because I need to like go through
Google's
developer jungle to get a key and it's
still annoying, but they cannot prevent
me. And worst case, my agent just clicks
on the on the website and gets the data
out that way
>> to browse.
>> Yeah. I mean, I I watch my agent happily
click the I'm not a robot button.
Uh and there's this this whole that's
going to be that's going to be more
heated. You see companies like
uh Cloudflare that try to prevent bot
access and in some ways that's useful
for scraping but in other ways if I'm
I'm a personal user I want that you know
sometimes I
I use Codex and I I read an article
about
modern React patterns
and it's like a medium article. I paste
it in and the agent can't read it
because they block it. So I have to copy
paste the actual text or in the future I
learned that maybe I don't click on
Medium because it's annoying and I use
other websites that actually are agent
friendly. So there's going to be a lot
of powerful rich companies fighting
back.
So it's a really you're at the center.
you're the catalyst, the leader, and
happen to be at the center of this kind
of revolution where it's going to
completely change of how we interact
with uh services with with web.
And so like there's companies like
Google that are going to push back. I
mean there's every major companies you
could think of is going to push back.
Even yeah, even search um and I use I
think Perplexity or Brave as providers
because Google really doesn't make it
easy to use Google without Google.
I'm not sure if that's the right
strategy. But I'm not Google.
>> Yeah, there's a there's a nice balance
from a big company perspective because
if you push back too much for too long,
you become Blockbuster and you lose
everything to the Netflixes of the
world. put some push back is probably
good during revolution to see
>> but you see that like this is something
that the people want
>> right
>> so
>> yes
>> if I'm on the go
I don't want to open a calendar app I
just I want to tell my agent hey remind
me about this dinner tomorrow night and
maybe invite two of my friends and then
maybe send a send a WhatsApp message to
my friend and I don't need I don't want
I need to open apps for that I think
that
We passed that age and now everything is
like much more connected and and fluid
if those companies want it or not. And I
think we'll
the right companies will find
ways to jump on the train and other
companies will
perish. You got to listen to what the
people want. Uh we talked about
programming quite a bit and a lot of
folks that are developers are really
worried about their jobs about their
about the future of programming. Do you
think AI replaces programmers completely
human programmers?
>> I mean we're definitely going in that
direction. Programming is just a part of
building products.
So maybe maybe I does replace
programmers eventually.
But there's so much more to that art.
Like
what do you actually want to build? How
should it feel?
How's the architecture? I don't think
Asians will replace all of that. Yeah,
like just the the actual art of
programming,
it will it will stay there, but it's
it's going to be like
knitting, you know, like people do that
because they like it, not because it
makes any sense.
So, so I read this article this morning
about someone that it's okay to mourn
our craft and I can a part of me very
strongly resonates with that because in
my past I I spent a lot of time
sinkering just being really deep in the
flow and just like cranking out code and
like finding really beautiful solutions
and
yes in a way It's
it's sad because that will go away and
I also got a lot of joy out of just
writing code and being really deep in my
thoughts and forgetting
time and space and just
being in this beautiful state of flow.
But you can get the same state of flow.
I get a similar state of flow by working
with agents and building and thinking
really hard about problems. It is
different
but and it's okay to mourn it but that's
not something we can fight like there is
the world for a long time had a there
was a lack of intelligence if you if you
see it like that
of people building things and that's why
salaries of software developers reached
stupidly high amounts
and they will go away. Um there will
still be a lot of demand for people that
understand how to build things.
Just that all this tokenized
intelligence
uh
enables people to do a lot more a lot
faster and it will be even more even
faster and even more because those
things are continuously improving.
Um, we had similar things when I it's
probably not a perfect analogy, but when
we created the steam engine and they
built all these factories and replaced a
lot of manual labor and then people
revolted and broke the machines. Um I I
can relate that if you very deeply
identify that you are a programmer
that it's scary and that it threatening
because what you like and what you're
really good at is now being done
by
a soulless or not entity.
But I don't think you're just a
programmer. That that's a very limiting
view of your craft. You are you are
still a builder.
>> Yeah. There's a couple things I want to
say. So one is I never as you're
articulating this beautifully and I'm
I'm realizing I never thought I would
the thing I love doing
would be the thing that gets replaced.
You hear these stories about these like
said with the steam engine. I've I've
spent so many I don't know maybe
thousands of hours pouring over code and
putting my heart and soul and like and
just like some of my most painful and
happiest moments were alone behind I I
was an Emacs person for a long time and
Emacs
and and then there's an identity and
there's meaning and there's like when I
walk about the world I don't say it out
loud but I think of myself as a
programmer.
And to have that in a matter of months,
I mean, like you mentioned, April to
November, that really is a leap that
happened, a shift that's happening.
To have that completely replaced
is uh is painful. It's truly painful.
But I also think um
programmers,
builders more broadly, but what is what
is the act of programming? I I think
programmers are generally best equipped
at this moment in history
to learn the language to empathize with
agents to learn the language of agents
to feel the CLI. Yeah. Like like to
understand what is the thing you need
you the agent need to do this task the
best. I think at some point it's just
going to be called coding again and it's
just going to be the new normal.
>> Yeah.
>> And yet while I don't write the code, I
very much feel like
I'm in the driver's seat and I am I am
writing the code, you know. It's just
>> you'll still be a programmer. It's just
the activity of a programmer is is
different.
>> Yeah. And because on X
the bubble I mean is mostly positive on
on Master Don and Blue Sky. I don't I
also use it less because often times I
got attacked for my blog posts and I I
had stronger reaction in the past. Now I
can sympathize with those people more
cuz
in a way I get it. It in a way I also
don't get it because it's very unfair to
grab onto the person that you see right
now and unload all your fear and hate.
It's going to be a change and it's going
to be challenging, but it's also I don't
know. I find it incredibly
fun and and gratifying and
I can
I can use the new time to focus on much
more details. I think the level of
expectations of what we build is also
rising because it's just now
the default is now so much easier. So
software is changing in many ways.
There's going to be a lot more.
And then you have all these people that
are screaming, "Oh yeah, but what about
the water?"
You know, like I did a conference in
Italy about the the state of AI. And
my whole motivation was to push people
away from don't see yourself as an iOS
developer anymore. you are now a builder
and you can use your skills in many more
ways also because apps are slowly going
away. Uh people didn't like that. Like
uh a lot of people didn't like what I
had to say. And I don't think I was
hyperbol. I was just like this is how I
see the future. Maybe this is not how
it's going to be, but I'm pretty sure a
version of that will happen.
And the first question I got was, "Yeah,
but what about the insane water use on
data centers?" But then you actually sit
down and do the math and then for most
people
if you just skip one burger per month
that compensates the the CO2 output or
like the water use
in the equivalent of tokens. I mean the
masses is the mass is tricky and it
depends if you add pre-training then
maybe it's more than just one petty but
it's not off by a factor of 100 you
know. So, so there like golf is still
using way more water than all data
centers together. So, are you also
hating people that play golf?
Those people grab on anything that they
think is bad about AI without seeing the
potential things that might be good
about AI.
>> Mhm.
>> And I'm not saying everything is good.
It's certainly going to be
a very transformative technology for our
society. There's I to steal man the the
criticism in general. I do want to say
in my experience with Silicon Valley
um there's a bit of a bubble in the
sense that
there's a kind of excitement
and an overfocus about
the positive that the technology can
bring.
>> Yeah.
>> And which is great. It's great to focus
on not to not to be paralyzed by fear
and fear mongering and so on. But
there's also within that excitement and
within everybody talking just to each
other,
there's a dismissal of the basic human
experience across the United States, in
the Midwest, across the world, including
the programmers we mentioned, including
all the people that are going to lose
their jobs, including the the the
immeasurable pain and suffering that
happens at the short-term scale when
there's change of any kind, especially
large scale transformative change that
we're about to face. if what we're
talking about will materialize. And so
to having a bit of that humility and an
awareness about the tools you're
building, they're going to cause pain.
They will long-term hopefully bring up
about a better world and even more
opportunities and even more awesomeness.
But having that kind of like quiet
moment
often of of respect for the pain that is
going to be felt and so not not enough
of that is I think done. So it's it's
good to have a bit of that. And then I
also have to put against uh some of the
emails I got where people told me they
have a small business and they've been
struggling and and OpenClaw helped them
automate a few of the tedious tasks from
from collecting invoices to like
answering customer emails that then
freed them up and like cost them a bit
more joy in their life
>> or or some emails where they told me
that Open Claw helped their disabled
order uh that she's now empowered and
feels she can do much more than before
which is amazing right because you you
could you could do that before as well
the technology was there I didn't I
didn't invent a whole new thing but I
made it a lot easier and more accessible
and that did show people the
possibilities that they previously
wouldn't see and now they apply it for
good
>> or like also the fact that
yes I I I suggest the the the latest and
best models, but you can totally run
this on free models. You can run this
locally. You can run this on on on KI or
other other other models that are way
more accessible price-wise
and still have a a very powerful system
that might otherwise not be possible
because
other things like I don't know entropics
co-work
into their space. So, it's not a lot of
black and white. There I got a lot of
emails that were heartwarming and
amazing and and I don't know just made
me really happy.
>> Yeah, there's a lot it has brought joy
into a lot of people's lives, not just
not just programmers, like a lot of
people's lives. It's it it's beautiful
to see. Uh what gives you hope about
this whole thing we have going on
the human civilization? I mean, I
inspired so many people. There's like
there's this whole builder vibe again.
People are now
using AI in a more playful way and are
discovering
what it can do and how it can like help
them in their life and
creating new
places that are just sprawling of
creativity. I don't know like there's
like clock on in Vienna. there's like
500 people and there's such a high
percentage of people that I want to
present which is to me really surprising
because you usually
it's quite hard to find people that want
to like talk about what they built and
now it's there's an abundance.
So that gives me hope that we can
we can figure out
>> and it makes it accessible to basically
everybody.
>> Yeah. Just imagine all these people
building
especially as you make it simpler and
simpler
more secure. It's like anybody who has
ideas and can express those ideas in
language can build. That's crazy.
>> Yeah. That's ultimately power to the
people and
one of the beauty
the beautiful things that come out of
AI. Not just not just a slop generator.
>> Well, Mr. Claw Father, I just realized
when I said that in the beginning, I
violated two trademarks cuz there's also
the Godfather. I'm getting sued by
everybody. Um, you're a wonderful human
being.
uh you've created something really
special, a special community, a special
product, a special set of ideas, plus
the entire the humor, the good vibes,
the inspiration of all these people
building, the excitement
to build. Uh so I'm truly grateful for
everything you've been doing and uh for
who you are and for sitting down to talk
with me today. Thank you, brother.
>> Thanks for giving me the chance to tell
my story.
Thanks for listening to this
conversation with Peter Steinberger. To
support this podcast, 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, let me leave you with some
words from Balta.
With great power comes great
responsibility.
Thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time.