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Peter Steinberger: What Happens When 4.7 Million People Let It Cook

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Peter Steinberger: What Happens When 4.7 Million People Let It Cook

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952 segments

0:07

Six months ago, I was the future. These

0:12

days, the pulse say I got mocked by an

0:15

anime girl. You know, I get questions

0:17

like this almost every day. Usually, I

0:21

ignore it or I give the media answer.

0:26

Today you get some real ones. It's going

0:30

to be five questions, 40 minutes. And I

0:33

know what you what you might all came

0:35

for. You came for loops, graphs, making

0:38

codex go brew. This is free on my

0:41

Twitter.

0:43

This will help you to survive the roller

0:46

coaster that might be coming for you.

0:50

You know, yesterday Boris told you to

0:52

let the model cook.

0:56

I'm the guy who found out what happened

0:59

when tens of thousands of people let it

1:03

cook at the same time. Let's start with

1:05

the question everyone asks first. How is

1:07

open claw only 8 months old? You know,

1:11

it might be eight months in in human

1:13

time, but in AI times it's it's more

1:16

like four years. And my source of

1:19

inspiration is usually being annoyed. So

1:22

on on a rainy day in November, I was

1:25

juggling some agents,

1:27

but I was also hungry.

1:30

So I wanted to make sure that my tokens

1:32

are put to good use while I raid the

1:35

kitchen. And there was still no good way

1:38

to just send a prompt from my phone to

1:42

my computer

1:44

so some agent could check up how my

1:46

agent's actually doing. Remember early

1:49

2025? And you know guys, this is my

1:52

first silent discos. It's a very new

1:55

experience. So like I give me some hands

1:57

if you actually listen to me. Yes.

1:59

[cheering]

2:00

Amazing.

2:02

Amazing. You know, early 2025. Oh my

2:06

god. We're talking the old Oppus 3i 2.5.

2:11

Openi had 03 which was the most

2:14

impressive one but also really slow and

2:17

expensive at times. And I got a dopamine

2:20

hit when my agent did something right.

2:22

I'm sure you remember this time. And

2:25

these days, if I if they get something

2:28

wrong,

2:30

I usually question myself, you know, did

2:32

I design the loop wrong? Did I not give

2:35

my agent everything they need to verify

2:38

their work? Do I have an error in my

2:40

thinking?

2:43

Am I asking for impossible things?

2:46

So, I came back from the kitchen

2:48

and my coding agent stopped because of

2:50

something silly

2:53

and I

2:54

was annoyed. So, I spun up a new

2:57

terminal session. I rambled my idea in

3:00

and I let the model cook. It built me a

3:03

WhatsApp relay and in an hour later I

3:06

could send messages from my Mac to

3:09

WhatsApp and back.

3:11

And that in itself felt magical. But

3:15

really, it shouldn't have. It's like I

3:18

we all did this for months already,

3:19

right? You open the terminal

3:22

and you type something in and you get a

3:24

reply.

3:25

But the magic is how it felt. It wasn't

3:28

a terminal. It wrote concise answers.

3:33

It It was proactive. Like sometimes it

3:36

would just like check on me during the

3:38

day. I made it so the the complexity

3:42

would melt away. You don't have to think

3:44

about which model, which context size or

3:47

when you start a new session. And I I

3:49

prompted the weights to a little bit

3:51

outside the default distribution

3:55

make it feel more like a friend.

3:58

And I was using it. I had I had so many

4:02

moments where I felt like this is the

4:04

future. This is this is AGI.

4:07

[snorts]

4:09

And you know what? Nobody cared.

4:13

Back then I already had a good following

4:15

on Twitter and I know it's called X now.

4:17

I don't I'll always call it Twitter.

4:19

People were not getting it. I would keep

4:22

trying to like make them make them

4:24

understand like how magical this felt to

4:27

me.

4:29

But week after week I failed.

4:33

And you notice a pattern? It annoyed me.

4:37

So I would create group chats with

4:39

friends and I added them WhatsApp relay

4:43

and I would show them I would let them

4:45

talk to it and every time I got a strong

4:49

emotional reaction. Some people were

4:52

amazed, some people were scared or

4:55

freaked out even. But each time there

4:58

was a strong emotion

5:01

and the best part there were quite a few

5:03

people that really wanted it and like

5:06

especially to my nontechnical friends I

5:07

told them no this is not yet for you and

5:10

they got mad. So if that's not an

5:12

indicator to have product market fit I

5:16

don't know what is.

5:18

So

5:20

I spent another months tweaking the

5:22

details thinking

5:25

what could I do to explain the world

5:29

you know and then the audacity someone

5:32

sent me a pull request to my WhatsApp

5:34

relay to add Discord support

5:37

you know like what parts of the name are

5:40

you not getting I let the PR sit for a

5:42

while and I was thinking and I was

5:44

thinking

5:46

>> and then eventually I was like ah what

5:47

the hell

5:48

and out of V relay became claudis

5:51

because I'm good with names and there's

5:54

no more than one message channel and so

5:57

you understand how early this was. I

5:59

didn't even had compaction built in yet.

6:01

So like at some point it would just like

6:03

stop uh and just just for in time for

6:06

Discord I I added a very hacky version

6:08

of compaction so Mario could make a good

6:10

one in Pi.

6:12

So, it was around New Year's Eve

6:16

and as you do, I I went home early

6:20

to hack on it some more. And then in the

6:23

first week of January,

6:26

just as the the geek world collectively

6:29

was learning about coding agents, I

6:32

created a Discord room, server, guild,

6:36

however we call it, and I put my claw in

6:38

it. And I remember the the first night

6:42

vividly.

6:44

People would be joining Discord and they

6:46

would like watch me build it in the

6:48

open. They would try to hack it. They

6:49

were like talking to it. They were

6:51

getting smug replies and they see what

6:53

they can do and they finally got it. You

6:57

know, like this was this was the moment

7:00

I sit up all night. I let people

7:03

interact with it.

7:05

I had this prompt in my agents.mmd that

7:08

would instruct it don't do any dangerous

7:10

tool calls unless the prompt comes from

7:13

Peter

7:15

you know this were like six months ago

7:20

and where all the things we wrote in our

7:21

agent felt more like suggestions so I

7:25

watched it very carefully I could always

7:27

pull the plug and then at 7 a.m.

7:30

Finally, I was done. I said good night.

7:32

I pressed Ctrl C and I went to bed. But

7:35

of course, like I built the software to

7:38

be resilient. So, it was a launch demon.

7:40

You know what happens if you like press

7:41

control C in a launch demon? Yeah. It'll

7:44

just it'll be dead for 5 seconds and

7:46

it'll start up again.

7:49

So, while I was walking into the

7:50

bedroom, my agent happily started

7:52

answering God in the world. And then I I

7:56

slept for like 10 hours. When I woke up,

7:58

I woke up to around 800 messages. People

8:02

tried to hack it. I pulled the plug. I

8:04

freaked out. I read through everything

8:07

and nothing actually happened. But this

8:10

was the moment. This was the moment

8:12

where it went viral. And you all been

8:14

here. You know what happened next? My

8:17

inbox exploded.

8:20

Reporters tried to call me in the middle

8:21

of the night. Did you know about this

8:23

feature that Apple would build when you

8:24

put it on do not disturb, but people

8:26

call you a few times in a row, the

8:28

iPhone would think it's an emergency. It

8:29

would would still let call through. I

8:31

didn't know about it, but reporters did.

8:34

My email inbox was more like a

8:37

waterfall.

8:38

Yeah, the Mac Mini sold out. I think

8:40

they're still sold out. I got more

8:43

invites to podcast in a month than I did

8:46

in my 39 years before. And Tropic sent

8:49

an email demanding the name change

8:53

and like dropped the lobster

8:56

and the project molted a few times.

8:58

Claudius became claudebot. Then there

9:00

was a very short time where we don't

9:02

talk about the name and then it started

9:04

on openclaw. Jensen called it the most

9:08

successful open-source project in the

9:10

history of humanity. And meanwhile, my

9:12

inbox was flooded with reporters,

9:15

security people, and countless curious

9:18

humans, and also agents. You know, the

9:21

numbers still don't feel real to me. In

9:23

8 months, more than 18,000 different

9:27

people opened an issue or a pull

9:30

request. Over 111,000 in total. I did

9:35

the math. No, who am I lying to? My

9:36

agent did the math. Almost 3,000 people

9:39

have commits in the repo.

9:42

And some people were mad at me because

9:45

clearly they did it first and I stole

9:48

the idea and they sent me links of

9:49

something I've never seen. Some people

9:52

called me I Jesus.

9:54

For some I became the antichrist. At

9:57

some point I started collecting the

9:59

obarius.

10:02

There's a new one every few weeks.

10:06

The the most recent one is actually

10:11

from yesterday.

10:14

What do we learn here? Be careful what

10:17

you wish for.

10:19

I was not ready for all this attention.

10:21

It almost broke me. Like I was that

10:25

close of just deleting the whole thing.

10:28

I stopped answering my friends.

10:31

I didn't even want to look at my phone

10:32

anymore because it was just a stream.

10:34

And of course, somebody leaked my phone

10:36

number and also a lot of private details

10:38

because I'm an enemy of humanity. And

10:42

here I am just wanted to build something

10:44

cool.

10:47

And now we're getting to question two.

10:50

Did you sell out? You know, this wasn't

10:51

my first ride. I spent my my 20s and my

10:56

30s

10:58

building a B2B software company.

11:01

I wrote a PDF framework

11:04

by hand like an animal. I bootstrapped

11:07

the company. I grew it to almost 80

11:09

people. I ignored the competition. It

11:11

became the thing most enterprises would

11:13

buy. And eventually I passed things on

11:15

to my co-founder. I sold my shares and I

11:18

very badly burned out.

11:21

Retirement. The idea of it sounds great.

11:24

And I spent almost three years wandering

11:27

around aimlessly,

11:30

catching up on life and parties.

11:32

I did all the things that I kind of

11:35

missed out on life. I had months where I

11:37

didn't even open my computer, you know,

11:39

just casually checking the the internet

11:42

with my phone.

11:45

It's like a normie.

11:48

I always knew that if I if I give myself

11:51

enough time,

11:53

the urge the urge would come back.

11:57

I always thought the urge would be code.

12:03

I always love programming.

12:06

But it took me a year to understand that

12:10

that's not entirely correct. I love

12:13

building.

12:15

Programming was just a means to an end.

12:18

And here I was

12:20

eight months after I found my Spark

12:21

again.

12:23

And my inbox was full of receipts

12:25

begging me to take their money.

12:28

And I didn't know I want to.

12:31

So when the big labs came knocking and

12:34

suddenly I was on the phone with

12:37

Mark, Sam, few others, this seemed like

12:42

a much more interesting pass.

12:44

It also felt unreal, right? Talk about

12:46

imposter syndrome. And maybe that's an

12:48

important lesson for you. Everything

12:50

that

12:51

everything you can build can be forked

12:54

or cloned, but your name cannot.

12:57

So your personal brand is way more

13:00

important than any single product that

13:02

you ever will

13:04

start working on that before you need

13:05

it.

13:07

So yeah, I know how to play the game. I

13:10

also know that doing this was the

13:13

equivalent of selling my soul.md. If you

13:16

know, you know

13:18

the decision was not easy,

13:21

but I if I learned anything during my

13:23

time after the burnout, it's it's this.

13:26

It's trusting your gut. And my gut told

13:29

me that I like open the most. Did Hermus

13:33

win?

13:35

And the short answer I can give you is

13:38

they beat us where it hurt. We're still

13:40

there.

13:42

And both of those are my fault and my

13:46

doing. In the months after the release,

13:50

we got absolutely crushed by security

13:54

reports.

13:56

In some ways, we were a prototype of

13:57

what many open- source projects now

14:01

experience.

14:03

And even though most were

14:05

super HKC, uh I felt the pressure.

14:10

And then the press, the press say 20% of

14:13

our skills are malicious. Now we

14:16

actually put a paper up with this. We

14:17

did the the numbers and the numbers are

14:20

more like 0.3%.

14:23

We scanned all 67,000.

14:26

We shipped the we shipped the paper. But

14:28

you know

14:30

a correction never travels as far as a

14:33

scare. I felt this responsibility.

14:36

The world discovered open claw. And even

14:41

though there was this big scary

14:43

disclaimer actually much bigger than I

14:45

could on the slides when you install it.

14:47

I knew many people wouldn't read the

14:48

docs. So I really focused on that

14:51

hardening the code base building layers

14:54

and layers of security. I did

14:56

sandboxing, allow lists,

15:00

a a web protocol with permissions built

15:02

in. We were shelling out to Python for

15:05

some file operations because there were

15:07

some primitives that are simply lacking

15:09

in Typescript

15:11

to ensure your agent stays in the

15:13

workspace. It doesn't follow sim links

15:15

and that the configuration files are

15:16

written atomically. Most of the users

15:19

didn't care about that. Sure, they

15:23

they like the abstract term of security,

15:26

but in all practical terms, they

15:28

updated. I broke something they depended

15:30

on. I made things slower and I made

15:33

things more difficult to update.

15:36

And another thing I have to admit I got

15:38

sloppy

15:40

because now I had to my time shifted

15:42

between open source the press

15:46

spending countless times on the phone

15:48

with lawyers to set up a a 5013 American

15:51

nonprofit.

15:53

I worked on my own one and you know

15:55

OpenI has its own world

15:59

that is interesting and demanding. I

16:01

brought on help

16:03

and we got such an amazing community of

16:07

maintainers that are very much respected

16:11

and everyone added their own little

16:14

feature. I felt I felt like I'm a bit in

16:17

a hard place.

16:19

After all, these people work for free,

16:20

right? So who I am who I am to to to to

16:23

tell them what to do

16:26

and also my attention was all over. So

16:30

we added a lot of features.

16:33

You know features are the fun part.

16:36

A new feature is is just a prompt away.

16:39

The real cost comes after every feature

16:43

we shipped of course with a

16:45

configuration option because we didn't

16:47

want to break everyone's setup. At our

16:49

highest, I had to count that we ended up

16:53

with around nine and a half thousand

16:56

configuration options. If you count all

16:59

the permutations, you can write all the

17:01

tests you want. It is impossible to

17:04

cover all of these and not break things

17:07

from time to time. It is infinitely

17:10

harder to evolve software that has

17:13

users.

17:16

Meanwhile, other companies, they were

17:17

fueled by VC money. They pushed ahead.

17:21

The anime girl company did it especially

17:24

well. People started inserting

17:26

themselves into pretty much any

17:28

conversation on Twitter while we were

17:30

burned in security grant work and

17:33

features. They had a simple story, an

17:37

aggressive marketing campaign,

17:39

and a oneliner to migrate people's

17:41

clause. The main thing though that

17:46

really hurt the project was entropic.

17:50

Not the name. The part was stressful,

17:53

but I I kind of understood and they were

17:56

really nice about it. It was the fact

17:59

that I optimized too much on their

18:00

model. I built Open Claw with Codex and

18:03

GPT, but the harness for a long time

18:07

really worked the best and was optimized

18:09

for OPOS.

18:11

So when they ping me with around 24

18:14

hours

18:16

notice that they're going to disable the

18:18

subscription for everyone

18:20

there was not really enough time to

18:22

change course.

18:24

I mean, sure, we we support openweight

18:27

models.

18:28

We did a lot of work on them, but they

18:31

really weren't that great yet.

18:34

And the early open air models

18:38

simply lacked character.

18:42

So maybe write this one down.

18:45

Your dependencies business model is your

18:49

business model.

18:51

You know, that's all fixed now. solves

18:53

pretty awesome. Open weight models are

18:56

actually good.

18:58

I learned a lot about harness

18:59

engineering.

19:01

But in many ways, people moved on.

19:04

You can see that in our download charts.

19:08

We bottomed out at around 835,000

19:15

weekly downloads in May. And then after

19:18

being declared death in in June, we

19:20

peaked at 4.7 million, the highest ever.

19:24

Both of those are true at the same time.

19:26

A hype is like the weather. You might

19:28

see it coming, but you can't control it.

19:31

In my case, it was a storm. Question

19:33

four, is it still fun? You know,

19:37

somewhere around February,

19:40

it stopped being fun. I started to feel

19:43

like it started to feel like a

19:44

responsibility.

19:46

I woke up and the man who didn't want to

19:49

build another company found himself in a

19:52

situation where he had two jobs

19:54

or should I say a job and a calling. I

19:56

was struggling and worst of all I

19:59

stopped using my own product. Somewhere

20:01

in that time I stopped making a product

20:04

I love and I worked on making something

20:06

for everyone. It became less of a thing

20:08

that I use every day and more I think

20:11

that I saw and felt was work. And I

20:14

wanted to picture who everyone really

20:17

is. One of them has a grocery agent.

20:22

Another one tried to social engineer my

20:24

bot. Between everyone adding features

20:27

and all the organization work.

20:30

I became the person that fixed the bugs,

20:33

fixed the security issues

20:35

and provided support and built a

20:38

foundation. And because all these people

20:40

were like giving the rumor mill, oh,

20:42

open clouds owned by OpenAI. I didn't

20:45

want to take too much help from OpenAI.

20:47

I mean, yeah, they gave me token and I

20:51

boy did I use that.

20:54

But I was also pulled into other product

20:57

projects and there was a whole flood of

20:59

people that I couldn't as easily block

21:02

who wanted to talk to me. In hindsight,

21:04

I could have many done differently like

21:06

I could have asked for more help.

21:09

I could have moved responsibility off my

21:12

plate, but I was so deep in everything

21:14

that I didn't take time to think through

21:18

strategically.

21:20

Luckily, I met a bunch of amazing people

21:23

and little by little things aligned. I

21:27

figured out my visa,

21:29

eventually formed a nonprofit.

21:31

We got amazing companies as donors and I

21:34

found some really good people that

21:36

believe in open source.

21:38

and started working with me. I also need

21:42

to give Nvidia a special shout out

21:44

because they were very early and they

21:46

simply asked me what I need. And then

21:49

they sent people to take over much of

21:50

their security work. And I think it was

21:52

somewhere in May

21:55

around my birthday

21:57

where I had this feeling that things are

22:00

starting to feel good again where the

22:03

joy of building for me was coming back.

22:06

And yeah, somewhere in the press,

22:09

the press decoined an open open clock

22:11

killer every other week. At some point,

22:15

I think I counted 20 of them. There's

22:18

even a a literally a project called

22:21

OpenCloud Killer. It's an uninstaller,

22:23

which is totally unnecessary because we

22:24

have an uninstaller, but you know, but

22:27

none of the killer stories ever picked

22:28

up what this is actually about.

22:33

open source. My source of inspiration is

22:36

being annoyed.

22:38

These days, I get annoyed when I have to

22:41

use software where I can't just send a

22:44

prompt to my agent to change it. That's

22:48

the fun part that's coming back. It's

22:50

hard to compete with someone who's just

22:53

there having fun. Fun is velocity.

22:58

The weeks I enjoyed building, the

23:00

product got visibly better.

23:03

the weeks I didn't. We should config

23:06

options. Question five.

23:09

What's next?

23:12

Some people in the audience might be

23:13

like, is this finally the part where he

23:15

talks about graphs? First of all, I'm

23:18

super happy with where we are with the

23:21

foundation. Our mission is to bring

23:23

people closer to AI and things are

23:26

changing so fast. For many people, it

23:30

feels scary. I'm proud of one thing that

23:34

OpenClaw achieved

23:36

and then for many people it moved the

23:39

eye from this thing that's like nebulous

23:41

and scary into something that is fun and

23:45

weird you know lobsters and all of that

23:49

and they'll keep pushing there.

23:52

keep building a great ecosystem of open

23:54

source software

23:57

with events that bring people together

23:59

and with education.

24:02

We have 10 people now on payroll. We're

24:04

hiring a few more roles including a CEO.

24:07

Second of all, I kind of made claw noun.

24:12

You know, Kapati dropped the open Satya

24:14

says enterprisegrade clause in

24:17

Microsoft's keynote. There are 33,000

24:22

claw named repositories.

24:25

If we are in a simulation, we're

24:27

certainly in one of the weirder ones

24:29

that won't get shut down. I dig this

24:31

part of the future.

24:33

Third,

24:35

we still don't have an agent that's

24:37

always on,

24:39

always syncing. There's still so much to

24:42

do. the landscape and the tech in AI are

24:45

building faster

24:47

than the software that you build around

24:50

and that's an opportunity for all of

24:52

you.

24:54

Our workflows are also evolving

24:57

like the vision I had early on where we

25:00

shouldn't think about session or

25:02

compaction.

25:05

The world is finally the models that

25:06

tech is finally getting to a stage where

25:08

this is becoming a reality.

25:12

We're entering a world where

25:14

we finally move on from the text text

25:18

only interfaces to voice and

25:20

multimodality.

25:22

Just yesterday we got a a hack working

25:25

that your claw can now facetime you and

25:27

this is kind of what matters why open

25:29

claw exists at all. Every lab will sell

25:33

you an agent. Open claw is the

25:35

alternative.

25:37

Open source runs everywhere, works with

25:41

any model. And if you run local models,

25:44

your data never has to leave your

25:46

device. Your agent, your machine, your

25:51

life.

25:52

That's not even my C thesis, that's

25:53

Gary's. You know, [laughter]

25:57

we just chipped it first. So we also

26:00

finally are building open claw with open

26:02

claw again but this time with a twist

26:05

where everyone sees each other's session

26:07

on a team server and there's a claw that

26:10

knows what everyone else is working on

26:13

and also can also take over

26:15

orchestration of the work. Yeah, we are

26:17

finally leaving this slowly this weird

26:21

blip in the future where people work in

26:24

terminals and run around with their

26:26

laptops open because the agent needs to

26:28

keep working. If you only remember three

26:31

things, number one, don't stop having

26:34

fun. Fun is the ultimate driver so you

26:36

can you can get the best ideas. Number

26:39

two, listen to your gut. And also fix

26:42

the things that annoy you. it might just

26:45

become the next big thing. And number

26:48

three,

26:50

stay focused.

26:52

You know,

26:54

another podcast is not what what will

26:56

make you win. Live in the future,

26:59

build what's missing.

27:02

And when they write your arbiterary,

27:05

keep shipping. It confuses them. Now,

27:07

[snorts] these were five questions. I'm

27:09

sure you have many more. And I think we

27:12

have plenty time. uh for QA. So first it

27:16

was agents, then loops, then graphs. How

27:20

are you building these days? I mean it

27:24

was always sessions, right? But in the

27:26

beginning you had to like actually care

27:27

that like you would clean and like you

27:29

would make sure that your instructions

27:32

are are coherent.

27:34

And these days it's more like my

27:37

sessions are topics. clearing the

27:39

session

27:40

sometimes even a disadvantage because

27:42

there's so much information in there

27:44

that helps the agent. Um

27:47

but the big thing the big thing the big

27:49

thing that shifted is

27:51

I try to make the agent do more

27:55

proactive work for me. So when I when I

27:58

shift my attention to something I don't

28:01

want to read issues I want to see fully

28:03

reviewed and tested PRs. Maybe I like

28:06

the feature, maybe I don't, but like I

28:08

don't want to like split my attention.

28:11

At the same time, at work, if you come

28:12

to me and you you tell me this feature

28:15

idea, I'm going to get mad at you. Like,

28:19

it's so easy that you just discuss the

28:21

feature idea with an agent, you build

28:23

it, you make screenshots, you let me

28:25

play with it. That way, if it's good, we

28:28

can like immediately iterate it. But

28:30

most of the time, people will figure out

28:31

why it's not good and don't even come to

28:33

me. What comes after graphs

28:36

and what's next for openclaw?

28:40

I know like I sometimes I like to

28:43

post on a Sunday and then like my

28:45

Twitter explodes

28:47

but also it's not a post, right? So

28:50

anytime you you you know what we as

28:53

engineers did for the longest time we

28:56

built automations

28:58

to make our life easier. That's like

29:01

that's been going on since our

29:03

profession exists.

29:05

So if you design

29:07

call it loop, call it graph, call it

29:09

workflow, it's kind of all the same. If

29:11

you design something that gets a trigger

29:14

or gets an input and does something for

29:16

you

29:18

and maybe there's a decision in the way,

29:19

boom, there's your graph. It's not it's

29:22

not magical. Even though like you know I

29:25

favored some of those graph engineering

29:27

posts because I'm kind of curious what

29:28

their opinion is that it would be in my

29:31

world. It's just like

29:34

it's just a a better way of our

29:36

automation story that we did for so long

29:38

already in a world of build fast ship

29:42

fast.

29:44

How to make sure that what you build is

29:47

still reliable and scalable.

29:51

Yeah, that's the part I I messed up for

29:53

a while

29:55

because I was not I was not focused

29:59

and the models were not really good at

30:02

testing.

30:04

I think that the models are really good

30:06

now. We have

30:08

we not just have sessions that remember

30:11

we have

30:14

orchestration trained into models so

30:16

they really understand and know to use

30:18

sub agents. We have computer use, we

30:21

have browser use. Like all of that

30:23

together is like your perfect Q&A

30:25

environment. Like I did that yesterday

30:28

where I spin up codecs, use 12 sub

30:31

aents,

30:32

understand my project, break it down

30:34

into features, and then each

30:38

each uh sub agent would like stress test

30:40

the feature or code review feature and

30:42

then inform the other session where to

30:44

focus testing on. some um we're not yet

30:48

at the point where you can automate

30:50

everything. You'll still you still need

30:52

to do some manual clickthroughs so that

30:55

you know how it feels. But like for a

30:57

lot of the the typical bugs that users

31:01

will encounter, you can actually now you

31:04

can prompt your way and you get very

31:05

far.

31:07

Okay.

31:09

AI tools. Ah, what's your decision you

31:13

made purely for speed early that you

31:16

still live with today? I think that was

31:18

really early in in deciding that

31:23

I don't read all the code. I see code

31:26

review more as a as risk management.

31:31

You know, sometimes you touch a system

31:34

that is

31:36

scary. kind of want to like read a

31:38

little bit closer and other times

31:40

you build UI. Do I really care the UI is

31:43

built if it looks correct? No. So you

31:45

kind of you glance over or you simply

31:49

you simply accept that

31:53

it looks right. Part of it is just like

31:57

you develop a little bit of a feeling

31:58

how long something should take. So if I

32:01

do a small tweak that should like change

32:03

how dragging works and it takes three

32:05

hours, I know something's wrong. I'll

32:06

look closely. But otherwise, part of

32:09

code review is simply like observing,

32:11

looking how big it changes and trusting

32:13

your gut.

32:15

Okay.

32:16

AI tools make it easy to build a product

32:18

in a weekend now. But building isn't the

32:20

hard part. Getting people to use this.

32:23

How would you go from a working

32:24

prototype to your first 10 real users

32:27

today? Well,

32:30

I think that was part of what I

32:31

addressed in my talk. User number one

32:34

should be you.

32:36

And my users two to 20 were friends. So

32:44

I'm sure you have some people that would

32:47

actually test your stuff, but you need

32:49

to be the first user. If you don't if

32:51

you don't get excited of what you're

32:52

building,

32:54

it'll probably not make sense.

32:57

Like in this day and age,

33:02

eyeballs are kind of the the most

33:04

expensive currency because

33:07

building something so fast now. How do

33:09

you balance solving issues that annoy

33:11

you and make features you think people

33:14

you want? That's a hard one because

33:16

oftentimes it it kind of goes together.

33:18

I get annoyed if something's not there

33:20

as I want it. I haven't I haven't to be

33:23

honest, I haven't fully figured that

33:24

part out yet. I feel I could just work

33:26

for months on issues because there's

33:28

always going to be weird edge cases in

33:30

software. Uh especially if you add more

33:32

and more features,

33:34

but then again, if I only do that, I'll

33:36

lose interest in working. So, it needs

33:38

to be like it needs to be a healthy mix.

33:41

If you could back and change the thing,

33:43

one thing about open claw, what would

33:46

you change? I would be less stressed out

33:51

about

33:52

security researchers.

33:55

They are really good at making you feel

33:57

really bad. They would send a report.

34:01

They would email me. They would call me.

34:04

They would th everything they can

34:06

possibly get to get my attention, but

34:08

not actually to help a product. In most

34:10

of the case, it's really just for them

34:13

to get cloud, for them to get a point.

34:15

Oh, we found something. And most of them

34:17

really sent reports that their agent

34:20

produced without actually even testing

34:22

it. I would I would take a stronger

34:25

sense of explaining what are the parts

34:27

that we guarantee

34:29

and what are the parts that will not be

34:32

fixed because that that's not our

34:34

security boundary. But I honestly I had

34:36

no this was my first time I was

34:40

exposed to this world. So I I just

34:43

didn't know

34:45

how to handle that and I I lost a few

34:49

months and got a few gray hairs to

34:52

learn. What's the single biggest

34:55

bottleneck in today's Atlantic

34:56

infrastructure?

34:58

Reliability

35:00

tooling memory

35:03

evolves managing compute if that makes

35:06

sense.

35:08

Like

35:10

if I run one test locally in my machine,

35:13

TSGO will spin up 16 threads and will

35:16

bottleneck my machine. If 10 sessions do

35:19

that,

35:21

two of them will probably time out and

35:23

we'll have to do it again. And there's

35:24

no really good system of like managing

35:26

all of that. Now, if I do web stuff,

35:28

it's easy to create a cloud session. If

35:31

I do like something that requires Mac

35:32

OS,

35:34

that's already where like 99% of the

35:36

tools fail me. If it's something that

35:39

needs other stuff that's on my computer,

35:41

same. And we haven't really built

35:43

something yet where things could easily

35:46

move from here to here without issues.

35:48

At least I didn't see good stuff working

35:51

yet.

35:53

or where I could

35:57

drive a fleet in a reliable way like

36:00

right now

36:03

I use too many systems I screen share

36:05

into some computers to like distribute

36:06

the load I shouldn't be doing that how

36:09

do you keep an open source project

36:11

opinionated

36:12

and pointed in one direction rather than

36:15

just merging the N plus1 PR that adds a

36:18

random feature

36:20

and how do you communicate that

36:21

direction to the community. Have you

36:23

ever said no to popular PR because it

36:25

pulled the project off course?

36:29

Yeah. Yeah.

36:31

I would say I

36:34

I didn't say no enough.

36:39

This is I

36:42

when I do new open source I write a

36:44

vision.mmd file where I kind of explain

36:47

what it is now where I see this to be

36:51

but of course it's it's incorrect. It's

36:54

not perfect science and it's something I

36:57

I need to adhere to better because it is

36:59

it is always tempting to add this one

37:01

feature that looks really cool but what

37:05

you rarely think about is

37:08

when you merge this feature it really

37:09

means here's this pile of code that I

37:12

don't that the person probably doesn't

37:14

really understand that I don't fully

37:16

understand that I also go on

37:17

responsibility when do you expect to

37:20

have claws that are perpetually running

37:22

that are proactive in their work. I

37:25

mean, honestly,

37:28

that's not so much a tech problem. It's

37:31

more a token problem

37:34

where we could do that today,

37:39

but you wouldn't get very far with your

37:41

subscription

37:43

and not everyone

37:46

is willing to spend so many tokens.

37:50

It's also

37:52

but a part that's not easy is designing

37:54

a system that

37:57

doesn't just burn empty tokens. Even the

38:01

my early system of like heartbeats was

38:04

too static and not

38:08

not proactive enough.

38:10

And then especially bad if you have a

38:12

large session

38:14

and then one hour later you call like a

38:17

highbeat check up on everything and that

38:19

means you send 600,000 tokens back to

38:22

the server after the KV cache cleared

38:24

and you pay

38:27

a stupidly amount of of of money for

38:31

a lot of not useful work. So there's a

38:35

lot of things that can be done to

38:37

optimize that. It's also really really

38:40

hard. Can you tell us more about your

38:42

own personal setup?

38:45

What do you host your claws on? What

38:48

model are you running? What harness do

38:49

you use? Do you still read

38:54

Can we scroll?

38:56

Do you still read your code? I use my my

38:59

MacBook,

39:01

but I usually

39:03

use jump desktop to screen share into my

39:06

studio and then just use the computer

39:09

there because that one's always running.

39:12

That one I can run whatever I want fast

39:16

and not drain my battery and I can close

39:19

my laptop and things keep working. Um,

39:23

and I have a few other remote machines

39:26

where I sometimes VNC in. The the part

39:28

that's really nice about it is because I

39:30

do a lot of Mac software, agents love to

39:32

take over my screen and click around and

39:34

if you put that in their own if you give

39:36

them their own machine, it will not

39:38

bother you. Otherwise, you'll fight with

39:41

the agent for the mouse cursor.

39:43

Do you still read your code? I think I

39:45

answered that a little bit with the term

39:47

risk management. And also if I do open

39:51

source by myself

39:53

is a difference is a different risk

39:57

management than if I do software at

39:59

OpenAI where we do still read all of the

40:01

code. Peter, how would you approach

40:05

your next startup idea?

40:09

I don't know. Should I tell this to

40:10

everyone? Like I feel like it gets a lot

40:12

of copies. I mean the most important

40:13

thing is you need to build something

40:15

that you want to use. Otherwise it'll

40:17

just not going to be good.

40:20

Second of all is

40:23

I hope you worked on your personal brand

40:25

and on visibility because in this day

40:27

and age there's so much noise out there

40:30

that your hardest problem is not the

40:32

tech, it's not the software, not even

40:34

the people. The hardest problem now is

40:35

like getting eyeballs. Maybe I would

40:38

pick something again that's that's in

40:41

the category

40:43

hard and boring

40:47

because that's usually a category that

40:51

is a little bit easier to actually find

40:53

people that will appreciate when you

40:55

solved something. If you pick something

40:57

that is fun, even if it's hard,

41:01

you're gonna have a very tough time,

41:02

especially in a time where people can

41:05

just prompt things into existence. All

41:08

right, last one for today. What's a

41:11

product you want someone to build? You

41:13

know, I feel it's very easy to have to

41:16

get uh

41:19

a test box for Linux.

41:22

It is unreasonably hard

41:25

to get one for Mac that works really

41:27

well. And all the stuff that I I I got

41:30

for Windows is also quite annoying. Um I

41:35

haven't found a really good provider yet

41:36

that

41:38

does all of that fast and cheap. Um I'm

41:42

not sure if this is the business you

41:43

want to be in because dev tools are

41:44

inherently hard, but that's something I

41:48

would love to have. Thanks everyone.

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