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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.

Interactive Summary

The speaker chronicles the extraordinary journey of OpenClaw, an AI agent system that emerged from personal frustration. In just eight months, it rapidly evolved from a WhatsApp relay into a globally recognized open-source project. Despite its viral success, the project faced numerous challenges including overwhelming security reports, feature creep, dependency issues due to changes from providers like Anthropic, and the personal toll of burnout on the founder. Through these experiences, the speaker learned the critical importance of a strong personal brand, trusting one's intuition, and maintaining the joy of building. OpenClaw's future vision focuses on democratizing AI, offering an open-source alternative to proprietary agents, and pushing towards always-on, proactive agents that transcend text-only interfaces, all while emphasizing user control and data privacy. The guiding philosophy remains that "fun is velocity" for continued innovation and growth.

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