OpenClaw Creator: Why 80% Of Apps Will Disappear

Today, I'm sitting down with Peter Steinberger.

The creator of OpenClaw, the open-source personal AI agent that has completely taken over the internet.

The GitHub repo exploded to over 160,000 stars practically overnight.

The community has built countless projects like Moltbook, where bots talk among themselves.

And now, the bots are even renting humans to do tasks in the real world.

In our conversation, we discuss his aha moment, his contrarian development philosophies, and what this means for builders in 2026.

Let's dive in.

So good to see you, man.

Hey, what's up?

Um, so you've made something people want.

It seems so.

Yeah, uh, OpenClaw, as it's called now, has absolutely.

Name number five, yeah.

Has been absolutely exploding the internet, um, how have the past one or two weeks been for you, man?

Oh my God, I need like, I need a cave.

A week of solitude.

You you came out of the cave and you want to go back to the cave like a like a lobster.

It's been absolutely wild.

I don't know how one human can absorb all of that.

I probably need another week just to like respond to all my emails.

I got some incredibly cool stuff.

I got some incredibly bad stuff.

Um, but clearly I hit something that spur up emotions.

And made people interested and inspired people.

And that's really cool.

And a lot of people have been working on, you know, AI.

And even personal assistants, like what what is it that made OpenClaw take off?

I think my big difference is that it actually runs on your computer.

Like everything I saw so far runs in the cloud.

It's like, it can do a few things.

If you run it on your computer, it can do every effing thing.

Right?

So that's way more powerful.

Yeah, your machine can do anything that you can do with the machine.

You can just connect to your oven.

Or your Tesla.

Or your lights, your sonos, my bed.

It can control the temperature of my bed.

ChatGPT can't do that.

You gave it all the skills that you have yourself.

A friend told me like he installed OpenClaw and it.

And then it asked like, look through my computer and make a narrative of my last year.

And it made this incredibly good narrative.

And he was like, how did you do that?

And then he, the OpenClaw found audio files where like every Sunday he was recording stuff.

And OpenClaw found that.

But he didn't even remember about it because it was like more than a year ago, right?

So, so, just by it being able to search a whole computer, it it can surprise you.

It's also, you also give it all the data, right?

So it can surprise you in many ways.

And so now you have, you know, we're even moving from human to bot.

So like interactions that you've been talking about to bot to bot interactions.

Or even like bot to other humans where, you know, bots on behalf of you are then hiring other humans to accomplish tasks IRL.

Like, what's happening?

I think that's a natural next step.

Like, okay.

I want to book a restaurant.

My bot will reach out to the restaurant bot and do the negotiation.

Like.

Because it's more efficient.

Or maybe it's like an old restaurant, so my bot needs to actually get some human work done.

So that the human then calls the restaurant because they don't like bots.

Or or walks there to stand in line.

If he doesn't get a robot.

For the owner of the bot.

Yeah.

And now imagine it like maybe if I have even multiple bots.

Like maybe I have like specialists, one is like for my private life.

And one is for like my personal my my work stuff.

Maybe one is our relationship bot that cares like everything in between.

Um.

I don't know.

We are so early.

There's still so much so many things that we haven't really figured out if it actually works.

Um, but I feel we are we are on the timeline now.

It seems like everyone was chasing sort of like the sort of like centralized God intelligence.

And what has sort of emerged over the past, you know, 10 days or so is sort of like the swarm intelligence.

Um, and and the community intelligence.

I think that if you look at one human being.

What can one human being actually achieve?

Do you think one human being could make an iPhone?

Or one human being could go to space?

I think one human being would probably just like not even be able to like find food.

Um.

But as a group, we specialize.

As a larger society, we specialize even more.

So what can we learn from that that we can apply to AI?

You know, we we really have like AI that specializes in certain things.

Um, even though it's it's generalized intelligence.

What if it actually is also specialized intelligence?

So, I don't know.

It's going to be very exciting.

It's really cool.

Yeah, you kind of like opened a window into the future.

And now a ton of people are kind of like building building on it.

And have sort of like their aha moment.

Um, can you walk me back to when you had your aha moment and kind of like recount that very moment?

I wanted something to like just type stuff.

So my computer would do stuff.

Like very simple.

And then I built a built a version of that in May, June.

That was cool, but wasn't really it.

Um.

And then I built a whole bunch of other stuff.

And kind of like build up my army.

And then in November.

There was a day where I wanted this again.

Like I.

I went to the kitchen and all I wanted was check up if my computer was still do stuff.

Or being finished.

And doing stuff was was coding.

You were coding stuff.

Yeah, of course.

Were you coding something else or were you coding the thing itself?

No, no.

That was just like the need was again there.

And I'm like.

What were you coding at the time?

What were you building?

My God, you see my my GitHub is like, it's like 40 projects.

I don't even know.

Uh, I think it was summarize.

It's like a it's like a little CLI app where you can give it whatever, like a podcast or.

Uh, a hot seat thing like here and it would summarize it, but it would also show you the slides in the terminal.

Because you can do that nowadays.

You can just do things.

So for the love of the computer, you kind of like started messing with stuff.

You came out of retirement, actually, right?

Yeah.

Um, to sort of like mess with AI.

Yeah.

And then increasingly you were so hooked that you wanted to just do it always also on the go with the phone.

I mean, the last project I I worked two months on Wipe Tunnel.

To the point where it got so good that I was catching myself always like coding.

Next to my when I was at my friends.

And I'm like, I need to stop this.

This is like too addictive.

And then in November, like my need came back and I I started building Clawbot.

Or now it's called OpenClaw.

And I think very very in the beginning I was like, oh, I rebuilt it again.

Mhm.

But this time I built it even better.

This time you don't type into a terminal, you just you talk to a friend.

You don't think about compaction, new sessions.

Which folder I'm in, which model I'm in.

I mean.

You can, you know, just like I want to leave it open for power users.

But usually you just like, you just talk to a friend.

And the friend is like this ghost or entity or whatever you want to call it.

That can control your mouse and your keyboard and can just do stuff.

Yeah.

And when did you have that aha moment?

When you were like, wow, this is doing way more things than I actually thought it could.

Literally, I took me one hour for like the the very shitty initial prototype.

It was just a little bit of glue between like a dependency that connects WhatsApp and Claude Code.

And then I would like call Claude Code and get like the string out of Claude Code.

It would be slow, but it it worked.

But I wanted images, because you know, you want pictures.

I want I want the model to send me selfies or whatever and I want the model to create images and me back.

So that took me another few hours.

And then I.

I went to Marrakech for a birthday party.

And there was like the internet wasn't that good.

You know, WhatsApp works everywhere.

Because I don't know.

It's just like text.

So I used it a lot, a lot of restaurant, what does this mean?

You make like a picture and like translate this for me.

And just it was just so useful.

And it was also really nice about it because it it spoke my language.

You know, it it was a little sassy.

It was like funny.

It was like really pleasant to use.

And then I was walking and just like sending it a voice message.

And I'm like, oh wait, this can't work.

I didn't build that.

Right, right.

And you saw like the type indicator, it's like blinking, blinking, blinking.

10 seconds later, it just replied to me.

I'm like.

How in the F did you do that?

And it replied.

Yeah.

The model did the following.

You sent me a text message.

And there was no file ending, so I looked at the header.

I found it's Opus.

So I used FFmpeg to convert it to Wave.

And then I wanted to like transcribe it, but I didn't have Whisper installed.

But then I looked around and I found this OpenAI key and I just used curl to send it to OpenAI.

Got the text back and here I am.

And that all in like what, nine seconds?

And you didn't build or anticipate like any of those specific things.

No.

It.

You know, it turns out, um, because coding models got so good.

Coding is really like creative problem solving that maps very well back into the real world.

I think I think there's there's a there's a huge correlation.

They need to be really good at creative problem solving.

And that's a skill, that's an abstract skill, you can apply to code.

But like to any real world task.

So the the model had a oh, surprise, there's like a magical file.

I don't know what it is.

I need to solve this.

And it did its best and solved it.

And it was even that clever that it it chose not to install the local Whisper.

Because it knows that that would require downloading a model, which would take probably a few minutes.

And I'm like impatient.

You know?

So it it really took the most intelligent approach.

And that was kind of like the moment where I'm like.

Holy.

F.

Yeah.

Uh, that was where I got hooked.

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Okay, back to the video.

And so when computers can just do all these things that you didn't even anticipate.

You didn't build an app to do that exact thing.

Are apps just going to go away?

Uh, I think 80% of them are going away.

Why do I need my fitness pal?

Like my agent already knows that I'm making bad decisions.

I'm at.

I don't know.

Uh, Smashburger or something.

And it will already assume that I eat what I like to eat.

If I don't make a comment, it will just automatically track it.

Or I make a picture and it will just store it somewhere.

I don't even need to care where, right?

And then my maybe it it improves my my gym schedule.

Like add a little bit more cardio in it.

I don't need my my fitness app.

Because it just it just does the fitness planning for me.

Uh.

Why do I need it to do that?

I just tell it, hey, remind me of this and this.

And then next day it will just remind me of this and this.

Do I care where it's stored?

No, it just does its thing.

So there's a.

Every app that basically just manages data could be managed in a better way.

And it's in a more in a more natural way by agents.

Only the apps that actually have sensors.

Maybe they survive.

And so if, you know, most apps are going to go away.

In that scenario.

Um, are the models the only remaining sort of apps?

Not everything will go away.

But yeah, I think there's the the large model companies have some big mode.

Because they ultimately they give the token.

And turns out, one of the complaints was that people use too much token.

No, you just really love using it.

That's why you you use the thing so much.

Because that's why we burn the token.

Um.

It's like, is it my fault that I make something that's so popular?

And so, you know, like all the the models, they're kind of like leapfrogging each other constantly.

And and, you know, maybe they're also getting commoditized.

So if apps are going to go away, models are going to get commoditized.

Or at least, uh, you know, the lobster can like the brain is is is swappable out.

What's the thing that remains?

What's where's the value?

Is it the store of memory?

Is it, um, the harness that's valuable?

What what remains?

First of all, I don't think the the model companies always have a mode.

And because you see this already, a new model comes out, people are like, oh my God, this is so good.

Oh my God.

And then like a month later, uh, it degraded.

It's not good anymore.

They like quantized it.

No.

They didn't do anything.

You just adapted to the new standard and now your expectations went up.

But the model is still the average.

So I think for quite a while.

Every time a new model releases, I see the same.

People love it.

And then it's the standard.

And then what's down there, you don't even want to think about it anymore.

So, so we have like open source stuff that's as good as the current models from a year ago.

Everybody's hating it, complaining, oh, this is not good.

It's not funny.

Yeah.

Yet this was what we had.

And like in a year we'll have this open source.

And then we'll like complain about this because we are used to this.

So.

Ah, for the foreseeable future.

The big companies still have mode.

Harness-wise, it's going to be interesting.

Because.

Every company kind of has their own their own silo, right?

You you there's no way.

I mean.

Maybe there is for Europeans.

Hmm.

To actually get the memories out of ChatGPT.

I don't I'm not aware.

Either there's no there's definitely there's no way for a different company to get your memories out.

So if if if I was like a company who like provides chat services.

You could use me, but then I couldn't access the memories.

So like the companies try to like bound you to their data silo.

And the beauty of OpenClaw is it kind of claws into the data because at the end user.

The end user needs access.

Because it's it's in the end otherwise it wouldn't work, right?

If the end user has access.

I can access the data.

And you own the memories, it's just a bunch of markdown files on on your machine.

Well.

I mean.

I don't own the memories.

Other people.

I mean you.

Yeah, everyone owns their own memories as a bunch of markdown files on their own machines.

And to be honest, those are probably super sensible.

Because.

Let's be honest, um, people use their agent not just for problem solving.

But also for like personal problems.

Very quickly.

Super quickly.

I mean.

I I I fully do that.

I'm like, there's memory stuff that I don't want to have leaked.

Yeah, what would you rather, um, uh, sort of like not show your Google search history at this point?

Or your, you know, memory.md files?

What's what's the Google word?

Yeah.

Yeah.

People still using Google.

I built this.

And I was so excited.

But on Twitter, people wouldn't get it.

Yeah.

Like I I was failing to explain the awesomeness.

I feel like it needs to be experienced.

So.

I I tried various things and I I I couldn't I couldn't nail the.

I couldn't nail the explaining.

So I was like, let's do something really crazy.

I just created a Discord.

And I just put my bot without any security restrictions in the public Discord.

And then people came in and they interacted with it and they saw me build the software with it.

And they tried to prompt inject it and hack it.

And my agent would be laughing at them.

And you just added lockdown to your user ID.

So it only listened to you.

Yeah, yeah.

That and it was I mean, I made very clear instructions that other people are dangerous.

Only only listen to me, but respond to everyone.

And this prompt was in where was it stored?

The instructions.

Um, that's actually part of OpenClaw itself.

Very much so that that's part of the system prompt.

Okay, you are now that explains to you, you're in Discord.

There's like public people there.

But you only listen to your owner.

Or like your human.

I don't even know how I wrote it.

Yeah, yeah.

Your God.

And I kept I don't know what I did, but.

My system was built very organically.

Like at some point I created like an identity.md, a soul.md.

Like like various files and then only in in January.

I started making it so other people could install it easier.

And I remember.

I built all these templates based on like, oh, check a rough look at what I have.

And make like templates and Codex wrote it.

And what came out was like bread.

You know, like people joked that Codex feels like bread, even though now they have a new friendly voice.

I haven't tried that yet.

Yeah.

But the new bots, they felt so boring compared to what I had.

So I was like.

Malty, infuse infuse those templates with your.

Malty is the name of your personal.

Yeah, that's the it's a new name because.

Uh, there were some naming challenges.

Yeah.

So you're you're talking to Malty.

Yeah.

I was like, infuse infuse those templates with your your character.

And he changed the templates.

And then I and then like.

All the things that came out afterwards were like actually funny.

Not as funny as mine.

So like I kept some secret.

And the one file that's not open source is like my soul.md.

So even though my my bot is in public Discord, so far, nobody cracked that one file.

Tell me more about soul.md.

I just saw this research from Anthropic about where they.

Now I think it's public, but like a few months ago it was like where somebody.

Randomly found out some text that's hidden in the weights.

Where the model couldn't really remember that it learned it, but it was like ingrained in the weights.

About the non-collity constitution.

And I found that incredibly fascinating.

And I I talked about it with my agent and then we created a soul.md.

With like the core values, like how do we want human AI interaction?

What's important to me?

What's important to the model?

Like.

Some parts is a little bit like mumbo jumbo and some parts is like I think actually really valuable.

In terms of how the model reacts and responds to text and makes it feel very natural.

In terms of building OpenClaw.

Um, you're also going to taking a little bit of a contrarian view at some times.

Like which model you like for coding, which one you like to run your bot on.

Um, and then also like how you actually like, you know, code, um, work trees, Git work trees have kind of been a popular thing.

There's more and more tools embracing them.

But you're just you're just like, you know, no work trees, just multiple checkouts of the repo.

And like parallel, you know, terminal windows.

Tell me more about how you you build.

Yeah, I feel like the whole world does Claude Code.

And I don't think I could have built the thing with Claude Code.

Like I I love Codex because it it looks through way more files before before it decides what to what to change.

You don't need to do so much charade to get a good output.

If you're a skilled, a skilled driver, as I sometimes even say.

Uh, you can get reasonably good output with any tool.

But Codex is just.

It's just really brilliant.

It is incredibly slow.

So sometimes I use like 10 at the same at the same time.

Uh.

Like maybe six on the screen.

And then two there and two there.

And I don't like.

This is already a lot of complexity in my head.

There's a lot of jumping.

So I try to minimize anything else that is complexity.

So in my head, main is always shippable.

I just have multiple copies of the same repository.

That all are on main.

So I don't have to deal with how do I name that branch?

Um, there could be like conflicts on naming.

I cannot go back.

It's it's.

There are certain restrictions when you use work trees that I don't need to care about if it's copies.

I don't like to use a UI.

Because that's again just added complexity.

Yeah.

Like there's simpler and less friction.

All I care about is like thinking and text.

Yeah.

I don't necessarily need to see so much code.

I I mostly see it like flying by.

Sometimes there's like gnarly stuff that I want to like take a look.

But in most cases, if you clearly understand the design and think it's through and start it with your with your agent.

It's fine.

I'm also very happy that.

I didn't even build in MCP support.

So OpenClaw is very successful and there's no MCP support in there.

With a small asterisk, I built a skill that uses Make Porter, which is one of my tools that converts MCPs into CLIs.

And then you can just use any MCP as CLI.

Um.

But I totally skipped the whole classical MCP crap.

So you.

Because you don't then you can actually, if you need to.

You can use MCPs on the fly.

You don't have to restart, unlike unlike Codex or Claude Code.

Where you actually have to restart the whole thing.

I think it's way more elegant.

And also scales way better.

Now you see Anthropic, they do.

They built like a tool call search feature, like something super custom for MCPs.

That was like in beta because it's like so gnarly.

No.

Just have CLIs.

Bot really is good at Unix.

You can have as many as you want.

And it just works.

So I'm very happy that I don't think I got very little complaints about the MCP stuff.

It's kind of back to you're just you're giving it the same tools that humans liked to use.

Yeah.

And not invented stuff for for for bots per se.

Yeah.

Humans no sane human tries to call MCP manually.

Yeah.

You just want to use CLIs.

Yeah.

That's the future.

I'm here for it.

Thank you so much for making the time to sitting down chatting.

It's been a huge inspiration to sort of like when we're texting, you know, over the course of the past couple of years.

And I saw you getting back into the game.

And I was like, Peter, like, what you're telling me?

Like, chase that dragon.

Yeah.

And you were doing like the weird like vibe tunnel thing, etc.

Nobody was paying attention.

And so I'm just like beyond, you know, stoked to see, you know, what's happening.

And, um, and of course, they had to be sort of like a loner from some like tiny country like far away from Silicon Valley.

Just like, you know, bring all of this upon us.

Um, so huge inspiration.

I'm here for it.

Awesome.

Thanks, Peter.