Peter Steinberger, the creator of the viral AI agent OpenClaw, who has since been hired by OpenAI, has some advice for those experimenting with AI technology, including AI agents. From his own experience, the best way to build today is to explore, be playful, and not expect to be an expert at what you do right away.
“I wish I could say that I had the unified plan in the beginning, but a lot of it was just exploration,” Steinberger said. “I wanted things, and those things didn’t exist, and…let’s say, I prompted them into existence.”
The developer was chatting with OpenAI’s Head of Developer Experience, Romain Huet, on the first episode of the company’s new Builders Unscripted podcast. Here, he spoke about what OpenClaw was like in its early days and how he didn’t have a plan when he got started.
Steinberger explained he began by building a tool that would integrate with WhatsApp, but then set it aside for a bit and focused on other things, as he assumed the AI labs would build something like what he was working on in the near future.
“I just experimented a lot. My mission was, kind of like, to have fun and inspire people,” Steinberger noted. By last November, however, the developer was surprised that no AI labs had started to build what he wanted to use. That led him to create the initial prototype of what’s now OpenClaw.
“Where it really clicked was where I was at this weekend trip in Marrakesh, and I found myself using it way more because it was so convenient…there was no really good internet. [But] WhatsApp just works everywhere,” he said. The tool made it easy for him to find restaurants, look up things on his computer, send texts to friends, and more.
The more he played with the technology, Steinberger realized how good modern AI models have become at problem-solving, much like coders are.
“Now they can just, like, actually come up with the solutions themselves, even though you never programmed them at all,” he noted.
Throughout the process of building, Steinberger said that his workflow improved — and he stresses to other developers that’s something that can take time, so don’t give up.
“There’s these people that…write software in the old way, and the old way is going to go away,” he pointed out. They then decide to try vibe coding, but are disappointed with the results.
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