Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:27:34 · Lenny Rachitsky, Claire Vo
[00:27:34] S0: And that's versus cheap models is what you're saying there, don't use the cheap stuff? [00:27:36] S1: Versus cheap models. If you want to go on advanced mode and start to optimize this agent uses this open source model and that agent used that, go for it. I pay for the confidence of the experience and I pay for the security of the nicer model. So it's going to ask you about the model and off provider, and then it's going to ask how you want to talk to it, and it's going to give you a couple options. And I picked Telegram, because I think it's the most beginner-friendly way to set up. Even though you do, and trust me, you'll just have to do it, you do have to talk to this guy called the BotFather on Telegram to set up talking to your OpenClaw, just close your eyes and message the BotFather and don't think too hard about how weird that is. And then once you have the model configured and your channel or how you chat with it configured, you can add a couple tools and then you're off to the races. [00:28:33] S0: And once you get that initial stuff going, you can connect it to WhatsApp, you can connect it to iMessage, something that I did, which is a little complicated but easy to do, and then you could talk to it over email, Slack. [00:28:44] S1: Yeah, anything you want. [00:28:46] S0: Okay, cool. So, I know one of the steps is it asks you just like, "What am I? What do you want me to do? Who do you want me to be?" Talk about that step.
00:28:46 · Lenny Rachitsky, Claire Vo
[00:28:46] S0: Okay, cool. So, I know one of the steps is it asks you just like, "What am I? What do you want me to do? Who do you want me to be?" Talk about that step. [00:28:53] S1: Let's do that. I'm going to pull up this screen, which is a agent I just configured before the show. Its name is Q. And Q is going to be my kid's agent. I have a personal assistant for the family, I have a personal assistant for work, my kids have too much homework or they think they have too much homework, and so I'm going to set up Q. [00:29:17] S0: This is an awesome idea, by the way. Just the idea of giving... Versus ChatGPT.
00:29:17 · Lenny Rachitsky, Claire Vo
[00:29:17] S0: This is an awesome idea, by the way. Just the idea of giving... Versus ChatGPT. [00:29:20] S1: Jesse Genet has inspired me on all things OpenClaw and kids, so it's a great idea. I haven't said anything to Q yet, so we're just going to see what he says, so I'm going to say hi. And I'm running OpenClaw right here in my terminal just because it's easier to show for the screen share, but you can just do this in Telegram as well. And it says, "Hey, I just came online. Who am I? Who are you?" And so, again, product people, designers pay attention, if you think about the onboarding experience of an agent, you know what I do at ChatPRD, I force you to press these buttons and tell me who you are and write a bio and all this stuff in these structured fields, and I think that's such an old mental model of how to design an onboarding experience, and this is a very interesting one where it just says like, "Who am I and who are you? And we're going to figure this out together." And so I'm going to say, "You're Q. You are a elementary school teacher and ex professor, slash, scientist who is going to help me and my kids with their academic and extracurricular pursuits." I'm clear. This is a trick, I call this the brain transplant. So because Q is living on the same machine as my other agents, I say, "You can look in my other agent, Polly's Soul..." [00:30:52] S0: Just an amazing thing to write.
00:30:52 · Lenny Rachitsky, Claire Vo
[00:30:52] S0: Just an amazing thing to write. [00:30:53] S1: "... to learn more about me. Finn also has some good info about me and the kids." Okay, so this is, I think, an advanced trick, but because all these agents live in the same folder and workspace, same computer, if you give them permission, you can also lock them down so they know that, they can actually go look in other places. Oh no, he's sandboxed. Well, okay. Well, we'll skip this. OpenClaw has done a good job of locking things down by default and forcing you to open them up, which I appreciate. [00:31:30] S0: You just can't look at the other soul, is that what's going on there? [00:31:32] S1: Yeah, I just can't look at- [00:31:32] S0: Security for the win.
00:31:32 · Claire Vo
[00:31:32] S1: It's security. See? It's soul locked. And so it's going to ask me questions. Tell me about yourself and kids, tell me to say I'm clear. I have three boys, H, T, and J. I'll put their ages, so we'll do a nine, six, and newborn. And Q will start setting up its own workspace. And one of the tricks that I really like that OpenClaw does, which is this interview. So the more information you give it, the more it's going to start to try to discover about you and figure out tasks it can do on your behalf. So it's asking what are the full names, what are they into, it's making some guesses based on what I said on their age and their identity, what's my main goal, where am I located, what about you. And so I'm going to say, "Let's stay with initials for now. They're really into basketball and soccer, and they need help planning how they get all their homework done on a weekly basis around their activities. They both also have supplemental math and piano class." So I'm telling them poor San Francisco kids with their two extra math classes I make them do. And so now what it does, now that it's done this interview of me and trying to figure out a little bit more about me and the kids, is it's going to build out its soul and ask me more questions, and then we'll start to work together to discover what things it can do for me. And, again, like a great assistant, it's discovering the things it might need to know, when are they at school? What are their activities, how much homework do they have to do, are there hard... I love this. Family dinners, bedtimes, days that are totally off limits. And we started talking about how I really value my family time, and I'm going to say we're not doing anything after 06:30. We start to get into bath time mode, we start to read, we're not going to overload them on the weekends because they need to have relaxation and fun. And so I just think this Asian experience is so nice. And then there's no magic behind it. It literally just has a folder that has a IDENTITY.md file and it's going to write to itself, "I'm Q and I'm going to help Claire's kids with their homework."
00:33:59 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:33:59] S0: This is such a cool use case. I feel like I want this right now. My kid's not old enough to use this yet, but this is such a cool idea, instead of just go use Claw, go use ChatGPT. We're going to go through some other examples of how you actually use this. Let's double down on this idea of soul and identity because I feel like this is part of the reason that OpenClaw is so special and it's like this interesting concoction of ideas. And someone had this really great tweet that I just want to, for memory, share where he's like, "Who'd be surprised that AGI is just you need a soul, you need a heartbeat and you just have to do some jobs." Talk about just those elements of OpenClaw, why that is important and how does it work.