I Gave an AI Agent the Keys to My Life (Here's What Happened)

Talk transcript

1. 0:00

   [upbeat music] Ready to go?

2. 0:16

   All good, yeah. Please welcome Radek, everybody. Cool. [audience applauding]

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   Hey, I'm Radek. I'm one of the OpenClaw maintainers, and, uh,

4. 0:28

   I want to talk what happens, like, in my life with OpenClaw when I practically gave the keys to my life to, to OpenClaw. Uh, and like, it's almost like literally.

5. 0:43

   And, uh, w-what that actually means... So, so this happens like step by step. It wasn't all at the same time. But it can access my emails, it can access my notes, files, calendars, tools, my operating system.

6. 0:59

   So automations, and it builds on top of like memory of everything that I do, uh, at the computer. So, uh, it can do anything, uh, with it that, uh, that is possible to do with a computer.

7. 1:18

   But it didn't all happen in one big, like, leap. So I install OpenClaw, and now I-- it just like controls my life and does everything for me. Uh, that, that would be silly to do or like even silly to expect that this could even work.

8. 1:39

   Um, so what happened is that I, I tried installing, uh, just like, like everybody does, just like with one channel. I think it's-- at, at the beginning it was just WhatsApp, then I migrated to Telegram, now I'm on Discord.

9. 1:59

   But it was just, uh, just WhatsApp, just, uh, one ability to do to just like chat. Okay. So we are there. Uh, what, what's next that we can do?

10. 2:08

    Uh, let's, let's do some like one simple workflow or one very simple task that you can do. Once we are there, let's go to the next step. So this is how it happened where I am today, where I used to think that I have quite a simple setup with, uh, my OpenClaw and what it does because I

11. 2:31

    never did any big change. But when I encounter different, I don't know, Twitter threads, uh, YouTube videos, or talking to other people how they have it set up, I see that like my setup has everything that they have, more on top of that, and most also is just like more sophisticated than what, what I see out there,

12. 2:57

    which was really surprising to me because I felt that it's just like one small step at a time. I have a pretty like simple setup, works for me. But, uh,

13. 3:08

    that, that's what I want to, to show how that happened and how it looks like today. So y-you already had like a lot of talks about how the sausage is made, how we are making it better.

14. 3:22

    You'll have more talks about the insides of the OpenClaw. I want to show how it looks from the other side, from the first the simple user, then the power user.

15. 3:36

    Now I'm also a, a maintainer. You don't have to go to the maintainer route, but, uh, when I was playing like with one of the, uh, workflows, I just encountered some errors and just like submitted first PR, then the second PR, then just looked into Discord, and then, you know, just got involved.

16. 3:56

    Now I'm a maintainer there. So it's also was just like one, one step at a time.

17. 4:02

    Uh, so that, that's the step of-- These are the steps that, uh, it usually happens that I see, I see the need, uh, I solve it in, in a very simple way, uh, and, and then I add more steps to it.

18. 4:17

    And this is also why I usually don't have big issues that people have that, "Okay, now it broke my computer," or, "It just like completely bricked during the update."

19. 4:29

    Because I have all these small steps that I take. If something breaks, I just like step-- take one small step back, fix it, see what doesn't work, understand it, why it d-didn't work, uh, have a setup that it never happens again, and just like ta-take one step, uh, further again.

20. 4:48

    So, uh, where it started being more and more helpful and kind of like running my life is when I gave it my knowledge base. So I had a lot of stuff

21. 5:04

    in my Obsidian, which I built up for years. So right now I have like about three thousand pages or notes, Markdown files in my Obsidian.

22. 5:18

    And this is everything. This is work stuff, personal stuff, tasks, projects, research. Um, what else? Articles. Mm, kind of like an inbox of links that I'm just putting there, and it then finds the, the connections, uh, a-and puts it in, in perspective

23. 5:43

    and in context to, to other stuff that I have. So all of that is now

24. 5:50

    accessible through my OpenClaw with a very good search. I have search and memory. I have like normal search. I have QMD search for, for Obsidian. I have different memory for, for my workspace.

25. 6:07

    Uh-

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    And all of that is interlinked, uh, and, and that, that's where that magic happens. And when I saw recently-- And that, that's where it hit me that I probably don't have a simple setup.

27. 6:23

    When I recently saw Andrej Karpathy's, uh, tweet that went viral, uh, where he says about LLM knowledge bases. I was reading that, and it's just like, yeah, that's exactly what I have.

28. 6:35

    Like, what's, like, super, uh, revolutionary about it? And then I, I, I understood that, okay, so I got there step by step. It works for me, so it's probably, probably worth, I don't know, sharing, sharing, telling more about it, uh, showing how it works, showing how you can get to that point as well.

29. 6:57

    Uh, and, uh, for example, for Obsidian, uh...

30. 7:04

    Do we... Yeah. Th-this is how the-- This is the real screenshot of my, my vault and all the nodes, and these are different clusters. Some are probably, uh, project-related, like the big clusters.

31. 7:23

    Some of th-- are one-off. Uh, these are probably more, uh, kind of like bookmarks. And one of the tasks that I'm doing and that I have is that when I add something, uh, to inbox, it then takes that link that I add there,

32. 7:44

    looks what's there. It could be a tweet. It could be a thread. Uh, it could be an article. It could be a YouTube video. Analyzes it, adds tags to it, adds context to it, looks at what's already there on this topic in my vault, how it could be helpful in other areas, and adds connections to it.

33. 8:08

    So what previously was just like Twitter bookmarks that you'd bookmark and you never go back to that, now it just adds more context, builds up my knowledge base and is much more helpful and even surfacing the things for me when I add a bookmark that, okay, so you already had like this and this and this about this

34. 8:31

    subject, and this is how it connects. Maybe you should look at those notes. And very often it's just like, yeah, I completely forgot about that and, and that's a good source of, of knowledge and of thinking about it, uh, because th-that was the reason why I'm adding this bookmark.

35. 8:47

    Uh, so that, that's where it's, it, it's starting to, uh, to be super, super useful.

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    On top of that, also, uh, at 4:00 AM, or like 4:00 AM is just like, uh, an example of that, that I have is happens probably between 3:00 and 6:00 more or less.

37. 9:10

    Um, so th-this is what, what is happening when I'm sleeping. So when I'm sleeping, again, m-my agent does everything so that it runs well. It indexes everything. It backs everything so that worst case, I-- if I lose something, I lose maybe couple hours of work, of content, of anything else.

38. 9:32

    Refreshes all the indexes for, for QMD, for memory, for my Obsidian vault, and I, I start fresh in the morning, uh, with, uh, whatever waits for me. Maybe summary of the emails, of the calendar, uh, everything updated.

39. 9:49

    The, the latest, uh, the latest OpenClaw version is waiting for me, which also took like step-by-step. I have some scripts around it so that it knows what to do and what not to do when updating, what can break, why it breaks, how to verify it before updating or before restarting, uh, your gateway so that it is able

40. 10:12

    to come back online again. So that, that all is, uh, also, uh, automated. And as, as I get up, it's, it's already waiting for me, uh, fresh and ready for me to start the day.

41. 10:25

    And each OpenClaw is... Like, I'm not a big fan of sharing like my exact setup 'cause that exact setup is like very specifically for me, for what I need right now, uh, for what I will need in the near future, for like the errors that I encountered, for issues that I want to be solved.

42. 10:50

    But to give you some idea so that we can talk more also about specifics and not just like in general, so these are some like five areas or five types of jobs that my agent is doing.

43. 11:04

    Uh, the first one is, is ambient operations. So, so this is what I just, uh, showed you. So it, it does all the updating. It does all the plumbing.

44. 11:15

    Uh, it does ev-ev-- all, all the stuff that needs to happen, but I don't need and I don't want to think about.

45. 11:23

    Um, the, the second is attention filtering. So th-this is also super useful that because it has access to everything and because it has all the content, uh, context actually, uh, so it knows that, for example, when an email comes and, uh, it's something important or urgent and it knows from Obsidian what's the context, uh, and the background

46. 11:47

    behind it, uh, 'cause yeah, I, I keep everything in Obsidian, about projects, about everything else. So it then can proactively tell me that, uh, I think I have here.

47. 11:58

    So like these are like three very specific examples that I had recently- That when the system notices that something is important and urgent, it just lets me know. So like Netflix payment failure, for some reason didn't go through, uh, was fixed within five minutes when it happened.

48. 12:18

    Domain renewal coming up, I would probably miss that email, uh, but, uh, it, it picked it up, uh, gave me, gave me a message on my Discord, uh, renewed my domain.

49. 12:30

    Uh, emails, uh, that can already be with enough context given about the project, for example, it can already, uh, give-- like read the email, uh, understand what's happening, understand what's already done within the project, and just draft the reply, and, and it's already in, in draft, uh, folder for me to, uh, accept

50. 12:55

    or, or delete or make some changes. So, so these are some examples of like attention filtering. Uh, execution support. Yeah, so that's draft. Synthesize is that, uh, the, the inbox.

51. 13:09

    And these are on the right. These are the channels that I have in my Discord that more or less relate to these types of jobs. So General is where I have everything.

52. 13:21

    Uh, I just start the conversations, uh, see where it goes, and if

53. 13:27

    enough times I have a type-- a certain type of conversation, I add a, a specific channel for it. So these, these are, uh, like real screenshot from, from today morning.

54. 13:39

    Uh, the inbox is where I just like drop links, and it builds the knowledge base for me. Consulting is for, for, for the clients and every-- all the backgrounds.

55. 13:48

    It knows all the projects. Uh, it know- knows all the quotes, deadlines, tasks, next steps, everything else. Video research is for, for YouTube, for

56. 14:01

    researching what, uh, what's out there, uh, to help me, uh, with, with the next episode. Uh, briefing is for morning briefings, Instagram for social posting. YouTube is, uh, for, for creating, creating the, the videos.

57. 14:19

    OpenClaw is for maintainer stuff. And there is also one playground channel, uh, which it, it changes depending on day, month, or the need. Uh, it's for testing. I usually test maybe a different model, maybe a different, uh, workspace, different way of setting up, uh, the, uh, the important files like memory and, and everything else.

58. 14:41

    So I just play there, see what works. If something worked, uh, I promote it. If, if it doesn't, uh, I discard it.

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    Uh, and all of that works because it's not just a--

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    it's a system that has many moving parts that work well together. So LLMs is for judgment, like understanding the email, understanding the context, making the connections. Then there are all the files, the, the tools, the scripts that I have built.

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    The scripts are just like, "If this happens, do this." It's done. You don't even need judgment, so LLM is even skipped. Uh, and important, uh, thing is also to optimize your memory file, your soul, soulmd file.

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    Uh, I have also critical rules MD, uh, because even if I had something in agents MD, uh, or in soulmd, uh, it, it still managed to, to forget something or not do something.

63. 15:43

    Uh, with critical rules, having critical rules helps and having it, uh, mentioned quite high in the agents MD file, uh, so that, that's also an improvement. Uh, I h- I went through a few different setups of memory where I had one memory file.

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    Now, now that, uh, I have like the whole memory folder, now we also have dreaming where, uh, we, we have like promoting the memories. So th- this is important to work on these files.

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    Uh, and but it's easy to do in OpenClaw because everything is inspectable. These are Markdown files, editable. You can look at it, you can read it, you can understand it, uh, and it work, w- works well.

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    Uh, what gets harder, uh, bad memory compounds. If the memory is not set up correctly and your vault, your nodes, your memories grow to thousands, you're gonna have an issue.

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    So you need to actively work on that. Brittle automations, especially when it's like ten-step automations, uh, it can break, and it probably will break at some point. So it's again, either split it up into simpler ones or, or have, uh, some guardrails, uh, that are more effective.

68. 17:01

    Uh, noisy nodes, uh, I'm getting rid of them, uh, cleaning, um, cleaning regularly and weak boundaries. So, so those are all the soulmd and everything else, uh, that, uh, the files that, that are important to optimize for your needs.

69. 17:19

    Uh, so what I want you to take away from this is that, like do what I did, and then at some point you realize, yeah, th- this stuff is awesome and th- this stuff helps my life.

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    Um, start with one recurring pain, grow trust incrementally, build the knowledge base, uh, move everything or like move as much as you can or as you want to mark down files a- and, and start making those connections.

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    Um, inspecting-- system inspectable is, is easy for you, done for with, uh, with OpenClaw, um, and optimize for the future you. And th- this is what I want to close with.

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    So a couple years ago, I had an article about like the past me, the present me, and the future me. And the past me is just like this completely stupid guy.

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    He does nothing. He's lazy. Uh, he doesn't want to do anything. So now I, present me, need to do everything for that, like past me. And, and the future me, the future me is this like kind-- some kind of like god creature.

74. 18:24

    It, it can do anything. Uh, that, that, that creature is like, um, all-powerful and just like, "If I don't do something today, it's fine. That, that other creature will do it for me."

75. 18:36

    So that, that was the, the issue and, [chuckles]

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    uh, the job for me is to, to become friends with the future me, to, to treat that as a person that I want to help with. And that's the job of the agent.

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    So I don't need to do as much as I used to because the agent just helps the future me as much as possible so that when I wake up tomorrow, it's like as much as could be done by someone else other than me is done.

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    So that's, that, that's the whole purpose of, of this setup, at least for me. I don't know. It could be different for you. So that's what I want to leave you with.

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    Thank you. [audience clapping] [upbeat music]