Comment by bobjordan
24 days ago
Here is what I have my openclaw agent setup to do in my wsl environment on my 22 core development workstation in my office:
#1) I can chat with the openclaw agent (his name is "Patch") through a telegram chat, and Patch can spawn a shared tmux instance on my 22 core development workstation. #2) I can then use the `blink` app on my iphone + tailscale and that allows me to use a command in blink `ssh dev` which connects me via ssh to my dev workstation in my office, from my iphone `blink` app.
Meanwhile, my agent "Patch" has provided me a connection command string to use in my blink app, which is a `tmux <string> attach` command that allows me to attach to a SHARED tmux instance with Patch.
Why is this so fking cool and foundationally game changing?
Because now, my agent Patch and I can spin up MULTIPLE CLAUDE CODE instances, and work on any repository (or repositories) I want, with parallel agents.
Well, I could already spawn multiple agents through my iphone connection without Patch, but the problem is then I need to MANAGE each spawned agent, micromanaging each agent instance myself. But now, I have a SUPERVISOR for all my agents, Patch is the SUPERVISOR of my muliple claude code instances.
This means I no longer have to context switch by brain between five or 10 or 20 different tmux on my own to command and control multiple different claude code instances. I can now just let my SUPERVISOR agent, Patch, command and control the mulitple agents and then report back to me the status or any issues. All through a single telegram chat with my supervisor agent, Patch.
This frees up my brain to only have to just have to manage Patch the supervisor, instead of micro-managing all the different agents myself. Now, I have a true management structure which allows me to more easily scale. This is AWESOME.
This feels like the "prompt engineering" wave of 2023 all over again. A bunch of hype about a specific point-in-time activity based on a lot of manual setup of prompts compared to naive "do this thing for me" that eventually faded as the tooling started integrating all the lessons learned directly.
I'd expect that if there is a usable quality of output from these approaches it will get rolled into existing tools similarly, like how multi-agents using worktrees already was.
2023 was the year of “look at this dank prompt I wrote yo”-weekly demos.
And 2026 is shaping up to be the year of "look at this prompt my middle manager agent wrote for his direct reports" :)
Maybe this is just a skill issue on my part, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the workflow of running multiple claude agents at once. How do they not conflict with each other? Also how do you have a project well specified enough that you can have these agents working for hours on end heads down? My experience as a developer (even pre AI) has mostly been that writing-code-fast has rarely been the progress limiter.. usually the obstacles are more like, underspecified projects, needing user testing, disagreements on the value of specific features, subtle hard to fix bugs, communication issues, dealing with other teams and their tech, etc. If I have days where I can just be heads down writing a ton of code I'm very happy.
I can't imagine letting a current gen LLM supervise Claude Code instances. How could that possibly lead to even remotely acceptable software quality?
I spec out everything in excruciating detail with spec docs. Then I actually read them. Finally, we create granular tasks called "beads" (see https://github.com/steveyegge/beads). The beads allows us to create epics/tasks/subtasks and associated dependency structure down to a granular bead, and then the agents pull a "bead" to implement. So, mostly we're either creating spec docs and creating beads or implementing, quality checking, and testing the code created from an agent implementing a bead. I can say this produces better code than I could write after 10yrs of focused daily coding myself. However, I don't think "vibe coders" that have never truly learned to code, have any realistic chance of creating decent code in a large complex code base that requires a complex backend schema to be built. They can only build relatively trivial apps. But, I do believe what I am building is as solid as if I had a millions of dollars of staff doing it with me.
But how is that less work and allows you to do that in Disneyland with your kids? For me, personally, there is little difference between "speccing out everything in excruciating detail in spec docs" and "writing actual implementation in high-level code". Speccing in detail requires deep thought, whiteboard, experimentation etc. All of this cannot be done in Disneyland, and no AI can do this at good level (that's why you "spec out everything in detail", create "beads" and so on?)
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Do you have any code publicly available so we could see what kind of code this sort of setup produces?
Not yet, but I can tell you that producing "good" code is another layer altogether. I have custom linters, code standardization docs, custom prompts, strictly enforced test architecture (enforced by the custom linters in pre-commit hooks which run before an agent tries to commit). Ultimately, it's a lot of work to get all the agents with a limited context writing code in the way you want. In the main large complex project I am generally working on now, I have hand-held and struggled for over a year getting it all setup the way I need it. So I can't say its been a weekend setup for me. It's been a long arduous process to get where I am now in my 2-3 main repos that I work on. However, the workflow I just shared above, can help people get there a lot faster.
> but I can tell you that producing "good" code is another layer altogether.
I feel like it isn't. If the fundamental approach is good, "good" code should be created as a necessity and because there wouldn't be another way. If it's already a mess with leaking abstractions and architecture that doesn't actually enforce any design, then it feels unlikely you'll be able to stack anything on top of below it to actually fix that.
And then you end up with some spaghetti that the agent takes longer and longer to edit as things get more and more messy.
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I don’t get it, and that doesn’t mean it’s not a bad thing necessarily. I’ve been doing systems things for a long time and I’m quite good at it but this is the first time none of this excites me.
Instead of sitting in my office for 12 hours working with 20 open terminals (exactly what I have open right now on my machine). I can take my kids to Disneyland (I live in Southern California and it's nearby) and work on my iphone talking to "Patch" while we stand in line for an hour to get on a ride. Meanwhile. my openclaw agent "Patch" manages my 20 open terminals on my development workstation in my office. Patch updates me and I can make decisions, away from my desk. That should excite anyone. It gives me back more of my time on earth, while getting about the same (or more) work done. There is literally nothing more valuable to me than being able to spend more time away from my desk.
If this is actually true, then what will soon happen is you will be expected to manage more separate “Patch” instances until you are once again chained to your desk.
Maybe the next bottleneck will be the time needed to understand what features actually bring value?
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I appreciate your insight, even if the workflow seems alien to me. I admit I like the idea of freeing myself from a desk though. If you don't mind me asking, how much does this all cost per month?
Edit: I see you've answered this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46839725 Thanks for being open about it.
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Please show us something you’ve produced this way.
> MULTIPLE CLAUDE CODE INSTANCES
a lotta yall still dont get it
molt holders can use multiple claude code instances on a single molt
Slurp Juice is still the only good thing to come out of crypto. I hope AI leaves us with at least one good meme.
You are absolutely right that I probably still "don't" get it, I am still shocking myself on a daily basis with all the stuff I didn't fully get grasp ahold of. I recently updated claude code and yesterday had one agent that used the new task system and blew my mind with what he got accomplished. This tech is all moving so fast!
My multitasking operating system would like a word..
/s
What are you coding with this? Is it a product you're trying to launch, an existing product with customers or custom work for someone else?
This just sounds ridiculously expensive. Burning hundreds of dollars a day to generate code of questionable utility.
Personally, I spend $200 on claude code 20x plan + $200 on openAI's similar plan, per month. So, yeah, I spend $400 per month. I buy and use both because they have different and complimentary strengths. I have only very rarely almost reached the weekly capacity limit on either of those plans. Usually I don't need to worry about how much I use them. The $400 may be expensive to some people but frankly I pay some employees a lot more each month and get a lot less for my money.
Automated usage like you described violates Anthropic's terms of service.
It's just a matter of time until they ban your account.
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Gastown also had a supervisor “mayor”. How is this one different?