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Comment by brcmthrowaway

3 days ago

Can someone explain the special sauce of the claws compared to just use claude.ai etc

There is no special sauce, it's mass hysteria driven by fake adoption metrics and people who don't know anything about computers who let "agents" run free on theirs. It's the equivalent of showing a magician cut a women in a box in half to a 5 years old kid... Put them in the same category as the neckbeards getting a hard on every 3 weeks for the past 2 years when they get to see the new version of ThE PeLiCaN On A BiCyCle... I wonder how long the circus will keep on going, at least it's funny to witness from the outside

  • I've found real utility in it, but the hype definitely exceeds the current capabilities

    • I agree. Its similar to the dotcom bubble. Alot of those websites had real utility as well. Its just the hype created a liability in investment that wouldnt be fulfilled

  • Damn son, you sure sound salty!

    • Better salty than tricked by smoke and mirrors into thinking the singularity will happen in two release cycles and that chatgpt will cure cancer and poverty by 2028 lmao

  • This is a classic early internet style snarky comment you used to find all over forums

    • > Some comments were wrong about one thing long ago hence every comments remotely similar about any other remotely similar thing will always be wrong

      That's how this argument sounds... And it really isn't a strong argument

  • It is a huge unlock. Ignore this snark and try it yourself. Any agentic use case you can imagine you can start to tackle.

    Openclaw itself is buggy but the idea is amazing.

    • > Any agentic use case you can imagine you can start to tackle.

      If "agentic use case" is shorthand for "use case that would benefit from giving non-deterministic systems blanket access to private local data and external accounts" than I can't imagine any such use cases.

      1 reply →

  • You really should open your mind to what this tech can achieve. Sooner or later it will click in a way that permanently alters the reality

They're "always" running, so they can notify you out of the blue, without you having to initiate a conversation. It's really nice UX to get a message from my assistant saying "hey, it's time to leave for the gym, and don't forget the supermarket bag because you're picking up milk on the way back, as you've run out".

  • Dunno, my calendar reminds me "out of the blue", without me having to initiate a conversation, that it's time to leave for the gym, no "claw" or "ai" involved.

    I always have my backpack with me, so if I need milk I can pick it up on the way back. And I am pretty sure that I have to notice if I need milk myself.

    The tech sounds cool, but whenever I hear about actual applications, I don't see the point.

    • That's because you just lack of imagination. Imagine if you have a human personal assistant, what would you ask them to do? Examples:

      "Find me the cheapest ticket to Las Vegas for the first week of June. Buy one at anytime that you think is reasonable. Wait until no later than two months from now before buying. Get two tickets if my brother can also go".

      "Email me if anyone posts a Sega multi mega for sale. But only if it's in black color".

      I have no idea if OpenClaws can already do such a task or not, I don't have one, but it opens up new possibilities. If it isn't there yet, it will be.

      12 replies →

    • If you don't have a need for a personal assistant, that's fine, not everyone does. That doesn't mean nobody does.

      The milk thing was just an example of a tool that can intelligently combine things for you, not a literal "it's a calendar with a milk function".

      This is a bit like "if I want to call my friends, I have a phone a home, why would I need a mobile?" which somewhat betrays a lack of imagination.

      4 replies →

  • Hmm, Google Gemini has access to my Google Tasks and can set reminders. It's also asked me if I want it to check something at "tomorrow 9am", and when I said yes, it managed to do that.

    • Yeah, that's kind of like it. Agents just have many many more integrations, so they can do many more things. For example, it knows all my preferences, and can search for flights and say things like "this one is more expensive, but skipping the morning wakeup is worth the $20".

    • But have you had consistently good experience with Google Gemini and Google apps? Or read the mixed reviews?

      For me, Gemini has been hit or miss and somehow less useful than Assistant was 2+ years ago.

      2 replies →

  • How do people afford this?

    • Claude max $100 is way more usage than I need. And yeah its not running all the time, just has a heartbeat file telling it how to check something and run

    • A subscription, really. It doesn't actually run all the time, it just has a cron job that makes it feel that way.

Whatsapp api integration + cronjob

Thats it. Its just pets.com

Edit: although as a counterpoint to my cynicism, just the intgreations and deamon-ness can be a game changer if the user experience is good. Thats the critical thing. If you can actually delegate tasks to it and not worry about them then it'd be great. But if your gonna have to worry if its done properly, or that it would delete your emails, then it doesnt work yet. But the dream of a robot assistant is inviting. I just dont think the underlying AI is there yet

Haven't you ever wanted to create a gigantic attack surface for your digital life that is always running and just aching to be pwned?

It can schedule stuff and run in a loop, so it's like claude combined with cron. Truly amazing technology.

There is no special sauce. They are claude or codex in a loop. The loop is facilitated by basic cron jobs. That's it.

Ai Agent as it has been for months, plus skills, plus a cron job to prompt it to do things every 20 minutes or 2 hours or however often you want.

Crons. A local daemon. System access as a user with the ability to listen to changes. Some idea of shared “memory” between sessions. Provider agnostic about AI. Multi-model.

It's for people that don't know how or don't want to be bothered with setting up a messenger integration and a scheduler.