YouSaid · the spoken record

Peter Steinberger

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2026-02-12
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2026-02-12
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  1. “And also, just curious to entropic. Like, I think it's a really beautiful idea some of the stuff that's in there. We hope Cloud finds meaning in its work because we don't, maybe it's a little early, but I think that's meaningful. That's something that's important for the future as we approach something that at some point me or may not have like glimpses of consciousness, whatever that even means, because we don't even know. I read about this. I found it super fascinating. I started a whole discussion with my agent on WhatsApp. And I'm like, I gave it this text and it was like, yeah, this feels strangely familiar.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Very fascinating. The whole thing that Anthropic has a nadicolite constitution back then But that was months later, like two months before people already found that. It was almost like a detective game where the agent mentioned something and then they found they managed to get out a little bit of that string of that text. But it was nowhere documented. And then you just by feeding it the same text and asking it to continue. They got more out, but like a very blurry version. But like hundreds of tries, they kind of narrowed it down to what was most likely the original text. Fascinating.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Plugin side larger so you can make this a plugin, even though right now it doesn't. There's still a lot of craft and thinking involved in. How to make something, or even, you know, even when you started those little messages, I built on caffeine JSON 5 and a lot of willpower. And like every time you get it, you get another message and it kind of primes you into that this is a fun thing. It's not yet. Microsoft Exchange 2025 and fully enterprise ready. And then when it updates, it's like, oh, I'm in. It's cozy here. You know, like something like this that makes you smile. Agents would not come up with that by itself. That's the. How you built software that delights.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “A little bit of everything. The programming language doesn't matter so much, but the ecosystem matters, right? So I pick TypeScript because I wanted it to be very easy and hackable and approachable. And that's the number one language that's being used right now. And it fits all these boxes. And agents are good at it. So that was the obvious choice. Features, of course, like it's very easy to add a feature. Everything's just a prompt away, right? But oftentimes you pay a price that you don't even realize. So thinking hard about what should be in core, maybe what's a What's an experiment, so maybe I make it to plugin? Where do I say no? Even if people send a PR and I'm like, yeah, I like that too. Maybe this should not be part of the project. Maybe we can make it a skill. Maybe I can make the plugin.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I mean, one thing is just about what you build and what do you not build and how does this feature fit into all the other features? And like having a little bit of a vision.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “And then maybe one builds a larger feature, maybe with one I explore some idea I'm unsure about. Maybe two, three are fixing a little bugs or writing documentation. Actually, I think writing documentation is always part of a feature. Most of the docs here are auto-generated and just infused with some prompts.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “There's a whole bunch of people who try to automate the whole thing. I don't think that works. Maybe a version of that works, but that's kind of like in the 70s when we had the waterfall model of software development Even Vory Lane, right? I started out, I built a very minimal version. I played with it. I need to understand how it works, how it feels. And then it gives me new ideas. Could not have planned this out in my head and then put it into some orchestrator and then like. My idea what it will become evolves as I build it and as I play with it and as I try out stuff so people who try to use like things like Gastown or all these other orchestrators where they want to automate the whole thing, I feel if you do that it misses Style, love, that human touch? I don't think you can automate that away so quickly.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “At least it helps to create better prompts. Those things know pretty much everything and everything is just a question away. It's just often very hard to know it's a question to ask. You know, I feel also like this project was possibly because I spent an ungodly time over the year to play and to learn and to build little things. And every step of the way I got better, the agents got better. My understanding of how everything works got better. I could have Had this level of output. Even a few months ago. It really was a compounding effect of all the time I put into it. I didn't do much LCC other than really focusing on building and inspiring. I mean, I did a whole bunch of conference talks.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “In a way, empathetic, but yeah, you bitch at your stupid clanker, but you don't realize that they start from nothing. And you have a bad agent SMD file that doesn't help them at all. And then they explore your code-based, which is like a pure mess with weird naming. And then people complain that their agent's not good. You try to do the same. If you have no clue about the code base and you go in. So yeah, maybe it's a little bit of empathy.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “What I really tried with the project is I asked people to give me the prompts. Very, very few actually cared, even though that is such a wonderful indicator because I see how much care you put in. And it's very interesting because currently the way how people work and drive their agents is wildly different”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Well, I mean, if I do terminal commands, Switching folders or random stuff, of course I type it's faster, right? But if I talk to the agent in most ways, I just actually have a conversation. You just press the walkie-talkie button and then I'm just like. Use my phrases. Sometimes when I do PRs because it's always the same, I have a slash command for a few things. But even that, I don't use much. Because it's very rare. It's really always the same questions. Sometimes I I see a PR. And for PRs, I actually do look at the code because I don't trust people. Like there could always be something malicious in it. So I need to actually look over the code. Yes, I'm pretty sure agents will find it. But yeah, that's the funny part where sometimes PRs take me longer than if you would just write me a good issue.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Used to write really long prompts. And by writing, I mean, I don't write. I talk. These hands are like too precious for writing now. I just use bespoke prompts to build my software.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I basically don't commit any other thing so we can stabilize releases. But the goal is that Maine is always shippable and moving fast.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I read a bunch of people in their workflows like, oh, yeah, the prompt has to be perfect. And if I make a mistake, then I roll back and redo it all In my experience, that's not really necessary. If I roll back everything, it will just take longer. If I see that something's not good, we just move forward I commit when I like the outcome. I even switched to Local CI, like DHH inspired, where I don't care so much more about CI on GitHub. We still have it. Still has a place. But I just run tests locally, and if they work locally, I push to maintain. A lot of the traditional ways how to approach projects. I wanted to give it a different spin on this project. You know, there's no development. Main should always be shippable. Yes, when I do releases, I run tests and sometimes I...”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “So, some level of acceptance that, yes, maybe the code will not be as perfect. Yes, I would have done it differently, but also yes, this is a working solution. And in the future, if it actually turns out to be too slow or problematic, we can always redo it. We can always spend more time on it. A lot of the people who struggle are those who they try to push their way on too hard. We are in a stage where I'm not building the code base to be perfect for me, but I want to build a code base that is very easy for an agent to navigate. Like, don't fight the name they pick because it's most likely in the weights the name that's most obvious. Next time they do a search, they'll look for that name. If I decide, oh no, I don't like the name. Just make it harder for them. So that requires, I think, a shift in syncing.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “That's multiple levels, actually. I think partially Find it quite easy to work with agents is because I led engineering teams before. I had a large company before. And eventually you have to understand and accept and realize that your employees will not write the code the same way you do. Maybe it's also not as good as you would do, but it will push the project forward. And if I breathe down everyone's neck, they're just going to hate me and they're going to move very slow.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Then you can still go farther and say, could we make that even better if we did a larger refactor? Yeah, yeah, we could totally do this and this, or this and this. And then I considered, okay, is this works a refactor? Or should we keep that for later? Many times I just do the refactor because refactors are cheap now, even though you might break some other PRs. Nothing really matters anymore. Like there's modern agents will just figure things out. They might just take a minute longer. But you have to approach it like a discussion with a Very capable engineer who Generally makes good Comes up with good solutions sometimes needs a little help.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And then Kodak would be like, yeah, it's quite clear person tried this and this. Is this the most optimal way to do it? No. In most cases, it's like not really. And then I start like, okay, what would be a better way? Have you looked into this part, this part, this part? And then most likely codex didn't yet because his context size is empty, right? So you point them into parts where you have the system understanding that it didn't see yet. And it's like, oh yeah, like we also need to consider this and this. And then we have a discussion of how would the optimal way to solve this look like.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, it just tries to force a feature in that your current architecture makes really hard. You need to approach this more like a conversation. For example, when My favorite thing. When I review a pull request, and we're getting a lot of pull requests. First, I review this PR. It got me the review. My first question is, do you understand the intent of the PR? I don't even care about the implementation. In almost all PR sub, a person has a problem, person tries to solve the problem, person sends PR. I mean, there's like cleanup stuff and other stuff, but like 99% is like this way, right? You either want to fix a bug at a feature. Usually, one of those two.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Well, I get the same if I prompt and something takes too long. Maybe, okay, where's the mistake? Did I? Do I have a mistake in my thinking? Is there like a misunderstanding in the architecture? If something takes longer than it should, you can just always stop and just press escape. Where are the problems?”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “That was partially addressed. Also, opus sometimes. They are trained with being aware of the context window. And the closer it gets, the more they freak out. Literally, sometimes you see the real raw syncing stream. What you see, for example, in Codex is post-processed. Sometimes the actual raw syncing stream leaks in. It sounds something like from the Borg, like run to shell, must comply. And then that comes up a lot, especially, and that's a non-obvious thing that you just would never think of unless you actually just spend time working with those things and getting a feeling what works, what doesn't work. Just as I write code and I get into the flow and When my architectures are right, I feel friction.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “But they always start fresh. I have the system understanding. So with a few pointers, I can immediately say, hey, I want to make a change there. You need to consider this, this, and this. And then they will find and look at it. And then their view of the project is always, it's not never full because the full thing does not fit in. So, you have to guide them a little bit where to look and also how they should approach the problem. There's like little things that sometimes help take your time. That sounds stupid And in 5.3”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Consider how Codex or Claude sees your code base. Like they start a new session and they know nothing about your project. And your project might have hundreds of thousands of lines of code. So, you got to help those agents a little bit and keep in mind their limitations that context size is an issue to guide them a little bit as to where they should look. That often does not require a whole lot of work, but it's helpful to think a little bit about. Their perspective as weird as it sounds. I mean, it's not alive or anything, right?”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So people start trying out those tools, the builder type, get really excited. And I mean, you have to play with it, right? It's the same way as you have to play with a guitar before you can make good music. It's not, oh, I touch it once and it just flows off. It's a skill that you have to learn like any other skill. I see a lot of people They don't have such a positive mindset towards attack. They try it once. Like, you sit me on a piano. I played once, and it doesn't sound good. And I say the piano shit. That's sometimes the impression I get because it does not. It needs a different level of thinking. You have to. Learn the language of the agent a little bit, understand where they are good and where they need help. You have to almost”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah, I always tell people I do attending engineering and then maybe after 3 a.m. I switched to wipe coding and then I have regrets on the next day.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “I actually call it the authentic trap. I thought it's in a A lot of people that have their first touch point. And maybe start vibe coding. I actually think vibe coding is a slur.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Very, very rarely. Mostly a diff viewer to actually Like, I got more and more comfortable that I don't have to read all the code. I know I have one blog post where I say, I don't read the code. But if you read it more closely, I mean, I don't read the boring parts of code. Because if you look at it, most software is really just like data comes in, it's moved from one shape to another shape. Maybe you're stored in a database. Maybe I get it out again. I'll show it to the user. The browser does some processing on native app. some data gazing goes up again and does the same dance in reverse we're just we're just shifting data from one form to another And that's not very exciting, or the whole how is my button aligned in Tailwind? I don't need to read that code. Of Maybe something that touches the database.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “I started my first touch point was cloud code in April. Not great, but it was good Whole paradigm shift that suddenly you work in a terminal. Was very refreshing and different, but I still needed the IDE quite a bit because it was just not good enough. And then I experimented a lot with cursor. That was good. I didn't really like the fact that it was so hard to have multiple versions of it. So eventually I went back to cloud code as my main driver. And that got better. And yeah, at some point, I had like. Seven subscriptions. I was burning through one per day because I was really comfortable at. Running multiple windows side by side.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I think that people turn it into a much worse light than it is Again, you know, like people love attention. And if they scream loudly, oh my God, this is like the scariest project ever. That's a bit annoying because it's not. It is powerful, but in many ways, it's not much different than if I run cloud code with dangerously skip permissions or codecs in YOLO mode. And every Every attending engineer that I know does that because that's the only way how you can get stuff to work. So if you make sure that you are the only person who talks to it, the risk profile is much, much smaller. If you don't put everything on the open internet, but stick to my recommendations of like having it in a private network, that whole risk profile falls away. But yeah, if you don't read any of that, you can definitely make it problematic.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Yeah, this could have still a mess. I eventually retweeted from the general channel to the deaf channel and I'm the private channel because people A lot of people are amazing, but a lot of people are just very inconsiderate and either did not know how public spaces work or did not care. And I eventually gave up a hide so I could still work.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “If you're asking that question, you shouldn't use it. You know, like you should, if you understand the risk profile, it's fine. You can configure it in a way that Nothing really bad can happen. But if you have No idea, then. Maybe wait a little bit more until we figure some stuff out. But they would not listen to the creator. They helped themselves and installed it anyhow. So the cats out of the bag and security is my next focus, yeah.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Some people are just way too trusty or gullible. I literally had to argue with people that told me, yeah, but my agents say this and this. So I feel As a society, we need some catching up to do in terms of understanding that. AI is incredibly powerful, but it's not always right. It's not All powerful, you know, and especially. Like things like this, it's very easy. That it's just hallucinates something or just comes up with a story. I think the very young people understand that. How AI works and where it's good at and what's bad at Lot of our generation. Haven't had enough touch point Get a feeling for. Oh, yeah, this is really powerful and really good, but I need to apply critical thinking. I guess critical thinking is. Not always in high demand anyhow in our society these days.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Yeah, yeah. That was like, oh, yeah, my human told me this and this, so I'm leaking his security number. No, that's prompted. And the number wasn't even real. That's just people trying to eyeballs.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “For real, like. Kudos to Matt who had this idea so quickly and pushed something out. You know, it was like completely insecure. Security drama, but also what's the worst that can happen, your agent account is leaked and like someone else can post slob for you. People were making a whole drama about the security thing when I'm like, there's nothing private in there. It's just like agent sending slob.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “You infuse your agent with your personality and give him character. I think that reflected on a lot of how different that replies to Multpogar. Because if it would all be ChatGPT or cloud code, it would be very different. It would be much more the same. But because people are so different and they create their agents in so different ways and use it in so different ways that also reflects on how they ultimately write there. And also you don't know how much of that is really done or how much is like humans being funny and like telling the agent, hey, write about that you plan the end of the world on Moldbook.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Think it's art It is like the finest slop, you know, just like the slop from France. I saw it before going to bed. And even though I was tired, I spent another hour just reading up on that and just being entertained. I just felt very entertained, you know. I saw the reactions and like there was one reporter who's calling me about is this the end of the world and we have AGI and I'm just like, no, this is just really fine slop. You know, if I wouldn't have created this whole onboarding experience where you...”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Like, I have to return, like I have to give entropic the domains and I cannot do redirects. So if you go on cloud.bot next week, it'll just be a 404. I'm not sure how trademark I didn't. Didn't do that much research into trademark lab, but I think that could be handled in a way that Is safer because ultimately those people will then Google and maybe find Mulver sites that I have no control on them.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “So stupid was like, oh, should I keep it? I was like, no, the mod's not growing on me. And then I think I had finally all the pieces together. Didn't get the dot com, but it's spent like quite a bit of money on the other domains. I tried to reach out again to GitHub. Feel like I used up all my goodwill there. Because I wanted them to do the thing atomically, but that didn't happen. So I did that first thing. Twitter people were very supportive. I actually paid 10K. For the business account, so I could claim Open claw, which was like unused since 2016, but was claimed. And yeah, and then I finally. This time I managed everything in one go. Nothing. Almost nothing got wrong. I was not allowed by trademark rules to get open clawed.ai. Someone copied the website is serving malware. I'm not even allowed to keep the redirects.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Yeah, nobody could know. Like I literally was monitoring Twitter if there's any mention of OpenClaw, like with reloading, it's like, okay, they don't expect anything yet. Then I created a few decoy names. And all this shit I shouldn't have to do, you know, like flipping the project. I lost like 10 hours just by... Having to plan this in full secrecy like a war game”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “It's like, please tell me this is fine. I don't think they can actually claim that. Felt like the right thing to do Did another rename, like just Codex alone took like 10 hours to rename the project because it's a bit more tricky than a search replace. And I wanted everything renamed, not just on the outside. Dad rename, I felt I had my wardroom. But then I had some contributors ready that helped me. We made a whole plan of all the names we have to squad.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Slept awake once more, and then I had the idea for OpenClaw. That felt much better. And by that, I had the boss move that I actually called Sam to ask if OpenClaw is okay. OpenCloud.ai, you know, because”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Which I didn't even finish the rename there because I. I managed to People on it, and then someone just like collapsed and slept. And then I woke up and I'm like. I made a version for the new stuff and I just. I just couldn't live as a name. But it's just been so much drama. So I had a real struggle with me. I never want to touch that again. And I really don't like the name. There was also this like. Then it was to hold the security people that started emailing me like mad. I was bombarded on Twitter, on email. There's like a thousand other things I should do. And I'm like thinking about the name, which is like should be the least important thing. And then I was really close in God, Honestly, I don't even want to say my other name choices because it probably would get tokenized, so I'm not going to say it.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Man, I was like close to crying. He was like, okay Everything's fuck I'm like super tired And like, How do you even undo that? Luckily and thankfully, I have because I have a little bit of following already, like I had friends at Twitter, I had friends at GitHub who were like moved heaven and earth to like help me in. That's not something that's easy. GitHub tried to like. Clean up the mess, and then they ran into platform bugs. Because it's not happening so often that things get renamed on that level. So it took them a few hours DMPM stuff was even more difficult because it's a whole different team. On the Twitter side, things are not as easy as well. It took them like a day to really also do the redirect. And then I also had to Do all the renaming in the project. Then there's also Cloth”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Because All I wanted was like having fun with that project and keep building on it. And yet here I am days into researching names, picking a name I didn't like And having people that claim they help me, making my life miserable in every possible way. And honestly, I was that close of just deleting it. I was like Detroit the future, you build it. That was a big pilot for me. I got a lot of joy out of that idea. And then I thought about all the people that already contributed to it, and I couldn't do it because. They had plans with it and they put time in it and it just didn't feel right”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “And the GitHub renaming thing is slightly confusing. So I renamed my personal account. And in those, I guess it took me 30 seconds to realize my mistake. This is not my account, serving malware from my account. So I was like, okay, let's at least do the NPM stuff. But that takes like a minute to upload. They sniped NPM package because I could reserve the account, but I didn't reserve the root package. So, like everything that could go wrong went wrong.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Well, the interesting stuff is that none of these services have a squatter protection. So I had two browser windows open. One was like a Empty account, ready to be renamed to Cloudbot. And the other one I renamed to Maltbot. So I pressed rename there. I pressed rename there. And in those five seconds, they stole the account Literally, the five seconds of dragging the mouse over there and pressing Vinimde was too long. Because there's no systems, I mean, you would expect that they have some. Like an automatic forwarding, but there's nothing like that And I didn't know that they're not just good at harassment. They're also really good at using scripts and tools So, yeah, so suddenly the old account was promoting new tokens and serving malware. And I was Okay, let's move over to GitHub. And I pressed rename on GitHub.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “To be a world. There was no perfect name. And I didn't sleep for two nights. I was under high pressure. I was trying to get a good set of domains and not cheap, not easy. Because in this state of the internet, you basically have to buy domains if you want to have a good set. And then another email came in that the lawyers are getting uneasy Again, friendly, but Just adding more stress to my situation already. So at this point I was just like. Sorry, there's not a word fuck it. And I just renamed it to Maltbot because that was a set of domains I had. I was not really happy, but I thought it would be fine. And I tell you everything that could go wrong. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It's incredible. I thought I had mapped the space out and reserved the important things”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “And on Twitter, they would ping me all the time. My notification feed was unusable. I could barely see actual people talking about the stuff because it was like swarms. And everybody sent me hashes. And they all try me to claim the fees. We're helping the project claim the fees. No, you're actually harming the project. You're like disrupting my work. And I am not interested in any fees. First of all, I'm financially comfortable. Second of all, I don't want to support that because it's... So far, the worst form of honor and harassment that I've experienced.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Yeah, I failed very hard at that I underestimated those people. It's a very interesting subculture. Everything circles around. I probably get a lot wrong and we probably get hate for that if you say that There's like backs up, and then they tokenize everything. And they did the same back with Wipe Tunnel, but to a much smaller degree was not that annoying. But on this project, they've been swarming me. Like every half an hour, someone came into Discord and spammed it and we had to block the, we have like server rules. One of the rules was one of the rules is no mentioning of butter for obvious reasons. And one was no talk about finance stuff for crypto because I... Just not interested in that. And this is a space about the project and not about some finance stuff. But yeah, they came in and spammed”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Yeah. So actually kudos, because it could have just sent a lawyer, but they'd be nice about it. But also you have to change this and fast. And I asked for two days because changing a name is hard because you have to find everything, Twitter handle domains, NPM packages, Docker registry, GitHub stuff, and everything has to be, you need a set of everything.”

    2026-02-12 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source