Re:Andrej Karpathy talks about "Claws"
by browningstreet on Saturday February 21, 2026 @04:07PM
(#47104762)
I live in Tahoe. I travel the area a lot. I wrote a Replit app that gathered a bunch of weather and traffic and local event info and told me what I needed to know for travel between certain events. Part of the stimulus was finding myself stuck in terrible traffic on the Bay Bridge, again and again, when there was a GSW game. I don't do pro team sports so being stuck in extra-traffic when all I wanted was a certain meal in the city felt dumb. GSW games wasn't really even in the periphery of what I pay attention to.
The app was pretty good, but it was very demand driven.
I have an OpenClaw instance running for a lot of banal things. To discuss the same use case, this time I have a /drive command and it knows about all those same data sources. This last week someone needed to come visit me but the roads were closed. I told my claw to check those data sources every 15 minutes and tell me when the chain controls were dropped. It told me as soon as that happened, and me and the other person didn't have to think about it for the duration (it took a few hours).
Again, same things with travel around Tahoe, road closure.. traffic accidents, when the rushes leaving the ski resorts is impacting the area.
Or, a bunch of conditions around weather for my outdooring, adventuring, and fitness routines. When it's very very sunny I tend to gym indoors. When it's partly cloudy I tend to hike up mountains. Unless it's very windy. Back to the gym.
Coordinating a lot of these activities, and my training schedule (for racing, etc), requires an obnoxiously detailed spreadsheet. It's how I roll. Or I tell it I'm heading to Desolation tomorrow around 10am and it'll check ahead of time and warn me if there are issues with the route there. Living up here, there often are.
But my claw makes it a lot easier, and I don't have to think up all the nuances of my requirements at the outset. Use, iterate, repeat. It adjusts and enhances along the way.
Almost no personal data involved.
I have other uses that matter to me, including writing some documentation notes to an Obsidian vault periodically.. very personalized, targeted notes about 100+ topics I care about. Places and things, but not really me.
Don't let the personal-data-overdoers negate the other great uses cases that can't easily be handled with traditional apps. The claw feels like something that can't really be handled, qualitatively, in other ways.
The app was pretty good, but it was very demand driven.
I have an OpenClaw instance running for a lot of banal things. To discuss the same use case, this time I have a /drive command and it knows about all those same data sources. This last week someone needed to come visit me but the roads were closed. I told my claw to check those data sources every 15 minutes and tell me when the chain controls were dropped. It told me as soon as that happened, and me and the other person didn't have to think about it for the duration (it took a few hours).
Again, same things with travel around Tahoe, road closure.. traffic accidents, when the rushes leaving the ski resorts is impacting the area.
Or, a bunch of conditions around weather for my outdooring, adventuring, and fitness routines. When it's very very sunny I tend to gym indoors. When it's partly cloudy I tend to hike up mountains. Unless it's very windy. Back to the gym.
Coordinating a lot of these activities, and my training schedule (for racing, etc), requires an obnoxiously detailed spreadsheet. It's how I roll. Or I tell it I'm heading to Desolation tomorrow around 10am and it'll check ahead of time and warn me if there are issues with the route there. Living up here, there often are.
But my claw makes it a lot easier, and I don't have to think up all the nuances of my requirements at the outset. Use, iterate, repeat. It adjusts and enhances along the way.
Almost no personal data involved.
I have other uses that matter to me, including writing some documentation notes to an Obsidian vault periodically.. very personalized, targeted notes about 100+ topics I care about. Places and things, but not really me.
Don't let the personal-data-overdoers negate the other great uses cases that can't easily be handled with traditional apps. The claw feels like something that can't really be handled, qualitatively, in other ways.