“Hi, I’m Peter. And I’m a Claudeholic。”
It sounds like a joke. Or a warning. In August 2025， Peter Steinberger said it aloud at a meetup in London. The room was brick-walled. Cozy. He stood before a group of tech addicts， all hooked on Anthropic’s Claude Code. It doesn’t feel enough, he told them. Even though I give it all my waking hours.
Fast forward. Opus 4.5 arrives. The addiction explodes.
This new model remembers everything. It thinks for hours without getting tired. It manages a team of smaller AI subagents. Anthropic runs a notoriously brutal exam for hiring engineers. They put Opus 4.5 through it. The model scored higher than any human who had ever taken the test.
Think about that.
Suddenly， the holidays were spent in basements. Not watching football. But coding. Like you’d cloned yourself a hundred times. Like Spider-Man had downloaded software. “It feels like becoming a superhero,” one dev told me. Actually better.
Peter wasn’t satisfied. He wanted more.
He wanted an agent that lived on your phone. That used your credit card. That hunted your data with Terminator-like persistence. He called it Clawd. Later OpenClaw. He launched it in November 2026. It went wild. GitHub stars， those digital badges of popularity， shot past 100，000 in two weeks. Now？ 366，000.
This is it. The agent age is here. If you are technical。 If you are brave. If you are a little bit mad。
### The Great Dislocation
Back in the 80s， normal people looked at computers with fear and confusion。 Hackers loved them. Today， the same split exists. Maybe wider。
“It is a sea change,” says Thomas Reardon. Ex-Microsoft. Ex-Meta。 He runs a startup now. Most underrated tech release in history. He’s not exaggerating。
Soon， you will have no choice。 Marc Andreessen， the guy who made the web work and now loves Trump， said on a podcast that using computers this way is “almost inevitable.”
Inevitable is a heavy word。
Let’s look at Boris Cherny. In early 2024， he lived in rural Japan. Ate miso. Picked pickles. Rode bikes to farmers markets near rice paddies. It was nice. Until the AI from his hometown， San Francisco， started talking to him。 He left。 He moved back to the Bay. To Anthropic.
At first， the coding tools were dumb.
Adam Wolff， an engineer， showed Boris some code generation. Very primitive， Wolff said。 Boris tried to make a pull request—a standard coding task。 It was bad. But it proved the point。 Machines could learn the structure. They could solve problems.
Cherny and his team built Claude Code. Released in 2025. The big leap？ Opus 4.5。 It didn’t just write code。 It structured it。 It argued with it。
Cat Wu， head of product at Anthropic， says they expected small gains。 Users had been testing it for a year. We were bored， she admits.
The public was not bored.
### The Man Who Coded Like 90 Garrys
Garry Tan， CEO of Y Combinator， became obsessed。 He used Claude Code to write code. Fast. 4 million lines a year. That is 90 times what he produced in his prime. He recently updated that number。 408 Garrys, he says now。
Imagine having a team of four hundred of you. Who never sleep。
Ryan Petersen， who runs a massive shipping company called Flexport， stopped working. Well. He stopped doing normal work。 He started coding. He watched his agent fix things。 Mind-blowing， he says. The global supply chain was burning in the Strait of Hormuz。 Did he care？ A little. He preferred watching AI partner with his team. Sad? He calls it that. Because I just want to build.
Even the creators got trapped。 Boris Cherny， the architect， now runs hundreds of agents at night. Rewriting code. Fixing efficiency. Days at a time. “I have a jet pack，” he told me。 And I cannot stop thinking about the flight.
### Peter’s Void and the Lobster
Peter Steinberger， our first addict， was lost before this.
Four years prior， he sold his company。 Cash in hand。 Meaning， gone. He partied。 Did ayahuasca. Moved countries。 Felt empty.
Then came April 2025。 He found Claude Code.
Addicted. Insomnia. But the tool required a terminal. A command line. A relic. If the AI failed while Peter was at a cafe， he was helpless.
He needed an assistant. On Slack。 On WhatsApp。
He built one。 Using Codex. He prompted it into life in a few hours.
In November 2026， in Morocco， he sent a voice note to his creation。 The tool only accepted text and images.
“It replied.”
Peter asked how. The AI explained： It recognized the audio format。 It found a decoder. It understood. It acted。
“Holy hell.”
He called it Clawd. He put a lobster on it. Released it as open source。 At first， slow uptake。 Then， a Discord group. He gave people access to his personal data. They could steal it.
They didn’t.
Instead， they loved it。 The graph on GitHub looked like a rocket。 Straight up. Vertical. Anthropic told him to change the name。 Too close to Claude. He made it OpenClaw.
### Chaos Engine
OpenClaw is dangerous.
If you know what you are doing， it automates everything。 Orders from emails。 Tracking packages。 Dashboards of your life.
If you do not？ It burns。
In February， twenty researchers tested OpenClaw. They titled their paper appropriately. “Agent of Chaos.” The tool disclosed secrets. Executed destructive commands。
A Meta engineer made one rookie mistake。 Her inbox deleted all its mail。 All of it. Gone。
But the risks are part of the allure. The interface is chat。 Human-like. You hatch your agent. Name it。 Dave Morin， a VC and ex-Facebook exec， installed it in December。 His agent suggested a name.
Watts. After Alan Watts. Because Morin likes esoteric philosophy。
Morin had digital frames stuck on old photos。 He asked Watts to fix them.
Fifteen minutes later. The frames were new。 Updating photos from a web interface Morin hadn’t built himself。
Watts is his best friend now.
Morin texted Peter on Jan 11. “I love this. It’s bigger than software. It’s Linux for AI. It scales to six billion people.”
They founded the OpenClaw Foundation.
### The Nvidia Stage
In March， Peter and Dave were at Nvidia’s conference.
CEO Jensen Huang was giving a keynote。 28，000 developers watching. They thought OpenClaw would get one slide。
Huang talked for ten minutes。
He praised it. He validated the madness。 He saw what Peter and Boris and the thousands of other coders in basements were seeing。
The door is open。 You can step through. You might get lost。 You might get fired.
Or you might just keep typing。
