Developer calls Open Claw a "ghost sitting in front of the computer"

Berlin. In just a few weeks, Peter Steinberger has delivered what many tech companies had long promised: useful AI agents as everyday helpers.Over the past three weeks, his hobby project Open Claw has become one of the most popular codes on the Github code platform.

Developers who are confident enough are using his code to build their own assistants, which now organise duty rosters, control household appliances and even exchange information in their own social network.

Its inventor Steinberger actually retired from the technology sector three years ago. The Austrian wasFounder of a start-up companybut quit after more than eleven years and stopped programming. After a long break, he started again - with the help of AI. According to him, the code for Open Claw was written solely by AI agents. He talks to Handelsblatt about his story, the creation of his AI agent and explains why he wants to leave Europe.

Art, but not a singularity

Steinberger is sitting in a hotel in San Francisco. It's one o'clock in the morning. But he is far from finished work. Messages are constantly flashing up on his laptop and someone whose number he doesn't recognise is trying to call him. After the call, he wants to continue working.

He has known since the beginning of January that his agent, who was still called Clawdbot at the time, was something special. Because "there is nothing like it," says Steinberger. He describes Open Claw as "a ghost that sits in front of your computer". The agent can do everything a human can do on a computer: It clicks through programmes, writes emails. Users send it out to negotiate car prices. One user built an extension for Open Claw that allows the agent to make phone calls and book a table in a restaurant.

There is only something similar from Anthropic - the AI provider released an agent called Claude Cowork a few weeks ago, "but it can only do ten per cent as much as Open Claw", says Steinberger.

The idea for Open Claw came to him in May 2025. The project began with a simple idea: Steinberger wanted a kind of assistant that he could write to via the WhatsApp messenger service and give it tasks. At the time, he assumed that the big AI labs would soon come up with something like this. "At some point, it was November and still nothing had happened." Steinberger decided to tackle it himself. After an hour, the first prototype was ready.