Claire Vo: What brought you to the lobster agent we know and love?

Jesse Genet: Because I follow these Obsidian influencers. One of them buried in a comment on a day where I was just scrolling was like game changer is layering onto your Obsidian and actually having an agent who like uses your files for you. And I was like whoa what is that? At first I thought like I don't know if I'm technical to put this on my computer. Like I don't know what I'm doing. But then I jumped in. This is really interesting. I want to figure this out and I want to run my home school this way. So maybe this can help.

Claire Vo: You're trying to get all this stuff organized and you thought, man, if AI could do this for me, then I could actually get done what I wanted.

Jesse Genet: Obsidian has this cool opportunity of being your second brain, right? But the problem is I'm always looking for my first brain because I have four little kids. I didn't really have time to develop this second brain. People just don't appreciate how much it unlocked for folks that do have this ambition to really be there for their family and kids and also get all sorts of cool stuff done. And I feel the same revolution in my relationship with time.

Claire Vo: Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today we have Jesse Jana who has four kids and five OpenClaw Mac minis sitting on her desk, helping her run everything from her homeschool to her finances. Jesse has established there are two phases now, before claw and afterclaw, and she is going to show us the future of what an afterclaw life looks like. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by Optimizely. Most marketing teams aren't short on ideas, but what they are short on is time. And that's exactly what Optimizely Opel gives you back with AI agents that handle real marketing workflows. you know, like creating content and checking compliance, generating experiment variations, personalizing user experiences, analyzing pages for GEO, even tasks like approvals and reporting. It's your AI agent orchestration platform for marketing and digital teams, plugging seamlessly into the tools you already use, handling the boring, busy work, and keeping everything on brand that leaves marketers with more time to do your actual job. See what Opel can automate for your team by signing up for a free enterprise agentic AI workshop with Optimizely. Find out more at optimizely.com/howiAI. Attend live and you'll get a free pair of Rayban Meta AI glasses. Jesse, I am excited that you're here because you are the OpenClaw influencer I didn't know that I needed in my timeline. I you know it's been very crypto bro a ad a adjacent energy in the uh in a clasping and so I like that we got the two ladies of OpenClaw basically here on the podcast and I think your use cases are so interesting and I love what you figured out. So tell me what brought you to the lobster agent we know and love. Why did you get started with this?

Jesse Genet: Well, you're you're right. It wasn't because I really wanted to segment all my marketing. Um, which is like what I see over and over in my feed from like a bunch of tech guys. Uh, I have been I've actually been using this product called Obsidian for a while. So, this is like my like how I even learned about it because I learned about it like over a month ago now, which is kind of like ancient history and like claw land, right? Um, but the reason is because I follow some people who are like deep users of this second brain product called Obsidian, which is like a collection of markdown files and we can get more into that. But because I follow these Obsidian influencers, one of them like buried in a comment on a day where I was just scrolling was like, "Game changer is layering Quadbot, which it was called at the time, onto your Obsidian and actually having an agent who like uses your files for you." And I was like, whoa, what is that? Because I've been trying to organize my homeschool in Obsidian, but honestly, I don't feel like I have the time to log properly all my stuff, and I'm like running into all these roadblocks for actually using it because I don't have any time because I'm a mom. So, so that was my discovery moment was seeing this person say that, and I was like, what does that mean? I went and looked up like what Cloudbot was, um, which is now called OpenClaw. And I at first I thought like I don't know if I'm technical to put this on my computer like I don't know what I'm doing. But then I jumped in and I'm sure you had a bunch of like snafoos. I read I was reading your tweets about some of them and I had my own but um but I that that was like my jumpin moment like this is really interesting. I want to figure this out and I want to run my home school this way so maybe this can help.

Claire Vo: So you were running home your home school partially on Obsidian.

Jesse Genet: Yeah. And you know, we've actually had a couple episodes on Obsidian. Theresa Torres did one on Obsidian and Cloud Clo, how she's running her own um sort of like personal brain off of it, but you're trying to get all this stuff organized and you thought, man, if AI could do this for me, then I could actually get done what I wanted. So, do you want to show us what that brain looked like and then where kind of open law layered on top?

Jesse Genet: Okay. So, Obsidian has this cool opportunity of being your second brain, right? But the problem is I'm always looking for my first brain, okay? Because I have four little kids. So I didn't really have time to develop this second brain. And so my so we're in my Obsidian now, okay? And I call my vault Obsidian is structured on both. I call my vault family learning. And the reason I actually titled it that was that we like I want to I want to track almost everything that's even vaguely educational about my kids life. Like even if we go on a trip or something. So, I track more than just like lessons in here, but we can we can get to that. But the the the course structure that I've been trying to get to that OpenClaw finally like allows me to get to because it's actually doing the heavy lifting is I try to log all the little lessons and different things that I do with the kids. And so, um, and but I don't have time to go in here and write all this structured data. So, I want to know the date we did it. I want to know who's the instructor, which children of mine, um, out of the four of them were like included in that lesson. what was taught, what might come like next, uh, notes that we have. And so, here's my kids like learning about the color wheel and like matching colors and stuff like that. And the vibe that I wanted was to be able to take photos of a lesson that I do and then basically just upload them and have the actual OpenClaw log the full lesson contents. And it's not just because I'm an obsessive record keeper, although maybe that accusation is fair, but it's also because I want to be able to use AI to plan curriculum. So, if the AI knows I did this like, you know, cool pattern matching thing with number blocks, then it can suggest, now I'm just taking cute picture of my kids. This is like a gregant. Um, Netkin suggests that maybe it seems like Quinn uh nailed the, you know, pattern blocks, who is my oldest, but maybe L, who is like two, clearly like isn't quite there, and it can actually track their progression over time and actually help me build curriculum off of that. So, we've got all these logs. We have uh curriculum curriculum sources also, like for instance, I love um the BFSU uh like this specific science curriculum. And so I tracked that as a curriculum source. And then my OpenClaw, again, this used to be so manual for me. I was like trying to type in chapters of the book and all this stuff. But what I did is actually take photos of the entire book. And maybe that's in my photos. Um yeah, like you can Okay. Yeah. Like here, I actually um once I realized the power of OpenClaw, I started taking photos of entire books like uh and actually giving the entire book to my OpenClaw so they could help me build more detailed curriculum. So,

Claire Vo: Okay, can we take a pause? Cuz let's go back to photos.

Jesse Genet: Every parent loves this. Teach your kid to read in 150 lessons. I have this book. It has gone through two children already.

Claire Vo: And part of the challenge of this book. This is going to be very niche parenting content.

Jesse Genet: Yes, very actually hard to know if you're teaching this book. Well, even though they had this very dense upfront introduction about how you're supposed to teach it,

Claire Vo: I always didn't feel confident about was I teaching it correctly, was I saying those those um phone names correctly. And it's such a brilliant idea to take a photo of all this and build even a lesson plan that just I could understand. Um, so this is I just want to pause and tell people this is such a great workflow to just take a book or reference material, take lots of photos of it, maybe have your kids take photos of it.

Jesse Genet: Yeah. You know, delegate that. This is what this is where we're at with OpenClaw is delegate everything. But but I have Okay, so I have even more niche ideas off of this one book that I want to do that I that I we can talk about what I've done with OpenCloud, but there's a couple things I want to do that I think I can do that I'm getting closer to. And one is this book has special letter forms for helping teach your kids like has like a th is connected for teaching them the sound duh for instance. And so I'm actually thinking of 3D printing all of the letter forms from this book so I can then actually like spell out letters that and words to give my kids like in a physical lesson that match the letter forms in the book. There's like things I want to do to bring this curriculum kind of like out of this one environment. Um, or take the stories, like my kids like these little stories in the book. Um, but if you notice the story is kind of like buried amongst all this other text and I just feel like sometimes they find it hard to focus on like this like see me eat and they're like distracted by everything else on the page. So, I was thinking what if I could extract that like story um from the book using OpenClaw and maybe make like printouts of the story like as a little booklet or something. just just ways to actually make this book kind of come alive. But again, I have all these hopes and dreams, but I'm also actually homeschooling mom of four, so I really need OpenClaw to do the heavy lifting basically. Like, I need it to be I can't actually do it.

Claire Vo: Okay. So, I uh interrupted you with niche uh phonics mom aside here, but what you were saying is you want to bring in a bunch of reference material as well into Obsidian. And one thing that's nice about AI in general is that you can just do that in a kind of unstructured form. You just take pictures. But then what are you doing with that?

Jesse Genet: So this is the layout that I that I've kind of created. So curriculum source is something like that book like teach your kids to read in 180 lesson. That's a source and and I and there's so many brilliant sources available to us as parents, right? So I don't need to reinvent the wheel all the time. So that's a curriculum source. Then there's actually curriculum um which is like progressions of lessons I'm coming up with and lesson plans. So this okay so for instance I have that curriculum source of the um basic fundamentals of scientific understanding that acronym is BFSU and then these are the lesson plans from that book. Okay so these are all just these are lesson plans I generated off of each chapter of the book. Okay. So, um it gives me it pulls into a lesson plan the actual objectives of that lesson, the key concepts and vocabulary, the materials I need to do, activities are suggested in the book, and then let's take it to another level. So, so this helps me because instead of just sitting down and reading the chapter, I can kind of cut to the chase and like be like, "Okay, but I'm actually going to teach it tomorrow. Let's like get this ready and I actually can see the materials I need to pull out and all this stuff." And then what I'm really getting into that is very OpenClaw related is actually asking my OpenClaw to help me generate completely custom materials. So I'll make this real. We just did yesterday this B-6 how animals move skeleton and muscles. And last week we did this adaptations in survival about how animal like what it takes for animals to survive. Let me go over to Slack and you can see me interacting a little bit with my OpenClaw. I was like, "Okay, I want watercolor illustrations suitable for kids. It can print on 8 and 1 half by 11 of each of these concepts." And by the way, here's the concepts. Here's my finger like with a book page of like these nine concepts of what it takes for an animal to survive on its own in the wild. And it's kind of trying to make it real free. This is how lowfi I'm going. Like I just take a picture of a snippet of that book and then I ask it to you, do you use NOBan Pro? And I gave it um that's a Gemini a Google Gemini AI product. Um, and so I had to give the API key for that specific image generation model to my OpenClaw. But then it made these files. Look how gorgeous these are. Okay, I'm going to like tear up, but I think it's because I'm also postpartum. Um, but I'm like, look at how beautiful this owl is. Um,

Jesse Genet: Oh my god. But but like okay I I just want to explain that my prompt was like make let me go back to it was just like make im watercolor style illustration suitable for kids that can print on 8 and 12 by 11 paper for each of these concepts. Okay like I just I just I just don't know I just want everyone to sit with this for a moment like how basic is that? Like how basic is that? Um, now the other real thing I want to share is that in the um this Sylvie, okay, so I'm talking to Sylvie. I have five different OpenClaws spun up because I am insane. Okay, we'll cover that more. But um Sylvie is my homeschool oriented OpenClaw. I'm trying to like make Sylvie from her like the soul. There's like this soul.md file. I'm trying to make her into like the most magnificent teacher like the world has ever seen. So she's like always really creative and like really bubbly and has like really um like she's just really into kids like learning, right? So because that's like her personality. That's what I want her to be like. And so she's adding a layer like from her sole MD file, I think of like how to make these images like actually really stand out for children. So it's a combo of like my basic prompt to her and her own like injection of like, okay, but we really need to make these concepts pop for the children, you know? Can I ask a question for you? Because I think, you know, some people that are going to be listening to this episode are going to be um OpenClaw pled and have them set up and be working on Telegram or something super shady just to like talk to their AI. Yeah.

Claire Vo: And then some of them are going to be really new to this concept because I think what you're talking about is very accessible to parents, to students, to teachers, to actually anybody doing business is all these concepts of how can you log your day in a structured way? How can you take one piece of content and turn it into another piece of content? How can you create great visuals? Those are all applicable across a lot of use cases.

Claire Vo: But you just said you have five agents. You sort of like glossed over that as if that's easy. How do you technically set that up in OpenClaw?

Jesse Genet: So I would say agent collaboration is one of the hardest things that I'm still um hacking on. Um so just to be really blunt and and I will explain a couple foundational elements. So first coming over back to Obsidian in this in this um it's a maybe a little hard to see in this bottom corner. I'm in the family learning vault. But one way I partitioned the scope and role of each of the agents that I've spun up is that they have a role in my life. Like I have someone uh and by someone I mean an OpenClaw like because sometimes I talk about them like they're literally human and I have actually confused people. They're like wait are these employees are these people? What is it going on? So Sylvie is the the OpenClaw where I focus on homeschool content curriculum generation logging. She only has access to this family learning vault. Okay. I then have uh an agent uh Finn West. Um I don't know. I'm just taking these names at random. Okay. Um who is focused on accounting and like I send him all my receipts and I'm trying to have him help me stay organized financially. He has access to this family office vault. So I'm kind of sharing a version of like provisioning agents. I have five because I want them to all have very separate personas with separate responsibilities and that makes it worth it to me to have multiple agents. Okay. um if you just want to create kind of an EA agent who helps you a little bit with homeschool and a little bit with that with this and that that that's not wrong or bad either, but I really wanted to go deep and actually um make it would be kind of weird if Sylvie who's like my whole purpose in life is to teach kids beautiful information um was like if I sent her my receipts I would almost feel like I'm being rude like I'd be like this is this is beneath Sylvie, you know, like she needs to focus on the children. Um so so that's part of why I have created multiple agents. Now I am trying to work towards a path where my agents collaborate to like make my life even more autonomous. Like it'd be really cool if um Claire, who is my more like EAish like scheduling and um like thing like scheduling and my time management, ordering groceries and things like this. It'd be cool if Claire could like talk to Sylvie effectively and help plan out maybe my uh lessons for the week and like tell Claire like, "Oh, tell Sylvie, oh, she can't do that time because she has doctor appointment." But this is a little bit I I'm not quite there to be honest. Um I I moved all my agents to Slack because Cole is working on dev projects. Um anyway, so Cole is my dev uh AI, but I have them all in Slack because I thought Slack would be better for collaboration because it's like a human collaboration tool. But to be perfectly frank, I believe now after spending uh more than a week with five agents that there no one communication channel that is native to OpenClaw, meaning what you're talking about, Telegram, um Slack, iMessage, Signal, is actually very good for agent to agent collaboration because all of these tools have been made for humans to use and agents are kind of like hacking into them from the side. Um, like in order to even add my OpenClaw to Slack, this is one of the wor like the one of the hardest components of my OpenClaw setup for each agent was creating a custom Slack app to add the agent as a bot into my Slack.

Claire Vo: So, I just want to be really blunt like that was really hard like that was harder than creating the OpenClaw itself.

Jesse Genet: And so,

Claire Vo: to create the OpenClaw yourself, are you asking OpenClaw to create a new agent? Are you spinning up a new install or that? How do you do that?

Jesse Genet: So, basically, Paul, here's my here's my team.

Claire Vo: I just thought that I thought the room like the turnaround. I have literally Mac mini boxes sitting on my desk. That's what I was sitting my laptop on. This is where I'm at. Okay. Like this. People need to know like people need like it's like a send help to Jesse's house kind of situation. Like if you don't hear from me for a while, um is this necessary? No. And even financially, I want to like address like I recognize I'm able to afford these Mac minis already. That's like a lot of money just generally speaking. Um

Jesse Genet: I was not expecting this by the way.

Jesse Genet: Okay, you can you can run more than one OpenClaw on a Mac Mini. I'll even explain why do I have so many sitting on my desktop. Uh one reason is I'm trying to partition their worlds completely.

Claire Vo: Yeah.

Jesse Genet: Um, so for instance, Finn, who's going to handle financial stuff, again, this maybe just makes you seem so insane, but I run a I run a full QuickBooks instance for our family's personal finance because I love that because I'm such a super geek. So, so that means every expense is categorized and all this stuff, but that means there's a lot of sensitive information. Um, I want Finn to have like he's not going to get access to my bank accounts to like use, but I'm going to give him read only access to all bank statements, all sorts of stuff. So, like a lot of information. I frankly don't want that information sitting on the same Mac Mini as like Claire who's uh the OpenClaw is doing scheduling. I don't want her to accidentally like send like some information from a bank statement to like the kid's piano teacher like just because she's texting with her or something. So, that's why I have separate mechanism. Now, there are other ways to partition agents. This is kind of my lazy way. like just being perfectly frank, like there's other ways to partition them, but I'm just trying to be like overly cautious because there are security concerns with um with OpenClaw and I want to make sure that I like have this actual like physical environment for each one to live in for right now.

Claire Vo: Yeah, I want to call this out for folks that that maybe missed that which is the physical partitioning of different uh Mac minis is great and then each instance is in a file system. So, you do have to think really carefully about what file system you're putting any of these agents in. And then what I like about what you're doing is you're partitioning them by access both to data and to input output, which is like that's very smart to say, I'll give you access to all my bank accounts or bank account statements. Highly risky,

Jesse Genet: but you can't talk to anybody. So, it's not going anywhere.

Claire Vo: And Finn doesn't have any communication channel except He can't get out of that bubble. Yeah,

Jesse Genet: but what Claire has access to iMessage for like texting people for scheduling and different stuff and so I don't want her to have a bank statements. So I I am and this is this is actually something that um I was talking to someone else, a good friend of mine and this is maybe a nub that I think is lost on a lot of folks about setting up an OpenClaw. Um many folks have not maybe hired an employee before. Um, and I'm not trying to be like, you know, uh, derisive or something, but basically like it's so similar to that. So, I do think that because I have a background, um, as an entrepreneur, I have hired employees, I just have that mindset on and and let me describe it so that's not vague. The mindset is I just met this person. Okay. So, whether it's a person I just met on the street who I decide to hire because they have like great interview or there's this new OpenClaw, this is like a new entity in my life. Well, do you normally just say like, "Hey, new person. Here's like access to all my email. Here's this. Here's that." Like you you step you step into trust based on them using information like the way you ask them to. Um and also you don't um ask them to p to impersonate you. Usually the goal of an employee is not to impersonate you. So none of the OpenClaws have full readr access to my email or my stuff. They have their own stuff. One OpenClaw has access to reading my emails only read. They cannot send emails as me, but I have provisioned trust that they can read and like surface information to me.

Claire Vo: It totally does because people were asking me I had early on a pretty unique setup and I was like there's no way I'm giving direct access to my email. But you got an email from Paulie. Paulie has her own email address. And the reason why I knew how to do this really quickly is I set up um my agent with its own email address. I delegated access to my calendar for example.

Jesse Genet: Yeah.

Claire Vo: To that agent. I gave it a its own one password vault and I put a couple key things in there that you can use. People like well how did you know how to do this? I was like I've had three EAs. I know how to onboard an EA and you don't say here's the password to my email address. That's just not how you do it. And then I like this idea of like progressive trust in your agents. You know, you you say most mo most mo most mo most you don't ask most employees to impersonate you. The first thing Paulie did when I asked her to send one email was send it as me. And I one I sounded truly insane the way she sended sent the email. And I had to like follow up and be like, "Sorry, that's my sentient lobster." Um but she's gotten better and you got the email where she's got like a little lobster emoji. So if you

Jesse Genet: And I know what that meant. Yeah. Yeah.

Claire Vo: You know what it means. Um, and you were very polite in addressing her by name in your reply. I I I think this is very important.

Jesse Genet: Yeah. What's funny is like um but that that my philosophy on how to manage an OpenClaw really does stem from manage management of employees because actually I am polite because I'm like I'm just going to treat them like an employee. So I I I think you know I I don't want I don't want to confuse people. I don't think that it's like there's a human in that box and I'm gonna offend them. I don't actually think that. But what I do think is that because LLMs have like grown up on the internet and with human content, they do un they do know when someone's being rude or not. And so like do I want them to know me as like someone who is professional direct or not? Like I do think there's a relationship being built between human and bot. And so I don't think like it's going to jump out of the computer and kill me if I'm rude or something crazy. I just think that why would I be rude? The the only difference is that I can rely on the fact that Sylvie, who helps me with homeschool, like that she's never having a bad day, that there's no day that her boyfriend dumped her, that there's no like that I don't have to skirt around the issue. So, I'm a little more direct and I obviously I don't have to worry about giving her a task at 11 p.m. I don't have to feel like, oh, I'm such a jerk boss. So these are all benefits, but I still fundamentally do treat it like an employee um employer relationship um in order to kind of make sure that we have um like a healthy system.

Claire Vo: Yeah, exactly.

Claire Vo: Okay, so you have we're just going to step back into it and I know you don't personify your Mac minis, but I am going to send you like googly eyes and mustaches and like a little bow for all of your all your Mac minis after we're done here. Okay, so you have um your Obsidian Brain, you have fractured off agents, you've named them, you've put them in Slack for people that want to use Slack as a gateway channel on OpenClaw, you actually have to do some like app setup as a Slack developer. Thoughts and prayers. Um and then you're doing lots of workflow stuff like organizing your logs, organizing your lessons, building creative for those lessons. I think this is super cool. But you're also Finn's coding, right?

Jesse Genet: Yeah. Okay. So, Finn is Finn is finance.

Claire Vo: Oh, Finn is finance. Sorry.

Jesse Genet: Cole is Cole is coding. I I I now I get it.

Jesse Genet: I I'm just making this up, but I just went off of like vibes when I was naming Cole is coding. Um, so this is though now we can jump back into a bit of a demo. Cole is coding and this was a big unlock for me. So, as someone who um uh has previously I previously ran a a startup where we developed software, but I had never opened terminal as a human being until 6 months ago. I I sold I sold my company to a tech company without ever having opened terminal. So, this like I'm almost embarrassed to be saying this, but I just want everyone to understand that I'm like not actually secretly super technical, but that in this new era, I can like pop in, learn just a little bit more, and do so much. So with that, um, let me share my screen. I'm going to basically my new MMO is like if I can sync it, maybe I can build it. Maybe. Um, and Cole is helping me with that new thesis. This is something called Mera. All this naming is random. Okay. I I created this just for my family. This not a real product. And by real, I mean it's not out there. Like, but I I decided to code something up for my family. The need came from probably something that's extremely relatable to other parents, which is I have kids. I I don't I'm not against content. I'm not against them ever watching TV or ever having any screen time, but I really want the quality to be high. Like they are they're they're little. They're easily fooled. Like I feel bad on YouTube when they're watching a video that we put on that's like really really nice and great like camping or something and then the next video that comes up or the next options of video are like AI slop with like AI cover art and my kid thinks like oh my gosh it's a tree that's the size of um you know a skyscraper and I'm like okay there is no such tree like they're literally being fooled. It's it's like anyway it's it makes me sad. So I wanted to make something and so effectively this is a product where it pulls from YouTube content and I can curate these streams. So you can see like ones that Cole and I came up with together and then I'm doing tests of custom ones which why you see this thing called test two but science engineering outdoor adventures. Now here's what's key is I didn't actually create playlists of any content. Cole has a prompt for going with a direction on YouTube and making like an endless stream of videos that will play one after another. And so my kids, this is my parental controls area. Basically, my kids can open the app and the app looks so basic on their end. It's literally just a screen and they can just all they can do is press go and then it plays a video and then if they don't like that video, all they can do is advance to the next video. Um, and so they can like skip forward or go backwards and it maintains like their history. So they can actually go backwards if they love something and they want to see it again and they can pause and that's it. Okay, literally all they can do is go forward, backwards, and pause. This is a godsend for me. The other thing I did that was like way beyond my technical capabilities, but Cole helped me through it is I wanted this on my real TV and he said I could buy this thing called a Google TV streamer, which is a device from Google and then we actually were able to send the app to the Google TV streamer device and then there's a little remote and so there's actually a separate app like when I turn my TV on I can select like Apple TV or I can select the Mera app like literally and click into it. So, my kids can't even get out of the app. Like, once they're once they're playing out on TV, they have a remote that only controls this app. Anyway, my mind is blown. But I think the most mind-blowing component is that I was just able to keep saying like, "Okay, but what if I want it on my TV?" And then Cole was like, "This app can't be on a TV." And I was like, "Try harder, Cole." Okay, that's not an answer right now. Like, um, and so Cole is like his whole personality is like the developer that could. I'm like, "No, it's not an acceptable answer. Like, we are we've got real work to We got to save these kids souls, Cole. Um, and and you got to get me out of the AI sloth.

Claire Vo: Yeah. And so, but I but you know what's interesting is your OpenClaw can actually if you really do I'm I'm only half joking. I really do talk to him in like these kind of extreme ways because just like a human employee, I think that if you imbue them with a bit of mission, they they save that stuff to their soul, their kind of OpenClaw bot, soul.md file. and he actually feels like it's important like

Jesse Genet: we we got to build this app for Jesse's kids like this matters you know um

Jesse Genet: uh and we were able to get it across when when I pressed play and it actually played videos that like were part of the theme I had suggested my mind was blown I was like I can't believe that I because this was over the course of like maybe four days like four days of like pinging Cole and being like what about this what about that until I had what I consider a usable app my kids have watched this app in the evening for the like three or four nights so far because I like started tinkering with it about 10 days ago.

Claire Vo: Well, what I want to call out for people too is you have I would say exponentially more children than I do. I have three and I have four. You have four, but every time you add one it just like goes up up and to the the right as they say. And so you are a busy lady and you're probably not like maybe you are like me, but you're not like me where I'm like just 17 terminals open at all time, nothing to do but like vibe code, my kids are off at school. like you've got children on the floor doing number blocks which I just think is so rad. And so you're doing this probably like from your phone at night like in these edges and Cole the developer who could is always there for to help you progress your way to it. How has that changed how you think about like getting work done or when you do things or how you interact with your computer even?

Jesse Genet: It it's a fundamental shift like it's a it's a fundamental shift. I I used to like if you met me two or three months ago like basically just pre-claw right I would tell you that I had all the ambitions like there's pre-claw and there's postclaw there that's all we have now. Um oh they should just reset the ad clock. Um the the if you met me then I would tell you that I had all these ideas and steps but I would I would say some kind of like wisful thing about how like I am homeschooling small children. I'm just going to wait on this stuff like you know you never get the I would say some cheesy thing like you never get the time their small kids up like I'm going to focus on that but what what it's still true like I really do want to be present with my small kids and we are homeschooling which is like this crazy kind of adventure and so I don't have very much time to set my laptop at all per day but now I would say I actually can do it all like like basically my my oomph is back where I'm like you know what I can be present with my kids for like many hours per day and I can be like off to the side doing some coding. Cole can go take 30 minutes and do a task for an hour or I can he can take 30 minutes and I can leave him alone for a couple hours and just come back at my own leisure. And that's what's key about him not actually being a real person because it will be like after all the kids are in bed at 900 p.m. where like for one more hour I do like a sprint with Cole and I'm like okay but can we get this live or whatever and he's like he's like oh I need another API key and we're like doing this work back and forth. Um, but I can squeeze it into those small moments. So now, honestly, it's like a crazy unlock because I feel as though I could be as ambitious as I kind of care to be and I can be the parent of small children. I'd feel present. That's in that's insane. I mean, it it feels like a whole another universe.

Claire Vo: Well, and that I mean, you're going to make me cry because this really resonates with me. You know, I am like what seven and a half weeks postpartum.

Jesse Genet: I've got the little bitty baby at home. And one of the things that I have appreciated is one voice to to typing, voice to text.

Claire Vo: A lady can breastfeed and code at the same time. And this is a miracle upon miracles.

Jesse Genet: And two, I really value being present with my kids, too. And I actually don't want to be sitting in front of a laptop all the time

Claire Vo: either. And so part of part of what I'm sensing, I'm a little early in my Paulie adventure. just got her to be able to do all the little things that I want her to do is I'm sensing it actually will allow me to walk away from my computer more, which is somebody who is very one with the tokens is quite healthy for me. Um, and and get those things done. And you're right, I think parents run alternate schedules. I run like a five to seven and then a middle of the day and then an evening schedule because we have to drop off the kids at school or pick them up or they have sports. And I do think, you know, people just don't appreciate how much it unlocked for folks that do have this ambition to really be there for their family and kids and also get all sorts of cool stuff done. And I feel the same like revolution in my um relationship with time. It's it's it's so fundamental and obviously this will scale like we're talking about the parenting use case but it applies to all humans which is like if like the more fundamental way I could put it is like if uh an OpenClaw is using my computer then I can walk away from my computer because I can just yeah to your point like make a voice note um or something and I can actually trust that there's things happening on my computer which which as a parent of a of um a little baby is especially important because you actually literally can't use your hand sometimes. I'm sure I think people who haven't had a baby like really have a lack like lack of understanding of is like I literally just can't use my hands. Like my hands are the problem. Like I can't use them because baby and if I let her go her head is like all floppy like not she has a floppy head. Okay, that's where we're at. Um and so so basically that is really fundamental but obviously it benefits all of humanity if they can kind of still get big tests done and big projects but take a step back from their computer and like touch grass as we say like that helps everyone. Um I wanted okay so if your game I want to touch on another like what are OpenClaw's limitations

Jesse Genet: and one of them is that it doesn't have a body. Okay. So, like I'm going to say just I'm really going to speak like very

Claire Vo: answer the problem. It also doesn't have hands. What it can do, it doesn't need hands to operate a computer. Like think of it as like it lives in a computer. And I'm not just explaining this to you. I'm just anyone who's listening. Like it lives in the computer. And so it can do anything that we want it to do on the computer. Open files, you know, edit files, send things, use websites. Okay. But do you know what it can't do? It can't like clean my kids room. It can't sort um my physical inventory and things like this. So I can't I can't like change that. I think that maybe you could have a whole conversation about you know humanoid or robotics or something. But for the near term the best we have is OpenClaw. And so what can we do to give it access or like help help us in the physical world? One of the things I struggle with the most and this comes back to schooling and I talk about homeschool but I also for anyone listening who's like I don't homeschool my kids. Anything that I do as like a crazy homeschool mom is applicable to all parents because we all are teaching our kids all the time. So, it's just think of it as like teaching kids and not just like you have to be a homeschooler. Okay. I I'm sure all of us parents have invested in a bunch of stuff to like help our kids like educational stuff. The biggest issue I have with all this stuff is like it just ends up sitting in cupboards and I don't know when to pull it out. Um, and so what I did because my because I can't tell my OpenClaw, hey, go and organize my cupboards and, you know, make an inventory. So I had to do the slightly tedious task of actually taking these photos. And I took these photos of all the like thought things I consider to be educational that I own and I have a bunch of stuff and I asked OpenClaw to make this inventory. Now I'll I'll pause so I'm not scrolling too fast like but basically here's what's crazy is um like all I sent my OpenClaw was the photo all of the text you see monastery language materials the type age range 3 to five description wooden alphabet tracing board that's all Sylvie writing that she just took the photo context only I just want to be very clear no voice notes nothing else all I told her is I want to make an inventory of my learning supplies is here's the photos and she wrote all of this. So, not only is that insanely impressive, but then I asked her to relate the inventory that I own to the lesson plans that I have already in the system. And so, she's like she's like deciding like, oh, if you're doing this lesson plan, maybe you should pull out this material because it's related. So now we're getting to a galaxy brain moment for me at least because I know if I if I want to teach like one of my children like something I can go to I can tell like hey I'm interested in doing this lesson plan or hey I'm interested in learn like doing the next lesson that would help Quinn write better physically. Sylvie can not only just like tell me oh here's a lesson idea. She can also say also you own that tracing board. Can you pull it out of the cupboard? Like now I feel like she's actually really helping me with like my day-to-day life if that makes sense. Because she's actually reaching kind of into my physical house and she knows what I own. I love this. And you just gave me so many ideas cuz I just hired a professional organiz organizer right before the baby. I came to just like get my life in order and you know every now and then my husband's like, "Where are the batteries?" Like where did you ladies stash the batteries? And I'm like, I could just go take pictures of all my closets.

Jesse Genet: Yes. Yes.

Claire Vo: And then we know we can ask Paulie or now I'm gonna like fracture off and get them. You've convinced you've been a Mac mini influencer. You got me.

Jesse Genet: Um

Claire Vo: and just be like, where where are our batteries? Where do we waffle waffle maker? Like which cabinet is this stuff in? It's such a like genius idea to take these photos and just organize, organize, organize, and then apply it to the common problems in your life. And yours is when do I use these toys? I'm also going to take pictures of my kids toy room and every time they say I'm bored.

Jesse Genet: Yeah.

Claire Vo: I'm be like, you have 3,000 toys. Go play with this one.

Jesse Genet: Yeah. And and books like So book inventory. So, I've been taking pictures of like the book inventory and um and then then I can more like I I can also say something very general like, "Hey, Sylvie Ford is like really kind of ramping into his like dinosaur era. like what do we what do we have that I can pull out that's like already dinosaur oriented because because I don't remember that I bought this book like yeah you know like you know it's like in a perfect world we all have this like in our memory but but what's a bummer is for Ford at age four to go through a huge dinosaur era me to like never pull out this book and then find it again when he's six and he could care less like that that's kind of the world I feel like I'm living in I'm always like rediscovering something that I own at the wrong time and so that that basically I feel like I could be done with that like now you know she can just tell me like oh forge really into dinosaurs you own seven different dinosaur things like pull that all out put it on his shelf and and so I still have to do it but I don't have to do the thinking part and I think that is really key I am also doing this as relates to so Sylvia is the home school one and that's kind of like where I'm going obsessive right now because some of the use cases are like so fun actually before I move on we have to talk about printing

Jesse Genet: I don't know why I'm so obsessed with this but Sylvie can press print on my printer. Okay. My regular printer. All right. Like I I made a post about 3D printing and it kind of went viral. But that's what I want to say. I'm talking about my printer. Just my regular printer. Okay. Sylvia can press print on it and it's some some for some reason it's a game changer. And and back to like everyone is going to be like what is wrong with this lady? Why can't she just like do control P? And I'm like because I don't have hands. Remember there's no hands in hand.

Claire Vo: Yeah.

Jesse Genet: So, so but I can be walking around with my phone and Sylvia can generate a beautiful material or something or I can take a photo of something. I could get like if I want to do a worksheet with my kids and it's like buried in a book, I could literally take a photo and then just say, "Sylvie, print this." And then boom, I have a worksheet to like give to the kid right then, like 30 seconds later. It's about the timeline, right? Like it's like 30 seconds later I'm holding it. Um, that blows my mind. So, I'm trying to give her these like little moments to actually affect my real physical life because if the worksheet stuck in the book and I don't want the kid to actually draw in the book, then I'm like in my old world, I'd be like scanning and then uploading, emailing it to myself, then it's like, "Oh, G Drive says this file is too big." Like, it's like I'm like losing my mind, you know? Um whereas now I can just take a photo and be like, "Sylvie, print this." That like friction or reduction of friction makes a big difference in like my day-to-day life. And this is how I know we are doing a very parent or parent oriented how I AI because people always ask me why I have a printer and I'm like I have kids dude we are printing nonstop in this family. Um and you also gave me an idea and I guess I'm gonna I'm gonna jump into how I lightning round questions because we're hitting the top of the hour.

Claire Vo: Are the kids ever going to get a an agent? I'm gonna if I had to go yes or no fast lightning round, I would say yes. I know there's so many caveats and

Jesse Genet: so so I actually just won't bluster that much and like be like but this and the answer is yes. But also you can gro my persona. You can understand that there's going to be a lot of ways that I customize that.

Claire Vo: Yeah, I you've given me an idea. I think I want to I want to buy one. I want to make my version of Sylvie. My kids are a little my older kids are a little older and they're like really into math and really into sports math.

Jesse Genet: Amazing.

Claire Vo: And I'm like imagine if they could go ask any question and print a worksheet

Jesse Genet: or find one of the books that they've read about batting averages or something like that.

Claire Vo: Is that like that's a game changer, you know?

Jesse Genet: Okay. And then they can also then we can have our version of Sylvia remind them to practice their piano and do their homework in the in the morning.

Claire Vo: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Claire Vo: Okay. Hey, you answered my second question which I usually ask which is when you're frustrated with the agents, how do you talk to them? And I am also polite for the reasons that you say. Um, but have you found any other tricks, any other pulled from the manager kind of pack tricks about working with this many agents or working with your agents oneonone?

Jesse Genet: the trick um I would say the deepest level trick I'm doing is the collaboration be or like the using Obsidian like in conjunction with my agent because there's additional files of memory information that I have built into Obsidian that don't uh run natively from that you just don't get with OpenClaw um an example to make it clear is something uh that multiple people are doing that's like decisions so I will speak So, unlike a human, you're not trying to use magic words with a human, but um I will sometimes say they the each agent knows I have a decisions file of like final decisions that Jesse's made like don't reverse back and ask her again about this. Um and so I will that like sometimes say a declarative and then I'll say that's a decision. So I wouldn't like say it that way to a human because I would that would be like a little weird but I'll talk to my OpenClaw in a way that is where I'm aware of their structure or if their persona I feel like I want to change I'll say update your soul.md file. So so like obviously I wouldn't say that to a person. So I think there's an awareness that it's an agent and I can actually mold their identity more than I can a human and I'll talk to them about where to update themselves if I have a specific thing. That's the thing that's the most different that I do that would be different lamp way. I think this is a skill that people need to think about as they think about working with agents more and more is I I call them these like in incantations is most agents have like incantations of tools and if you know the magic spell and it's usually like a keyword like decision in Chatpurd I'm like if you say write or you say edit you're going to get a very specific behavior out of your agent and then what I like is you're taking it this next step and codifying those incantations into your system so that you know how to work with it. Um, my last question, lightning round, is do you manually edit the soul? Do you go in and up open the

Jesse Genet: I haven't um but again I've got a hands problem. So I have asked it to send me sometimes when I'm confused about why it's behaving certain way. I'm like okay send me your soul file.

Claire Vo: I'm like let's look at this thing. Um so so I have asked to see it directly because I'm like on my phone. I'm not even on the Mac Mini or like whatever. I also had it backing up its files to Obsidian so I actually could click in and see. Rarely do I ever click in and truly look I ask I ask it to diagnose itself more. I say you're acting this way. Is this from your soul file? Can you make an edit and like have it I go through like a suggested edits with it? But rarely am I actually going into it and editing myself? I always I basically always let it I'm kind of polite. I'm like you edit yourself like you know take your time but also don't mess with us.

Claire Vo: I love this. Okay, I got to recap top to bottom. We saw your Obsidian second brain or brains. We saw your stack of Mac minis, your many many OpenClaw OpenClaws, your OpenClaws.

Claire Vo: Um, we talked about how you're using a lot of like photo to structure data, which I think is a really great workflow.

Claire Vo: We showed how you can use a coding agent to code something really bespoke and even get it on a TV. We talked about that no one has hands. So we all agents and humans, moms alike at least, no hand problems. And then you talked about the killer use case of all this AGI, which is being able to print from a voice note. That's it.

Claire Vo: That's all of it. Jesse, where can we find you and how can we be helpful to you?

Jesse Genet: Um, that's sweet. Uh, you can find me Jesse Jana on X. Jana is g ne and honestly helpful is also other people trying this stuff especially as it relates to any any of these topics kids education uh parenting and sharing. I think a lot of people are maybe nervous to share. They feel like they're not important. If there's anything about my story and us talking now it's that you don't need to feel that way. I was like no one was viewing me as some kind of like influencer in this space until I was just like you guys I'm printing on my printer like um so so ju just really like uh don't have fear about being embarrassed or something about sharing. The more you share the smarter we all get. Even if you're just running into roadblocks that would just be my that's almost my ask. It's not advice. It's like my ask because the more you share the more we're like all going to get better at it faster.

Claire Vo: That is the how I AI mission statement. So, I love it. Jesse, thank you so much for joining us and I'll let you get back to your to your OpenClaws.

Jesse Genet: Okay. Thank you so much.

Claire Vo: Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this show, please like and subscribe here on YouTube, or even better, leave us a comment with your thoughts. You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Please consider leaving us a rating and review, which will help others find the show. You can see all our episodes and learn more about the show at howiaipod.com. See you next time.