How I AI5 OpenClaw agents run my home, finances, and code | Jesse Genet
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
50 min read · 10,385 words- 0:00 – 2:30
Meet Jesse and her “after Claw” life
- CVClaire Vo
What brought you to the lobster agent we know and love?
- JGJesse 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 wanna figure this out, and I wanna run my home school this way, so maybe this can help.
- CVClaire 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."
- JGJesse 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. [laughs] I didn't really have time to develop this second brain.
- CVClaire Vo
People just don't appreciate how much it unlocks 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. [upbeat music] 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 Genet, who has four kids and five OpenClaw Mac Minis sitting on her desk, helping her run everything from her home school to her finances. Jesse has established there are two phases now, before Claw and after Claw, and she is gonna show us the future of what an after Claw 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 Opal 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 busywork, and keeping everything on brand. That leaves marketers with more time to do your actual job. See what Opal 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
- 2:30 – 4:44
Layering OpenClaw on top of Obsidian
- CVClaire Vo
AI glasses. Jesse, I am excited that you are 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 agen- adjacent energy in the, uh, in the Claw space. And so, [laughs] 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?
- JGJesse 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 in, like, Claw land, right? Um, but the reason is 'cause 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 Clawbot," 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 home school 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 of actually using it because I don't have any time [laughs] 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 Clawbot was, um, which is now called OpenClaw, and I... At first I felt 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, snafus. I re- I was reading your tweets about some of them, and I had my own. But, um, but I... That, that was, like, my jumping moment. Like, this is really interesting. I wanna figure this out,
- 4:44 – 7:12
Logging homeschool lessons automatically
- JGJesse Genet
and I wanna run my home school this way, so maybe this can help.
- CVClaire Vo
So you were running homes- your home school partially on Obsidian.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- CVClaire Vo
And you know, we've actually had a couple episodes on Obsidian. Teresa Torres did one on Obsidian and Claude Claude, how she's running her own, um, sort of, like, personal brain off of it.
- JGJesse Genet
Mm-hmm.
- CVClaire Vo
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 wanna show us what that brain looked like, and then where kind of OpenClaw layered on top?
- JGJesse Genet
Okay, so Obsidian has this cool opportunity of being your second brain, right? But, um, the problem is I'm always looking for my first brain, okay? Because I have four little kids. [laughs] Um, so I didn't really have time to develop this second brain. Um, and so my... So h- we're in my Obsidian now, okay? And I call my vault, um, Obsidian is structured on vault. I call my vault Family Learning, and the reason I actually titled it that was that we... Like, I wanna, I wanna 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 core structureIs 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 wanna know the date we did it, I wanna know who the instructor, which children of mine, um, out of the four of them, were like included in that lesson, what was taught, um, what might come like next, ah, 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, an obsessive res- record keeper, although maybe that accusation is fair. [laughs] 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 a cute picture of my kids. This is like a grievance.
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Um, then it can suggest that maybe it seems like Quinn, ah, nailed the, you know, pattern blocks, who's my oldest, but maybe Elle, 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
- 7:12 – 13:09
Turning books into a structured curriculum
- JGJesse Genet
that. So we've got all these logs. We have a curriculum, curriculum sources also. Like for instance, I love, um, the BFSU, ah, like this specific science curriculum. And so I track 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, well you can... Okay, yeah. Like here, I actually, um, once I realized the power of OpenClaw I started taking photos of entire books. Like, ah, and actually giving the entire book to my OpenClaw so it could help me build more detailed curriculum. So, um-
- CVClaire Vo
Okay, can we take a pause?
- JGJesse Genet
Yes, yes.
- CVClaire Vo
'Cause let's go back to photos.
- JGJesse Genet
[laughs]
- CVClaire Vo
Every parent loves this Teach Your Kid to Read in 180 Lessons.
- JGJesse Genet
Yes.
- CVClaire Vo
I have this book.
- JGJesse Genet
Yes.
- CVClaire Vo
It has gone through two children already.
- JGJesse Genet
Yes.
- CVClaire Vo
And part of the challenge of this book, this is gonna be very niche parenting content.
- JGJesse Genet
Yes, very niche.
- CVClaire Vo
It's actually hard to know if you're teaching this book well. Even though they have this very dense upfront introduction-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- CVClaire Vo
... about how you're supposed to teach it.
- JGJesse Genet
Yep.
- CVClaire Vo
I always didn't feel confident about was I teaching it correctly? Was I saying those, those, um, pho 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 wanna pause and tell people this is such a great workflow, to just take a book or a reference material, take lots of photos of it, maybe have your kids take photos of it. [laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah, yeah. Delegate it.
- CVClaire Vo
And then you've got this, this... Right
- JGJesse Genet
But this is what I, this is what I with OpenClaw is delegate everything. But, but I have... Okay, so I have even more niche ideas off of this one book that I wanna do that I, that I... We can talk about what I've done with OpenClaw, 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 it has like a TH that is connected for teaching them the sound th, 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 that I wanna 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 a homeschooling mom of four, so I really need OpenClaw to do the heavy lifting for this thing.
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Like I need it to do it. I can't actually do it.
- CVClaire Vo
Okay, so I, uh, interrupted you with niche, uh, phonics mom aside here, but what you were saying is you wanna bring in a bunch of reference mate- material as well into Obsidian.
- JGJesse Genet
Yes.
- CVClaire Vo
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?
- JGJesse 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 Lessons. 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 that 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 gonna 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. [laughs] And last week we did this Adaptations and Survival about how animals... 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 that can print on eight and a 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 just kinda trying to make it real for people. Like, this is how lo-fi I'm going. Like, I just take a picture of a snippet of that book, and then I ask it to use NanoBanana 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.
- CVClaire Vo
Oh, they're so beautiful.
- JGJesse Genet
Okay, I'm gonna, like, tear up, but I think it's 'cause I'm also postpartum, um, but I'm like, look at how beautiful this owl is. Um-
- CVClaire Vo
Oh my God.
- 13:09 – 14:39
Using SOUL.md files to give each agent a personality
- JGJesse Genet
Um, now the other real thing I wanna 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, 'cause that's, like, her personality. That's what I want her to be like. And so she's adding a layer, like, from her soul 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?
- CVClaire Vo
Can I ask a question for you?
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- CVClaire Vo
Because I think, you know, some people that are gonna be listening to this episode are gonna be, um, OpenClaw pilled and have them set up and be working on Telegram or something super shady just to, like, talk to their AI.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- CVClaire Vo
And then some of them are gonna 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
- 14:39 – 16:43
Running multiple specialized AI agents
- CVClaire Vo
cases.
- JGJesse Genet
Totally.
- CVClaire Vo
But you just said you have five agents. You sort of, like, glossed over that as if that's easy.
- JGJesse Genet
[laughs]
- CVClaire Vo
How do you technically set that up in OpenClaw?
- JGJesse Genet
So I would say agent collaboration is one of the hardest things that I'm still, um, hacking on. Um, so I'm just gonna 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, uh, maybe a little hard to see, but in this-
- CVClaire Vo
Yep
- JGJesse Genet
... 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.
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Like, 'cause 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 going on?"
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
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 s- 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 wanna create kind of an EA agent who helps you a little bit with homeschool and a little bit with that, with this and that, th- 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.
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
I would almost feel like I'm being rude. Like, I'd be like-
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
... this, this is beneath Sylvie, you know? Like, she needs to focus on the children. Um, so, so, so that's part of why I have created multiple agents.
- 16:43 – 18:19
Agent collaboration
- JGJesse Genet
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's my more, like, EA-ish, 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, k- tell Sylvie, oh, she can't do that time 'cause she has a 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 'cause it's, like, a human collaboration tool.
- CVClaire Vo
Yep.
- JGJesse Genet
But to be perfectly frank, I believe now after spending, uh, more than a week with five agents that there are 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.
- CVClaire Vo
Yep.
- JGJesse Genet
'Cause 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-
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... into my Slack. So I just wanna be really blunt. Like, that was really hard. Like, that was harder than creating the OpenClaw itself.
- 18:19 – 27:00
Partitioning data across Mac Minis
- JGJesse Genet
And so-
- CVClaire Vo
To create the OpenClaw yourself, are you asking OpenClaw to create a new agent? Are you spinning up a new install-
- JGJesse Genet
So-
- CVClaire Vo
Or that... How do you do that?
- JGJesse Genet
So basically, Paul-
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
... here's my, here's my team.
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
I just thought that... I thought the roo- 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?
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Like, th- this is... 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 wanna, 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-
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs] I was not expecting this, by the way. [laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Okay. You, you can, you can run more than one OpenClaw on a Mac Mini. W- w- I'll even explain why do I have so many sitting on my desktop. Uh, one reason is I, I'm trying to partition their worlds completely.
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
Um, so for instance, Finn, who's gonna handle financial stuff, again, this maybe just makes me seem so insane, but I run a pr- I run a q- 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 gonna get access to my bank accounts to, like, use, but I'm gonna 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, whose, uh, the OpenClaw that's doing the scheduling. I don't want her to accidentally, like, send, like, some information from a bank statement to, like, the kids' piano teacher, like, just 'cause she's texting with her or something. So that's why I have separate Mac Minis. 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 wanna make sure that I, like, have this actual, like, physical environment for each one to live in for right now.
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah, I wanna 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-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- CVClaire Vo
... 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."
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- CVClaire Vo
Highly risky.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- CVClaire Vo
But you can't talk to anybody.
- JGJesse Genet
Right.
- CVClaire Vo
So it's not going anywhere.
- JGJesse Genet
And Finn doesn't have any communication channel except Slack.
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
He can't get out of that bubble.
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
And but what... Claire has access to iMessage for, like, texting people for scheduling and different stuff.
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah.
- 27:00 – 37:00
Building a custom YouTube app with AI
- JGJesse Genet
can sync it, maybe I can build it. Maybe. Um, and Cole is helping me with that new thesis. This is something called Mira. I- all of these nameings are random, okay? I, I created this just for my family. This is 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, 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 the 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... Uh, 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 is why you see this thing called Test 2. But science and 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 a, 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 wanna 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 that 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 Mira 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 on the 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 I'm reading right now. Like, like, um, and so Cole is like, his whole personality is, like, the developer that could. I'm like, "No is not an acceptable answer." Like, we are, we've got real work to do. We gotta save these kids' souls, Cole. Um-And, and it-
- CVClaire Vo
You gotta get me out of the AI slop
- JGJesse Genet
... yeah, and so, but I, but you know, what's interesting is your Claw bot can actually, if you really do- I'm, I'm only half joking, I really do talk to him in like these e- 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-
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... kind of Claw bot soul to IMD, and he actually feels like it's important, like-
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... we, we gotta build this app for Jess's kids, like this matters, you know? Um, 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..." 'Cause this was over the course of like maybe four days, like four days of like pinging Cole and being like-
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... "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.
- CVClaire Vo
Well, what I wanna 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 m- 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-
- JGJesse Genet
Mm
- CVClaire Vo
... how you interact with your computer even?
- JGJesse 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 b- basically just pre-Claw, right? I would tell you that I had all the ambitions. Like there's pre-Claw and there's post-Claw. There- that's all we have now. Um, oh, they should just reset the AD Claw. Um, the, the, if you met me then, I would tell you that I had all these ideas and stuff, but I would, I would say some kind of like wistful thing about how like I am homeschooling small children, I'm just gonna wait on this stuff. Like, to like, you know, you never get the, a... I would say some cheesy thing-
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... like you never get the time with your small kids back, like I'm gonna focus on that. But what, what... It's still true. Like, I really do wanna 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 sit on 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 c- he can take 30 minutes and I can leave him alone for a couple of 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 9:00 PM 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 and feel present. That's in- that's insane. I mean, it, it, it just feels like a whole 'nother universe.
- CVClaire Vo
Well, and that, I mean, you're gonna make me cry 'cause this really resonates with me. You know, I am like, what? Seven and a half weeks-
- JGJesse Genet
Wow
- CVClaire Vo
... postpartum. 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.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah. Yes.
- CVClaire Vo
A, a lady can breastfeed and code at the same time, and this is-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- CVClaire Vo
... a miracle upon miracles.
- JGJesse Genet
Yes.
- CVClaire Vo
And two, I really value being present with my kids too, and I actually don't wanna be sitting in front of a laptop all the time-
- JGJesse Genet
Right
- CVClaire Vo
... either. And so part of, part of what I'm sensing, I'm a little early in my Polly adventure, I just got her to be able to do all the little things that I want her to do-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- CVClaire Vo
... is I'm sensing it actually will allow me to walk away from my computer more, which as 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 5:00 to 7:00, 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, s- people just don't appreciate how much it unlocks 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.
- JGJesse Genet
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 hands sometimes, which 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 they're holding the baby, and if I let her go, her head is like all floppy and like it is 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 tasks done and big projects, but take a step back from their computer and like touch grass, as we say. Like, uh, that helps everyone. Um, I wanted... Okay, so if you're game, I wanna touch on another, like what are OpenClaw's limitations, and one of them is that it doesn't have a body, okay? So like I'm gonna say just, I'm really gonna speak like very gen-
- CVClaire Vo
Hands are the problem
- 37:00 – 41:00
Creating a physical inventory from cupboard photos
- JGJesse Genet
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 homeschooling. 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 h- 'cause I can't tell my OpenClaw, "Hey, go and organize my cupboards and ke- 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, th- 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, Montessori language materials, the type, age range, three to five, description, wood- wooden alphabet tracing board, that's all Sylvie writing that. She just took the photo context only. I just wanna be very clear. No voice notes, nothing else. All I told her is, "I wanna make an inventory of my learning supplies. 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, m- she's, like, deciding that, 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 wanna teach, like, o- one of my children, like, something, I can go to d- I can tell Sylvie, like, "Hey, I'm interested in doing this lesson plan," or, "Hey, I'm interested in lear- like, doing the next lesson," that would help Quinn write better physically. Sylvie cannot 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, 'cause she's actually reaching kinda into my physical house and she knows what I own.
- CVClaire Vo
I love this, and you just gave me so many ideas, 'cause I just hired a professional organiz- organizer right before-
- JGJesse Genet
Mm. Yeah
- CVClaire Vo
... the baby 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-"
- JGJesse Genet
[laughs]
- CVClaire Vo
"... stash the batteries?" And I'm like, I could just go take pictures of all my closets.
- JGJesse Genet
Yes. Yes.
- CVClaire Vo
And then we know, we can ask Polly, or now I'm gonna, like, fracture off and get a ... You've convi- you've been a Mac Mini influencer.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah. Yeah.
- CVClaire Vo
You got me. Um, and just be like, "Where, where are our batteries? Where do we keep the 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"-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- CVClaire Vo
... I'm gonna be like, "You have 3,000 toys. Go play with this one."
- JGJesse 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?" And c- 'cause I don't remember that I bought this book. Like-
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah
- JGJesse Genet
... you know? Like, y- you know, it, 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, is like 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, Ford really into dinosaurs?
- 41:00 – 44:00
Printing from voice: reducing friction
- JGJesse Genet
You own seven different dinosaur things. Like, pull that all out."
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
"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 it relates to ... So Sylvie is the homeschool 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.
- CVClaire Vo
Yes.
- JGJesse Genet
I don't know why I'm so obsessed with this, but Sylvie can press print on my printer. Okay.
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
My regular printer. All right? Like, I, I made a post about 3D printing and it kinda went viral, but that's why I wanna say I'm talking about my printer, just my regular printer, okay? Sylvie 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 gonna be like, "What is wrong with this lady? Why can't she just, like, do Control P?" And I'm like-
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
... "Because I don't have hands." Remember?
- CVClaire Vo
No.
- JGJesse Genet
There's no hand anymore.
- CVClaire Vo
No hands. [laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah. So, so, but I can be walking around with my phone, and Sylvie can generate a beautiful material or something, or I can take a photo of something. I could get ... Like, if I wanna 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's 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.
- CVClaire Vo
And this is how I know we are doing a very parent orient- 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 AI lightning round questions, 'cause we're hitting the top of the hour.
- JGJesse Genet
Okay.
- CVClaire Vo
Are the kids ever gonna get a- an agent?
- JGJesse Genet
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 so... So I actually just won't bluster that much and, like, be like, "But this and..." The answer is yes, but also, if you can grok my persona, you can understand that there's gonna be a lot of ways that I customize that.
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah. I- you've given me an idea. I think I wanna, I wanna buy one. I wanna 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.
- JGJesse Genet
Amazing.
- CVClaire Vo
And I'm like, imagine if they could go ask any question-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- CVClaire Vo
... and print a worksheet or find-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah, like a little-
- CVClaire Vo
... one of the books that they've read
- JGJesse Genet
... a math work- about batting averages or something.
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
Like, that... You know? Like, that's a game changer, you know?
- CVClaire Vo
Okay. And then they can also... Then
- 44:00 – 49:27
Managing agent memory and decision files
- CVClaire Vo
we can have our version of Sylvie remind them to practice their piano-
- JGJesse Genet
Yes
- CVClaire Vo
... and do their homework in the morning. [laughs] In the morning.
- JGJesse Genet
Yes, yes, yes.
- CVClaire Vo
Okay, 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-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- CVClaire Vo
... that you'd say.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- CVClaire Vo
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 one-on-one?
- JGJesse Genet
The trick, um, I would say the deepest level trick I'm doing is the collaboration be- or, like, the using Obsidian co- like, in conjunction with my agent, because there's additional files of memory information that I have built into Obsidian that don't ru- run natively from the... You just don't get with OpenClaw.
- CVClaire Vo
Yeah.
- JGJesse Genet
Um, an example, to make it clear, is something, uh, that mul- most 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, th- 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, they'll, like, sometimes say a declarative, and then I'll say, "That's a decision." And so I wouldn't, like, say it that way to a human, 'cause 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 wanna change, I'll say, "Update your SOULmd file." So, so, like, obviously I wouldn't say that to a person, so I think-
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
... 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 than I play.
- CVClaire Vo
I think this is a skill that people need to think about as they think about working with agents more and more, is I c- I call them these, like, inc- 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 ChatPRD, I'm like, if you say write or you say edit, you're gonna 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 soul?
- JGJesse Genet
I haven't. Um, w- but, but again, I've got a hands problem. So I have-
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs]
- JGJesse Genet
... asked it to send me... Sometimes when I'm confused about why it's behaving a certain way, I'm like, "Okay, send me your soul file." [laughs] I'm like, "Let's look at this thing." Um, so, so I have asked to see it directly, 'cause I'm, like, on my phone. I'm not even on the Mac Mini or, like, whatever. I also have it backing up its files to Obsidian, though, 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 let... I basically always let it... I'm kinda polite. I'm like, "You edit it yourself. Like, you know, take your time, but also don't mess it up."
- CVClaire Vo
[laughs] I love this. Okay, I gotta recap top to bottom. We saw your Obsidian second brain or brains. We saw your stack of Mac Minis, your many, many Claude, Claude bots, OpenClaws, your claws.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- CVClaire Vo
Um, we talked about how you're l- using a lot of, like, photo to structure data, which I think is a-
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah
- CVClaire Vo
... really great workflow. 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, 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.
- JGJesse Genet
Yeah.
- CVClaire Vo
That's it. That's all of it. Jesse, where can we find you, and how can we be helpful to you?
- JGJesse Genet
Oh, that's sweet. Uh, uh, you can find me, uh, Jesse Genet on X. Genet is G-E-N-E-T. 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 i- 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, 'cause the more you share, the more we're, like, all gonna get better at it faster.
- CVClaire Vo
That is the How I AI mission statement, so I love it. Jesse, thank you so much for joining us.
- JGJesse Genet
Thank you.
- CVClaire Vo
And I'll let you get back-
- JGJesse Genet
Thanks for having me
Episode duration: 49:27
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