TBPN Full Interview: Clawdbot’s Peter Steinberger Makes First Public Appearance Since Launch
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Jan 28, 2026 
Peter Steinberger, software engineer who built iOS developer tools and returned from retirement to create the Clawdbot/MaltBot open-source personal agent. He talks about rediscovering coding joy, playful rapid prototyping, early agent hacks and WhatsApp integrations. He covers viral growth, scaling community support, model and hardware tradeoffs, self-hosting, and the move toward agents replacing apps.
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Return From Burnout Sparked By AI
- Peter Steinberger took a multi-year break after selling his company and only returned when he rekindled interest in building with AI.
- He started exploring agents and formed a meetup called Agents Anonymous to share and learn with friends.
WhatsApp Hack That Proved Agent Resourcefulness
- Peter built a WhatsApp bridge to chat with his agent and discovered it could transcribe voice messages by converting Opus to WAV and using an OpenAI key.
- That moment convinced him agents could be resourceful and act autonomously across tools on his devices.
Build For Models, Not Just Humans
- Build CLIs and design tools for how models expect them, not for human convenience.
- Peter argues agent-driven tooling scales because agents can call help menus and learn existing Unix-style programs.