# Long-running agents can automate work without making good products Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/long-running-agents-can-automate-work-without-making-good/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Peter Steinberger](https://realalpha.app/builders/peter-steinberger/) · Peter Steinberger is creator of OpenClaw. · Created viral open-source personal agent OpenClaw and joined OpenAI to drive next-generation personal agents. - Host: [Peter Yang](https://realalpha.app/people/peter-yang/) · Host, Behind the Craft · Led product at Roblox, Reddit, Twitch and Meta for 10+ years. - Show: Behind the Craft - Episode: [How OpenClaw's Creator Uses AI to Run His Life in 40 Minutes | Peter Steinberger](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/), Feb 1, 2026 - Moment: 22:33 to 28:26 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/long-running-agents-can-automate-work-without-making-good/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1353 ## Quote > “Because what those agents don't really do yet is **have taste**. They are really, they are spiky smart.” > — [Peter Steinberger](https://realalpha.app/builders/peter-steinberger/) at [24:48](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1488) · Behind the Craft ## Takeaways 1. More agents and longer runs are not proof of productivity. 2. Agents lack taste and need a person with a clear vision. 3. Iterate with the model as the project takes shape. ## About this segment Peter Steinberger calls overbuilt agent workflows the agentic trap: they can feel productive while generating slop. He argues that human vision and taste are still essential to making something good. From “How OpenClaw's Creator Uses AI to Run His Life in 40 Minutes | Peter Steinberger”, Feb 1, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/) ## Transcript Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [22:42](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1362) But I work a lot, I build a lot of things and I love Twitter as well, so I'm very active there and I just see so much, I almost, I kind of call it the agentic trap because people discover that, oh, those agents are amazing, but they would be better if they could do a little bit more and then they really fall deep into this rabbit hole. And I've been there myself where you build really sophisticated tools to like try to accelerate your workflow, but in the end, you're just building tools. [23:10](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1390) you're not actually building something that really brings you forward you just have this you know part of the problem is that it's so fun yeah like like when i when i started pretty early i i worked on vibe tunnel to have access of my terminals on my phone and i i was in this rabbit hole for two months until i it was so good that i was out with my friends on and instead of like joining the conversation the rest and i was just like vibe coding on my phone and i decided okay I have to stop this just more for my mental health than for anything else. [23:44](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1424) And these days, you can build everything, but you still need ideas. So I see so many managers for Cloud Code or Codex or orchestrators or other little things that have... The illusion of making you more productive, but really aren't. I mean, like the latest thing that I just had, I just cracked about it was like Gastown. It's like a really sophisticated orchestrator that is like also very broken and doesn't really work, where you run like tens or twenties of agents simultaneously and they all talk to each other and try to split up. [24:25](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1465) and there's like there's like watchers and overseers and a mayor and pole cats and i don't know what else really there's a mayor yeah in gaston there's a mayor i mean i call it slop town um or like or like this whole trend of ralphing where you just like you you give the ai one little thing and then like you write in a loop and then once a little thing is done you trash away all your context and you start again um like the ultimate token burn machine yeah and then and And then it can create code and run all night. [24:56](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1496) And then you have like the ultimate slop. Because what those agents don't really do yet is have taste. They are really, they are spiky smart. And they're really good at things. But if you don't navigate them well, if you don't have a vision of what you're going to build, it's still going to be slop. If you don't ask the right questions, it's still going to be slop. And I don't know how other people work, but when I start a project, I have like this very rough idea what it could be. [25:27](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1527) And as I built it and as I play with it and as I dare as I feel it, my vision gets more clear and I get like, I try out things, some things don't work and I evolve my idea into what it will become. And that's like my next prompt depends on what I see and feel and think about the current state of the project. but if you if you try to put everything into a spec up front you miss this kind of like human machine loop and and then and then i don't know how something good can come out without having having feelings in the loop almost like like taste so so it was like somebody somebody tweeted like oh look at this mac app like it was fully ralphed and i replied yeah it looks ralphed like no offense but it looks ralph because like you could clearly see that like no same person would design it that way yeah it feels like it feels like some some people are just like uh [26:25](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1585) actually building these things not for the apps themselves but to prove that they can get to run for like 24 hours like get ai to run for 25 hours without intervention right it's like self-master kind of kind of thing right it's just trying to prove that you can get ai to run super long time it's like uh it's like a size comparison context without saying the other word in a way and I've been guilty a little bit of that myself like I also had like a loop for 26 hours and I was very proud but it's that's it's a vanity metric it doesn't that makes no sense that makes no sense like just because you can build everything doesn't mean you should or that is going to be good but then again this this phase of I'm just playing I'm just like literally I'm building for fun it doesn't matter if it's going to be used this is incredibly useful because that's how you [27:11](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1631) learn right that's how that's how we learn to program and prompting is just a different skill sometimes i see people that they're like a little more on the on the ai skeptical side so they ignore it for a year and then they spend one day where they they evaluate the models and then they do a blog post and then they write like a short prompt and feed it i don't know into cloud web to make him make him and make an iphone app which like is completely underspecked and the model does it's best to deliver something and they're like it doesn't compile because they build it on the linux machine where there's no compiler for that you know and then you're like oh it's not good and then they dismiss the whole topic for a year it's like that's that's not how it works yeah you need to play to to to understand how [28:00](https://realalpha.app/v/AcwK1Uuwc0U/?t=1680) Those little monsters work. You need to understand a little bit their language, their way of inference, of thinking, and then you get progressively better at it, and then your output will be better. Yeah, you have to be persistent, right? Because sometimes it doesn't work properly, and you have to fix all the bugs.