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Behind the Craft · 3 min · Feb 1, 2026

Personal AI assistants could replace many phone apps

Peter Steinberger predicts assistants could replace many phone apps by combining services, context and memory in one interface. Repeated tasks get easier as the agent learns each workflow.

Peter Steinberger

Peter Steinberger is creator of OpenClaw.

Created viral open-source personal agent OpenClaw and joined OpenAI to drive next-generation personal agents.

  • Peter Yang, Host · Host, Behind the Craft

    Led product at Roblox, Reddit, Twitch and Meta for 10+ years.

About this segment

Peter Steinberger predicts assistants could replace many phone apps by combining services, context and memory in one interface. Repeated tasks get easier as the agent learns each workflow.

From “How OpenClaw's Creator Uses AI to Run His Life in 40 Minutes | Peter Steinberger”, Feb 1, 2026. Watch the full episode

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“there's a whole layer of apps that will slowly melt away because if they have an api these are just services that your ai will do”
Peter Steinbergerat 20:44 · Behind the Craft20:44

Takeaways

  1. An assistant can replace separate apps for food, travel and to-dos.
  2. APIs let an AI handle tasks that apps currently handle on their own.
  3. Persistent memory helps the agent reuse workflows it has learned.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 22:33Long-running agents can automate work without making good products5:53
  2. 29:07Peter steers coding agents through conversation, not plan mode6:20
  3. 14:37AI can handle errands, but its camera judgment can fail2:42

  4. 19:34Personal AI assistants could replace many phone apps2:48

  5. 2:48OpenClaw improvised around missing integrations2:34Up next
  6. 5:50AI lets engineers carry their system thinking across languages2:21

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 19:44

    I don't know if this is the project that's going to be, but if you think about it, this will lend away probably 80% of the apps that you have on your phone. Why should I use MyFitnessPal to track food when I have an infinitely resourceful assistant? that already knows I'm making bad decisions and I'm Kentucky Fried Chicken. So it will probably like remind me if I forget tracking the food, I can just send a picture and it will store it itself in the database and calculate it and roast me that I should go to the gym because I'm like way over my calorie limit.

  2. 20:18

    Why do I need an app to like set up when my bed, my A-slip should work or not? Because it just has API access. It can just do that for me. Why do I need a to-do app when it just tracks my to do's for me why do I need an app to like check in on my flights when it can just do that for me and it's like such a more convenient interface because I just I just talk to a friend yeah and because it has so much so much context it doesn't need so much custom prompting like why do I need a shopping app when it literally can like recommend these things and do all of that for me so I feel I feel there's a whole layer of apps that will slowly melt away because if they have an api these are just services that your ai will do and in a year i don't know i think actually this year will be the year where a lot of people will explore it

  3. 21:08

    more and like get their uh ai assistance from all those big companies yeah i think uh yeah why click on these little self-contained little apps when like yeah this assistant has a bunch of capabilities can just do everything right just connect it to everything and i guess the way you connect it to everything is just like you just you send it a text message or something and then it's like oh can you do this and they're like oh i need to do some research and then it just takes care you just kind of go back and forth with it and make it have happen right yeah and and then and then it writes a skill and it it remembers so part of what makes it so interesting is that it has it has persistent memory it will learn about you and it will update yourself so it so you the more you use it the more you customize it and the more powerful

  4. 21:50

    it gets because because okay maybe the first time you have to like guide it a little bit but then it will it will create a skill and then next time you can just mention it next time it i need to like check in my flight it will take like two minutes because it exactly knows all the quirks of the website yeah because it did it before and it made notes got it yeah it's like teaching someone to just learn something and they can do it easily the next time yeah yeah all right