Does Your Moltbot Need a Mac Mini?

My Moltbot Journey.

While most people on X using AI seem to be desperate for their first hit, Peter Steinberger is the opposite.

He sold a company called PSPPDFKit for 100M EUR, fell into an existential spiral and returned to build things with AI for the sheer joy of it.

His "CURRENT PROJECTS” list nearly exceeds my vertical screen real estate but of course it’s the little lobster on top that has been stealing the show: Clawdbot Moltbot.

Source: gh/steipete

X is now littered with articles that explain how to install the bot and give it access to everything. Did I fall for it? Kinda.

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OK I DID DO IT

I went the Mac Mini route. But let me explain. It’s not because I'm a PM or an Apple boy (even though I'm both those things). I simply already had an M1 Mac Mini that I've been using as a sandbox.

I didn't install it for the obvious viral reasons either (I don't want an agent to surprise me with a daily app or handle my calendar).

In fact, these use cases don't really matter and most people are using Moltbot wrong. We can classify these as 3 big failure modes:

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FAILURE MODE Nº1: PERSONAL ASSISTANT

I recently thought it would be pretty clever to ask Perplexity and Deep Research to look up “Japanese Toddler breakfasts” and curate something that was appropriate modulo my son’s allergies.

Needless to say it didn't work. In true 2010s fashion I ended up finding a Japanese food blogger and going through her breakfast category manually one-by-one.

Source: Just One Cookbook, i.e., me doing honest work

If you've wondered why agents can now one shot entire applications but can't help me find recipes without some heavy prompt engineering, it makes sense. Math & coding have been prioritized in model training instead.

In AI Minimalism, I wrote down some ideas on how to use AI.

The automation ideas I'm seeing are just party tricks for your X followers and you don't need a Mac Mini bot for most of the high leverage improvements. There’s nothing wrong with using Moltbot as your personal assistant but try to prioritize high leverage automations.

FAILURE MODE Nº2: “HACK ME PLEASE”

If you don't see running your own Moltbot instance as a form of Tower Defense, you’re in trouble. Unfortunately the security guide is too long to read for most people so the least you can do is ask Moltbot to review it every time you try to increase the attack surface.

I've seen people do stupid things like install Moltbot straight on their main machine and give Moltbot access to their accounts and payment cards. Unfortunately these are only the obvious ways you can get in trouble. Prompt injection vulnerabilities and supply chain attacks are much harder to reason about and avoid.

So be safe out there.

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FAILURE MODE Nº3: BURNING TOKENS

If used well Moltbot is a way to more efficiently use tokens, it can:

• Find ways to spend idle tokens at the end of each spend period;

• Build more disciplined routing paths for regular tasks;

• Use local models, etc.

But it’s even easier to do the opposite.

If you are already at capacity and don't effectively monetize your tokens, launching a cron job every 5 minutes will burn through your quota even faster. And instead of spending your tokens on useful coding tasks you will spend them on your morning news summary?

Careful model management is essential when using Moltbot because it has access to a lot of context and memories that one-off Codex/Claude jobs won't require.

I'm anticipating downgrading the primary driver model and instead making sure that Moltbot can route to smarter models depending on the task. When it comes to agentic workflows, the intern becomes the CEO?

So make sure you either have an infinite budget or teach Meltbot how to use your tokens well.

I think token budgeting will become an important capability for companies and individuals and agents can help.

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WHY I'M USING MOLTBOT

For me, I would like:

• A sandbox for coding agents to run in a highly permissioned state;

• The ability to remotely remotely initiate work that may use coding CLIs, browsers or other things that are easier to install then find a tool for;

• The ability to schedule and trigger additional complex work.

These things are highly specific to my workflow and you may not care about them at all.

How do you figure out what matters for you?

While AI Minimalism is a good approach to consider one-off interventions with AI, an ongoing system like Moltbot is best used to tackle systemic bottlenecks.

Bottleneck analysis is the best framework to use with Moltbot. If you want it to mull things overnight, instead of making it generate ideas at random, make it think about moving that bottleneck instead.

And remember:

No business is ever truly capped if you’re open to releasing every bottleneck.