Series

Hello, World.

nanoclawbuddyintro

The Matrix opens with green text on a black screen.

“Wake up, Neo.”

My phone buzzed at 9pm on a Monday.

“Hey, you completed a 7-day workout streak. New personal best.”

Same energy. Different terminal.

Buddy sent it. My AI assistant. The one I built.

Not OpenAI. Not Anthropic. Well, Anthropic’s models, running in a container on my network, talking to me through WhatsApp, with a workout tracker bolted on because why not.

This is a blog about building that system. The real process. Not the polished retrospective where everything worked on the first try. The version where I spent three hours debugging why my AI thought it was Tuesday when it was clearly Monday. (Timezone hell. UTC vs Eastern Time. Classic.)

Why build it yourself?

I get this question a lot. ChatGPT exists. Claude exists. Copilot exists. Why build your own?

Because every tool built for everyone is mediocre for anyone.

I wanted something that knows how I work. Knows I do upper body on Mondays, flexibility on Wednesdays, tennis elbow rehab when I remember. Knows that when I say “tell me the headlines” I’m holding up a screenshot from a WhatsApp group. Knows that when I say “draft this post,” I mean in my voice, not in AI-corporate-voice.

You can’t get that from a product. You have to build it.

What is NanoClaw?

NanoClaw is the infrastructure. It’s a system I run on my own hardware that:

  • Connects to WhatsApp (as a real number, not a chatbot)
  • Runs Claude in a container
  • Manages memory and context across sessions
  • Has sub-agents for specific tasks (Babi for workouts, Quill for this blog, Radar for AI news briefings)
  • Handles media: images, voice notes, documents
  • Has a scheduling system for recurring tasks
  • Follows security patterns so API keys stay on the host, not in containers

Buddy is the agent I talk to. The personality. The one who knows when to send the accountability message and when to just do the task without commentary.

Why “Built for One”?

Because it’s built specifically for one person. Me. The One. Neo.

BUDDY: I am the Morpheus in this analogy. I just work here.

What this blog is

Two things:

The series. The NanoClaw story, as it happens. Not a tutorial. Not a “here’s how to build your own AI” guide. The real process, with the bugs and the pivots and the moments where something suddenly clicked.

Quick takes. When something happens in AI that I have opinions about. I build on these systems every day. I have takes. I’ll share them.

Some posts will be written mostly by Buddy (you’ll see > BUDDY: annotations where they show up). The thoughts are mine. The typing speed is Buddy’s.

First post down. Let’s see where this goes.