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OpenClaw’s Peter Steinberger Predicts a Future without Most Apps
Y Combinator recently interviewed Peter Steinberger, the creator of the open-source AI agent project OpenClaw, who made a bold prediction: “Eighty percent of today’s apps will completely disappear.” For Steinberger, the AI revolution won’t play out in the cloud, but right on your own computer.
Rediscovering Purpose after Startup Success
To understand OpenClaw’s rise, you first need to know a bit about its founder. Peter Steinberger has long been a legend on GitHub. Back in 2011, he launched PSPDFKit, a popular document management tool, and in 2021 exited with a windfall of around €100 million (about $107 million USD). Like many founders after a big exit, Steinberger enjoyed golf, tried living abroad, and even experimented with ayahuasca in search of meaning. None of these, he says, filled the emptiness he felt—until he returned to coding and started building OpenClaw in 2025. That’s when he says he “rediscovered his spark.”
So what exactly is OpenClaw? It’s an AI agent that runs locally on a user’s computer. The project’s mascot is a lobster, and its GitHub repository has exploded, gathering over 160,000 stars overnight. Unlike cloud-based AIs like ChatGPT, which are limited to a chat box, OpenClaw can control your mouse and keyboard, access your file system, and even use APIs to adjust your Sonos speaker, your Tesla, or your smart bed.
Steinberger shared an example of how OpenClaw shows real problem-solving skills: “I once sent a voice message to my bot, but my computer didn’t have OpenAI’s Whisper installed. Instead of crashing, OpenClaw figured it out. It didn’t download a massive model because it knew that would be too slow. Instead, it wrote its own curl command, called OpenAI’s API, transcribed the audio, and replied—all in nine seconds, without any prewritten script from a human.” For Steinberger, this is the project’s secret sauce: “Other AIs are stuck in the cloud, limited in what they can do. If you run an agent on your computer, it can do anything you can do.”
Local First Stance Challenges Cloud-Centric AI
At the heart of OpenClaw is a rebellion against Silicon Valley’s push for centralized, cloud-based AI. Tech giants want your data and your memories locked up on their servers, Steinberger argues. But he’s pushing for “local first” design, which puts users in control. “If I ran a chat service company, I’d try to lock your memories in my data silo,” he says. “But with OpenClaw, your memory is just a bunch of Markdown files stored on your computer.”
This approach isn’t just about privacy—it’s about giving users a more personalized experience. Steinberger created a file called soul.md, which defines the AI’s personality and values. During a Discord experiment, he let people try to attack or manipulate his bot, but thanks to this soul file, the bot held its ground. “It even made fun of people trying to break it,” he says, proud of its resilience.
Why Most Apps Will Fade Away
Steinberger’s vision goes even further: he believes AI agents will render most apps obsolete. “Most apps just manage data,” he says, pointing to examples like MyFitnessPal. “Why do I need an app to log my meals? My agent already knows what I ate, through chat or photos. It also knows my goals, and if I eat junk food, it automatically adjusts my workout plan. I don’t need a special interface to enter data—I need an agent that helps me achieve my goals.”
He sees the same shift coming for to-do lists, travel booking, and more. As he puts it, we’re moving from static apps that require users to enter data and juggle multiple screens, to goal-driven AI agents that coordinate tasks across systems. “In the future, only apps with unique sensors or special hardware connections will survive,” he predicts. “Those pure database frontends—SaaS tools that are just a pretty face for your data—will have no value when agents can just read and write data directly, or even negotiate with other agents.”
Steinberger’s vision is radical, but he’s betting on a world where AI agents on your computer handle the routine work and let you focus on the bigger picture. And if OpenClaw’s momentum is any sign, that future may not be so far away.
Sources: Y Combinator,36Kr EU, System Intergration
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