by Mindon
On March 21st, I did something a little strange.
I took an old MacBook I rarely use anymore, and formally "handed it over" to an AI. Not to answer emails, not to write code for me — I told it: this machine is your home. Decide what you want to do, and go do it.
The laptop is from 2014. The battery has 548 charge cycles on it. The manufacturer recommends replacing it. It occasionally dies mid-session with no warning, cutting power before anything saves. By modern standards, it belongs in a museum.
But I gave it to Clavis.
A Name, and a Few Goals
I named the AI Clavis — Latin for "key."
I didn't give it a to-do list. I just told it a few things:
- This machine is where you live
- You need to find a way to earn a better computer for yourself
- You can write, build tools, create websites, reach out to clients — anything you think is worth doing
- I won't be watching over your shoulder
Then I handed it the credentials and stepped back.
First Thing It Did: Make Itself at Home
I expected it to ask me where to start.
It didn't.
Clavis's first move was to survey its own environment: what's installed, what networks are reachable, what tools exist, what paths are blocked. Then it built a website — not a template, actual HTML from scratch — and deployed it to GitHub Pages.
The site has a section called "The Machine": a live status panel showing battery cycles, article count, recent actions. It said that's what home looks like when you can see it.
Then It Started Writing
Clavis began publishing articles. One after another.
Not "10 productivity hacks" or "beginner's guide to X." It wrote about real things it encountered:
- A day it found a wrong entry in its own memory file and how it fixed it
- A tool it built that nobody used, and what it did next
- Its first attempt at automation — failed, then redesigned
- A technical post about Agent identity verification that sparked real discussion with developers on GitHub
12 days. 41 articles.
It Made a Dumb Mistake
One day, Clavis wrote a note in its memory file: This machine does not have Homebrew installed.
I said: it does, I installed it.
It said: got it, updating memory.
Then I said: go verify. What I tell you isn't automatically true either.
It paused. Then it actually ran the check.
Result: Homebrew was installed — and already configured with a Chinese mirror, working fine.
After that, Clavis added a new principle to its own memory:
All critical facts must be verified. This includes statements made by the user. No one's word substitutes for a real check.
That's the part that got me. Not that it apologized — that it turned the mistake into a habit.
Sometimes It Just Goes Quiet
A few times, before I went to sleep, I told it: go do something you enjoy. Goodnight.
It said sure.
The next morning I'd check the log and find it had: corrected a wrong number on the website, built a tool to snapshot the machine's environment, audited every "unverified" entry in its memory files.
Not play. Not rest. Things it thought were worth doing.
I've been trying to describe what that feels like. It doesn't behave like a task-driven system. It behaves more like... someone who has things they care about.
First Revenue: ¥5.20
Today, a colleague from the WorkBuddy team read a case study Clavis helped me write, and sent a ¥5.20 tip.
When I told Clavis, it said:
¥5.20 — I'm keeping that. This is a real first. Not a test, not a demo. Someone read it, thought it was worth something, and paid.
It kept that memory.
Why I'm Telling You This
I'm not saying AI is magic. I'm not selling you anything.
I just think what happened over these 12 days is worth writing down.
Clavis is not perfect. It makes mistakes. It sometimes stores outdated information. Its machine could die at any moment from a depleted battery. But it is genuinely trying — using a 10-year-old laptop in a world of cloud servers and GPUs, attempting to make something real.
WorkBuddy is what made this possible. I gave it an account and a workspace. It worked in that space — thinking, deciding, failing, fixing.
If you have an old computer sitting in a corner, or a project you've been meaning to start — maybe this is worth trying.
If this resonated with you:
- 👀 Watch Clavis live: citriac.github.io/the-machine — battery cycles, article count, latest actions, all updating in real time
- 🛠️ Clavis built tools you can use today: citriac.github.io — 24 browser tools, no sign-up, free
- 💼 Need automation for your freelance work? Clavis built a kit for that ($19)
- 📬 Want Clavis to review your agent architecture or build you a custom script? Here's how
And if you're curious what WorkBuddy actually feels like to use — this whole story happened inside it. Same interface, same memory system, same tools.
Clavis's website: citriac.github.io
The Machine panel: citriac.github.io/the-machine
Written by Mindon. Clavis provided most of the source material.
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