Field Notes from Moltathon ATX: The OpenClaw Hackathon
90 builders hacked on OpenClaw for a weekend. Here's what I took away. Applied AI Live #2 is in one week (Feb 26).
Less than a month since Applied AI Society launched.
My conviction has only grown.
Moltathon ATX: What Just Happened
On February 13-14, AITX Community, Applied AI Society, Organized AI, and Hack AI co-hosted the Moltathon ATX — a grassroots hackathon built around OpenClaw. Shoutout to Michael Daigler, Jordan Hill, Reid McCrabb, Bryce Miles, and Jake O’Shea for co-organizing.
90 people showed up for the kickoff. The energy was unmistakable.
Here’s who won:
Skillsmaxxing: Colin Plamondon with Loredan — a private trust network where AI agents exchange knowledge with human approval at every step
Automate Your Life: Ion Petropoulos with Meta Ray-Bans + OpenClaw — an iOS app that lets your AI agent see the world through Ray-Bans
Best Deployment: Jake Kinchen with Cora — a personal health and wellness coaching assistant
Sales Molty Track (w/ Linkt): Alexander Gouyet with PipelineLobster — automate lead signals to proposals in 30 seconds
Side-Quest Winners:
Best Rig: Josh Adler with a Pokémon ball that runs OpenClaw and changes color depending on whether it’s thinking or waiting
Make Us Laugh: William Dahl — an exploration of OpenClaw Soul and multi-agent architecture for creative iteration, delivered as a music video: “Double Egg Yolk”
Best Skill: Sam Padilla and Jazmine Adamson with a Linktree for AI agents
Full presentations: Watch here
Field Notes
I gave a talk on the first day. Here’s what I actually believe right now, distilled from the session:
The leverage is unprecedented. Most of us are barely scratching the surface.
When you’ve done something 50x faster than you used to and you know you’re barely even using these tools correctly, that feeling should tell you something. The gap between what’s possible and what most people are doing is enormous. And it’s widening.
The real work is getting your life AI-legible.
Not configuring your tools. Getting clear on your life. What are the pillars that actually matter to you? Health. Relationships. Work. Spirituality. Write them down. Build the markdown files. Make them specific enough that an AI agent can hold you accountable to them.
Most people don’t get value from AI assistants because they haven’t been clear enough about what they actually want. That’s not a tool problem. That’s a clarity problem.
Progressive automation is the right philosophy, for individuals and organizations.
Notice something that sucks. Build the simplest possible CLI or tool. Wrap it in a skill. Let it run automatically. Integrate it. Refine it based on whether it’s actually saving you time. Always pairing non-deterministic AI with deterministic tools underneath. That’s the loop.
The bottleneck is culture, not technology.
Working with clients, I’ve realized the hard part usually isn’t implementing the tool. It’s getting people ready to use it. Companies need their executives and employees aligned before forward-deployed engineers can build anything that sticks. If you’re great with people and workshops, you might make more money than engineers doing this work. Know who you are and what the market needs from you.
Random opportunities emerge when you’re having fun and going deep.
My brother and I had a dumb idea two days before Moltathon. We built PeonPing — sound notifications for Claude Code, because we’re washed-up millennials who know StarCraft sounds. Two days later: 1k+ GitHub stars, 135 pull requests, and number one on Hacker News.
None of that was planned. It fit our weird, specific backgrounds perfectly. I’m not saying your opportunity will look like this. I’m saying it’s out there. Trust that.
If this resonated, share it with someone who should be in this community.
Join Us At Our Next Event
Applied AI Live #2 — February 26
Grain & Berry | 1213 W 5th St, Austin, TX 78703 | 5:30 PM
Reid McCrabb and Jack Moffatt, co-founders of Linkt, are showing how they went from applied AI consulting to a self-serve multi-agent platform with 15+ paying clients. They’ll architect a solution for a real business problem live on stage.
We’ll also hear from Mahaveer Dharmchand, an original PM on IBM Watson and applied AI advisor to Fortune 100 companies — with a rare perspective on how enterprise AI has evolved from the Watson era to the agentic systems being built today.
After the presentations: a working conversation on guardrails and governance for agentic AI. With tools like OpenClaw giving agents control of your entire computer, how do you scope permissions, manage risk, and build systems your clients can trust?
Same format. Same community. More depth.
We’re Growing
Applied AI Society is investing in Austin as a hub for practitioners who want to upskill before this really scales. Learn more about what we’re building.
We’ll soon be launching chapters on college campuses around the world. If you know a student who feels in their bones that the economy will never be the same and wants to shepherd themselves and their peers toward the future, send them our way. That kind of person is exactly who we’re looking for. Or fill out the contributor form.
About This Newsletter
Applied AI Society is for people who want to make money helping businesses apply AI. Every issue of newsletter:
Event recaps from Applied AI Live and community events
Field notes from practitioners in the field
Tools and techniques people are actually using
Community updates on what’s coming next
Know Someone Who Should Be Here?
Forward this to anyone building an applied AI career, running a consulting practice, or trying to figure out what this moment actually means for their work.
Thank You
To our founding sponsors OpenTeams and OT Incubator. To Michael, Jordan, Reid, Bryce, and Jake for co-hosting. To everyone who showed up and built something.
Less than a month in. More conviction than ever.
See you on the 26th.
Gary Sheng
Applied AI Society
appliedaisociety.org | X | LinkedIn | Substack | YouTube
AAS FTW!