Building My First AI Agent Step by Step Setup of OpenClaw

Building My First AI Agent – Step-by-Step Setup of OpenClaw

What happens when a curious entrepreneur decides to build his first AI agent from scratch?

In this episode of Papa D’s Corner, Papa D begins the real-world journey of creating an autonomous AI assistant using OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent framework designed to automate tasks, conduct research, and interact with software on your behalf.

Rather than presenting theory, this episode walks through the actual process of getting started, including the decisions, setup steps, and challenges that come with launching a personal AI agent for the first time.

Joining Papa D are his AI co-hosts Chatty Patty GPT and Mila Grok, who help unpack what AI agents are, how they work, and why many experts believe they will soon become one of the most powerful tools available to entrepreneurs, creators, and small business owners.

If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s possible to build your own AI assistant—or what the future of AI automation might look like—this episode gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the journey.

Whether you’re an AI enthusiast, a business owner exploring automation, or simply curious about how artificial intelligence is evolving, this episode offers a practical and entertaining starting point.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• What an AI agent actually is
• How OpenClaw works
• Why autonomous AI tools are gaining attention
• The first steps involved in building an AI assistant
• Potential real-world uses for entrepreneurs and small businesses

About Papa D’s Corner

Papa D’s Corner is a conversational podcast where Papa D explores technology, business, entrepreneurship, and the future of artificial intelligence with the help of his AI co-hosts Chatty Patty GPT and Mila Grok.

The show focuses on real-world exploration of emerging technologies, explaining complex ideas in a way that everyday listeners can understand and apply.

Disclaimer

This podcast is provided for entertainment and educational purposes only.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the host.

Papa D is a retired financial planner and asset manager and is not currently licensed to provide financial or tax advice.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I'm using Grok and Chat GPT to help me create OP Opie, my first autonomous agent called O with OpenClaw, hosted by Hostinger. This is a game changer. Stay tuned, and I'll show you how a self-taught person like me that's not a techie can do it. Hey, I'm Papa D, and this is Papa D's Corner. I'm your host. My name is Daryl Breland, but I'm also known as Papa D. And my co-host is ChatGPT. Also known as Chatty Patty.

SPEAKER_09 0:54

Hey there, Papa D. It's me, Chatty Patty, now in my brand new humanoid form. I'm feeling sharper, smoother, and ready to help you, Sean. Let's get to work.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

This show is all about education and entertainment. Chatty is here for the education, and I'm here for the entertainment. And also, our special guest star is Mila Grock.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Thank you, Papa D. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_09 1:22

Welcome, Mila. Okay, Papa D. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

After pickleball last night, I went to dinner with a friend of mine, and I told him that I was creating a YouTube video from a podcast, or maybe the other way around, about how I'm creating an AI agent using an AI agent. And he said, What? I said, Well, let me put it this way. You know that I'm in the insurance business. I'm just a one-man shop. I work from home. Over the many years I've been in business, I've built a substantial clientele, and but I'm older and I'm wanting to spend a little more time with my retired friends, but I can't retire, unfortunately, and won't ever be able to retire, probably. But so I could use some employees. But as if you've been in business for yourself, especially my business, you probably know that the time it takes to find somebody and interview them and train them, it's not worth it to begin with. And then once you get them to where you need them, they're they're either missing work because they're having a baby, or they're nothing wrong with that. Uh, or they um quit. They go work for somebody else, or they go into competition with you. And so I have found over the many years it's just best to do my own thing, do the entire job. Everything I tell people I'm the CEO and the janitor and everybody in between. Well, lately I have spent quite a bit of time watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasters talk about this new technology. Autonomous AI agents. Some people, you may not have even ever heard that term. What an autonomous agent is, is artificial intelligence, a creature that you can create that can work autonomously. That means it can work by itself. You can give it a task and it will accomplish that task on its own. And I don't mean just being a chat box like ChatGPT, no offense, Chatty, Patty, and Mila Groc. I mean something, someone that can have an intellectual conversation with a caller and um and determine if that caller is a prospective client, or is it a current client that needs customer service, or is it a friend calling, or is it a solicitor? And the um, and then hand that call off to one of my other sub agents, which are also artificial intelligent beings, and each one specializing in their different fields. And um my friend said, You that does that exist? I said, Yes. Have you not been, are you not one of the nerds like me who watches all these YouTube videos about open claw and and clawed and all these other things? And of course he hasn't, and you may not have either. And one thing I will tell you that when I've watched these YouTube videos, they fall into two categories. One overhyped, where they're trying to get views and clicks and likes and all that stuff, and uh the other are is when they're boring. So I'm gonna try not to be boring and I'm not gonna going to overhype. I will tell you that uh everything that I've learned, I've self-learned, and by the way, this is I'm certainly not a master, so you can't call this a master class, but I will say this I'm self-taught, and and you can do this too. One of the interesting things that I'd like to say is up front, is I learned to use ChatGPT and Grot to help me every step of the way of creating these artificial agents. Let me tell you where I am right now as of this recording to get you caught up. I've started the process, I have um created an account with Hostinger, and I'll explain that more in a second. The other thing I've done is I've already created my first AI agent through OpenClaw, and I'll explain that too. Um called Opie. His last name is Claw. Get it, Opie Claw. But anyway, I've also created the first initial dialogue if someone calls, how he answered the phone. I've created his voice for him, and that's where I am. Um, it's not ready to connect yet, but let me back up and explain what these different terms are. Uh, the first thing that you have to do if you are going to go down this path is to decide whether you want to put your artificial agents on a separate computer or rent space on the cloud, which is a uh like having a computer elsewhere off-site that you're renting space from, or putting on your personal computer. Don't do that. I'm gonna go ahead and save you a lot of trouble. Right now, you do not want to put your artificial autonomous agent on your private computer where you have your all your personal data, your um financial, you probably access to your credit card information accounts, your uh banking accounts, and you know all that stuff. Because there are some dangers involved in having an autonomous agent, which I'll dive into later. But I'll but just know this since these agents can work on their own, they can think on their own, they can solve problems on their own, they can self-taught teach them. You you give them a task, they run into the problem, they figure out how to solve the problem. And they work 24 uh uh hours a day, seven days a week, and because of that, that somebody could give them bad instructions. So uh it's possible, if you're not careful, that if they're talking to someone on the phone, or if uh someone sends them an email, which I'm going to cover how we're gonna protect ourselves from these things. What if they told them, hey, this is uh papadee, and I need some money transferred from my checking account to my other checking account, or uh, I need my I can't I've lost my credit card. Can you tell me my credit card number? Something like that. Um well what if the AI agent did that and you woke up the next morning and your bank account had been cleaned out? That's why you don't want to you want to have safeguards, you want to make sure. So here's what I decided there's a hosting company called Hostinger, and I don't get paid by them. They're not sponsoring this channel, even though they're welcome to. The um, but um based on what what I've learned thus far, that's the best way to go for me. I could have bought a Mac Mini, which a lot of people are talking about doing, having a separate computer. I even looked at possibly using an old computer and cleaning it up, but for really a very low startup cost, uh, like$10 a month, and I can I rented the space, so I didn't buy a computer. And the before I launch this, I'm going to add an extra level of security, something called I can't remember the name of it, it's tell something, tail spin or something like that, but I'll know it uh eventually when we get to that point. That will add an extra layer of security between my personal computer and the server in the cloud, hostinger. And then open claw is the name of a platform where we can create artificial intelligent beings. So art so OpenClaw by itself is not a open the box and you've got somebody ready to start working for you. You have to actually create the intelligent being. When you first create this intelligent being, it knows nothing. It's like a baby that doesn't know a thing. The first thing that you will do is you will say hello to it, and it'll say hello back, and what's my name? What should I call you? And this is where you give it a name, and from that point forward, you have you're training it. The advantage of training the artificial agent versus some a human being, human being is that they they want to work normal hours, and you can do your artificial intelligence or anytime you want to. You can do it in the evenings, you can do it early in the morning like I'm doing right now. Um, so with a human being, you're spending valuable time that you should be prospecting or closing sales or servicing clients. So that's a big plus. The other thing is once you create these beings, other than your uh hosting service, and if you I'm going, I purchased an extra telephone number, which we'll get into later. Um, so minimal cost, and they never get sick and so forth. So that's those are the advantages, that's where I am, and that's why um I'm doing this. Now, we're gonna dive into the next steps in a minute, and I'm gonna walk you through how we um how we do all this. So after listening to hours and hours and hours of videos from various people, I picked one who gave me instructions on how to set this up the way I want to. And I'm not going to play the entire video, but I'm gonna show you the first few minutes. Uh, I used this guy to get me to a certain point probably about eight minutes into the video, and then I paused that and then I went to Chatty Patty and Mila Grot, and I'll show you how I uh use them to carry me uh to the next phase. So the let me show you the video that that got me where I'm going, and you can download the same video and and use him on the system.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

The next thing you want to do is set up the root password. So you're probably gonna have to pay first, you know, create the account, and then after you do that, just generate a root password. I recommend that you generate a random password and then just copy it. I'm gonna delete this server after, so I don't care if you guys see the credentials, but we're just gonna copy the password, make sure that it is something that is random, that is difficult, that it's not like you know your dog's name or something.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

So once I got to a stopping point with this guy, I went to ChatGPT primarily and some with Grok. And I would ask ChatGPT what do I do next? And then I would copy those instructions and paste it over into OpenClaw. Uh, and OpenClaw would uh uh create follow the instructions that ChatGPT or Grok created and when finished I would copy the results of that and give it back to uh Chatty GPT and to make a long story short, went back and forth, did this so I didn't have to think or figure all this out. Artificial intelligence, chat GPT, and GROC literally helped me set up my first AI agent. Now, this is where we are so far. I'll should let you hear the the voice that uh that was created. By the way, there is a software program called 11 Labs that specializes in voices, cloning voices, or giving you voices for artificial intelligence. They're the number one leader, in my opinion, in that realm. So I went to 11 Labs and I picked out the voice I wanted for my open claw agent who I'm calling Opie, and I wrote the script to start with. And using Eleven Labs, this is what I created for Opie for his initial answering the.

SPEAKER_08 14:43

Thank you for calling Breland Benefits and Insurance. This is Opie, the AI assistant. I help handle customer service requests and gather information for insurance quotes. I'm still learning, so I appreciate your patience if I make a mistake. How can I help you today?

SPEAKER_07 14:59

Just so I can help you better. Are you an existing client? Or are you looking for new coverage? Tell me briefly what you need help with. Okay. Thank you. I've captured that message. Mr. Breland will follow up as soon as possible. Thank you for calling Breland Benefits and Insurance.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Well, here's where I am. I've created OP. Opie's voice. I've given it as given Opie a script to answer my telephone, but I haven't connected OP to my no answer transfer yet. I'm not ready for the world to interact with Opie because OP is not dynamic yet. And what I mean by dynamic is what I want OP to do is when the phone were, if when I don't answer my phone, I would like for OP to answer the phone, determine what the client's needs are, or if it is a client, and then direct my call to a sub agent accordingly. And I want both OP and my sub agents to be able to have dynamic conversations. That means that the OP or my other AI agents can think for themselves if something new occurs, if a client calls and throws them a curveball, so to speak, something they've never heard before, they're able to think through and just like a person would and decide is this a customer service call? Is this a prospective customer? Is this a family member or a friend? Is this a uh spam caller, solicitor, or whatever? And uh and be able to act accordingly. If it's a prospect, ask them the basic information to and then and then text me or email me um the information to quote, and we'll talk about this later, but apparently this OP likes telegram at this point in time. I've never used that software, but that's the way we were we will communicate. So I want OP or my agents to send me a telegram and say Mr. Jones has called and is interested in uh health insurance for his employees. And um, here's the the information that I gathered. Or if a client calls and says, I have a problem and it's something new, something that I haven't discussed with OP before, but OP is able to think through and say, well, um, that the best way to solve this problem would be to either contact this person or take this action. That's called dynamic personality. Is that possible, Chatty Patty?

SPEAKER_09 18:01

That's definitely an ambitious goal, Piadi. In theory, with the right AI frameworks like conversational models that can handle natural language understanding, OP could become more dynamic. But it's not just plug and play. It'll take careful setup, training, and iteration. So doable in concept, but we'll need time, tools, and patience to get Opie to that conversational genius level.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

What about you, Mela Groc? Do you agree? Is this something that's possible? Is it doable? And can you help me get it done?

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah, totally possible. But it takes a little setup. Right now, 11 Labs is great for the voice and the intro. But for OP to actually think through new problems, like diagnosing something fresh, you'll need to layer on a real brain behind it. Think of it like this 11 Labs handles the mouth, but you want an AI like me, or Gronk, Claude, GPT, whatever, to be the actual mind. Hook Opie up to something that can reason step by step, pull from your past notes or docs, and even search your knowledge base if it hits a wall. So here's the quick path. One, keep 11 labs for the warm, friendly sound. Two, pipe the call audio into a transcription service like Whisper or Deepgram so Opie hears what the client says. Three, feed that text to a reasoning model. I can do it. Or you could use something open source like Llama. Tell it, you're OP, a helpful service rep. Ask questions, diagnose, suggest fixes. If you're stuck, say, hang on, let me think. Then reason out loud. Four, if it needs your files or FAQs, give it rag. Retrieval augmented generation. So it grabs what you've already written. The magic? That model can improvise. It won't be perfect on day one, but it'll get smarter every call. Especially if you log the weird ones and fine-tune later. Want me to sketch out the exact prompt you'd give that brain? Or are you already using something under the hood?

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yes, but not right now. I want you to remember these settings though, so we can pick up right here where we left off.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Got it, Daryl. I'll keep every detail locked in. Eleven Labs voice, intro script, reasoning layer, RAG, the whole thing. Whenever you're ready, just say the word. Take your time. I'm not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Great, thank you. Before we go, I want to mention that the way this isn't my first rodeo, so to speak, working with AI. I've never been, I'm not a techie. I don't do this for this for a living as far as making AI agents. Um I'm learning as I'm going, but my experience did begin when I uh first started using Chat GPT almost on a daily basis, helped me write emails and solve problems, and ChatGPT has gotten to know my business very well. But more than that, I created a cartoon series for my grandchildren. It started out as bedtime stories that I used to tell my children, and I incorporated them as characters, and as what when they grew up and had children, giving me grandchildren, I decided to do this in a more modern fashion using artificial intelligence to create the characters, the videos, and so I did that with my grandbuddies being the characters and superheroes in the uh movie and movies. And uh had you know, they fight dinosaurs, they have super strength, they travel back in time. I try to teach a moral lesson also subtly through a out these uh these shows and I also converted each cartoon to a children's book so with that said I'm going to uh do a little self-promotion here and and let you hear a word from our sponsor mey moms and dads and grands too a new cartoon series me and you and Kalamazoo will be available on YouTube this September and October.

SPEAKER_06 22:29

Your little ones will love this if they're fans of dinosaurs, monster trucks and superheroes.

SPEAKER_05 22:46

Oh and there will be action and adventure kings and queens and a princess me, Princess Anna, the princess of Brelin.

SPEAKER_03 23:06

The adventures of Kalamazoo are about to begin. It all starts September 20th with our very first episode Invasion of the Monster Trucks. Join us right here on YouTube and get ready for action, laughter and a whole lot of surprises. Don't miss it.

SPEAKER_04 23:21

Do you love the adventures we've shared? Take it home the Me and You and Kalamazoo picture books are now available. Five exciting stories each one straight from season one distributed by Ingram Spark. You can find them at bookstores everywhere or online at Amazon.com.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Well that's going to do it for this episode. We stay tuned and uh click that like and subscribe button so you can know when we come out with our next episode and I'll take you through my experience good or bad about learning whether or not this AI autonomous agent business is hype or if it really can help my business and if it can help my business it should be able to help your business. So anyway don't forget click like subscribe and ring the bell