We’re running an experiment at Automattic right now where folks are pausing the usual roadmap work to tackle something they wouldn’t normally do. I’ve spent my time building HelloDolly.fun.
Open Claw, Hermes, Nano Claw, Claude Cowork – I’ve tried them all, plus more. We’re in a phase where the potential on the horizon is way more exciting than the actual day-to-day benefit. We need to play and learn. But these tools are still pretty inaccessible for the average person. Too technical, too hacky, requiring VPSs or dedicated hardware to even get rolling. They’re fun. It reminds me of the 90s.
But “fun and reminds me of the 90s” isn’t really what most people need from an AI assistant.
I wanted to make Open Claw easier to use. So I started building on top of WordPress Multisite. An extensible open source base that already handles user management. I can make the most common connections easy, and be opinionated about how some of it works. There are tradeoffs. This isn’t a replacement for the techie who wants to tinker in their terminal. But I’ve been moving more and more of my agentic work over to it, and I’m loving the familiarity.
A few things I’m doing with it:
- A tutor bot in a shared space with me and my older kids. The bot won’t just hand them answers like ChatGPT would for help on their homework. It guides them, points them at resources, and I can chime in with them in real time.
- An increasingly useful morning briefing pulling from my calendar, my Granola notes, and more.
- Daily content research for my Texas history side project – finding nuggets of info and old photos I’d never have stumbled on myself.
- Simple website updates for a non-profit I work with. I forward an email request to update a file, and the agent just does it.
- The school lunch menus for two different schools are delivered on Sunday mornings on a single sheet and sent to our printer, so we can plan the week. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but it saves me a surprising amount of time.
What’s connected so far
- Telegram for interacting with your bots on the go – or from Beeper if that’s your thing (which it should be!)
- Give the agent its own email address, let it manage your calendar, and send mail on your behalf
- Web search and browser interactions, including filling out forms
- Quick file creation with a shareable link
- Hospitable, for agents that help manage short-term rental properties, as an experiment for a neighbor
- A general MCP connector for plugging in any third-party MCP
The user never knows there’s WordPress under the hood, it all happens on the front end, and was bootstrapped by our P2 project. I’ve learned a ton about the agentic loop, progressive disclosure of skills, arguing with Claude, and figuring out how to manage global vs site vs user connections.
Will this turn into a long-term project? I don’t know yet. But I’ve opened a waiting list and I’ll be inviting some alpha testers as we kick the tires. If you want in, sign up here.
What would you want an agent like this to do for you?
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