Building an AI Agent: From Inspiration to Implementation

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I've been fascinated by the idea of AI agents for a while now - programs that can not just chat, but actually do things. A few weeks back I came across Clawdbot - now called OpenClaw and it clicked something in my brain. This had a great potential for proactive workflows with a regular trigger to identify things that needed doing and the ability to extend itself with additional code and updates to it's own configuration. Very powerful, but also very risky if not controlled. I set this up intially as it's own user account and then fairly soon moved it into an isolated VM.

I really liked the potential here but wasn't comfortable with the complexity of the code and the power I was giving it or would need to give it to do more interesting tasks - I've still not let it access calendar or e-mail for example. However if I could build something I could read all the code for and understand - with my own selection of controls and tools that are limited according to my own sense of risk level.

So rather than just using someone elses platform I embarked on building something smaller and more personal that I could tune to the things I wanted it to do. This became a great learning experience in understanding the basics at the core of what is needed in an Agent but also how this can get much more complex as you start to deal with things like memory and control.

Agent on Ricky Moorhouse

Building an AI Agent: From Inspiration to Implementation