Meet Bob. (And Then Build Your Own Bob.)

How do I begin my first chat with my assistant? How you doing? No. Okay, we're off to a great start here. [music] So, over the weekend, I was inundated with seemingly 10,000 posts about the exact [music] same thing. It was very strange. It was annoying. It was obnoxious. I felt like a psychop. So, I'm going to check it out. And of course, the tool I'm referencing here is called Claudebot. And we're going to figure this out together. I'm never so much as install it. I'm not even sure why I need it or why it's useful. So, come along with me if you're in the same boat. So, I found two relevant links to get us started. Of course, the main GitHub page and then, of course, uh Kristoff of the Laravel community linked to this post and that seemed to be helpful to him. So, we're going to go through this together. Again, this is not a tutorial. Uh, I'm gonna figure it out on the fly. Here we go. I spent 40 hours researching Claudebot. Here's everything they're not telling you. Here's what everyone's hyping, but nobody's actually explaining. Okay. What is it in plain English? This is what I want to know. All I understand is like through Telegram, you can interact with a local AI, and it can do things on your phone or your computer. That's about as much as I understand. Okay. So, we're going to install software. It can run scripts. It can manage files. It can monitor websites. It can send emails. And also, as I understand it, it can like proactively message you and things like that. Like a true uh assistant is an AI agent that doesn't think. It just acts kind of cool. All right. Normal AI. Here's how you would organize your files. Claudebot, I already organized your files while you were reading this sentence. Okay, that's cool. I admit that's kind of cool. All right. So, why is everyone losing their minds? Cleared 10,000 emails. Built my entire website via Telegram while watching Netflix. That's cool. automated 80% of my work in 48 hours. All right, I think some of this is hyperbole, but maybe not. Maybe not. So, here's what's happening under the hood. You send a message via WhatsApp or Telegram. I would do Telegram. That message goes to a gateway, which is a single process running on your computer that acts as the control center. Okay. The gateway routes the request to Claude. So, we're still using Claude under the hood. Okay. that will execute commands on your computer, manages connections, handles file operations and automation. The real setup, it's not as hard as it looks. Okay, the GitHub page looks intimidating. All right, we haven't looked at that yet, but maybe it is. Here's the truth. Basic setup takes about 20 to 30 minutes. Okay, I'll try to speed that up here. So, we need a Mac. We need Node.js. Got it. We need an anthropic API key. I have one. We need Telegram. We're good on the setup. Okay, so we're just going to work through this together. uh and see how we do. Let's go to GitHub and I'm going to look for npm install. All right, let's grab that. Now, I'm going to install this on my local machine because I understanded other people are purchasing Mac Studios or setting up VPS's through something like Forge. Uh maybe we'll get there. But for now, just locally is fine for me. All right. And while it's doing its thing, let's come back. So, we're going to have an onboard wizard. Connects to our messaging app. Sets up permissions. First test command. The first test most people try. Yeah, this is kind of what I'm curious about. I can imagine things that would be helpful, but I also can't imagine things that justify the the inundation, if that's a word, that I felt over the weekend. So, this better be really good. Uh, and I assume it is. Uh, what files are in my downloads folder? I mean, okay. Cloud Boss lists them, organizes them by type. Done. PDFs in one folder, images in another. Okay, cool. That's cool. So, let's come back. Here we go. I understand this is powerful and inherently risky, especially as part of a video on boarding. Do we want quick start or manual? I don't know. Quick sounds good to me. What is our model? Okay, cool. So, you can pick your model. We'll go with anthropic. Let's use anthropic token from cloud code. Let's do that. Authorize. Select channel Telegram. Kind of excited to be honest. Okay. So now, yeah, of course, I've done this a few times. I need to go to Telegram and basically set up a new bot that will give me a token. I will feed it there, and that will give the AI the ability to to interact with me and send me messages. Let's do that. So, within Telegram, we search for botfather, start a chat. Next, we're going to do the new bot command. What are we going to call this? Uh, why don't we call our bot Bob? All right. Now, choose a username. I wonder if we can get away with Bobbot. No, somebody already took it. What about Bob_bot? No. Okay. How about Bob Larcast? Cool. Okay. So, now that's going to give us a token. We can copy that and we'll paste it in. Okay. So, it's installing missing skill dependencies. All right. Let's fast forward. All right. And that's going to take a while. So, let's switch back to this tutorial complex code project. See, I'm not Am I crazy? Like, I'm not interested in this for that. I I don't feel like I have an issue currently with my cloud workflow. Although although it would be cool if there was an easier way for me to to interact with my app through Telegram that that's something you can tunnel your way to make it work, but I haven't found a seamless solution for that yet. And that would be really neat. I I agree with that. the pattern have clear requirements, technical understanding, iteration and refinement, time, investment. Okay, let's get back. All right. And I've also added some tokens like OpenAI and Gemini behind the scenes. How do you want to hatch your bot? I don't know. I guess Tui. So, here is the bot that we created. Let's start a chat. Buddy, buddy, I'm in the middle of the video right now. You can't be in the camera. They can see you right here. You got to go over here. Come on. Anyway, so I'm now in Telegram. I'm messaging my bot. Access not configured. Why is it not configured? Ask the bot owner to approve. I thought I did that. All right. So, what do I do here? I come here. Paste that in. Here's the code. We're in. Okay. How do I begin my first chat with my assistant? No. Okay. We're off to a great start here. Agent failed before reply. No API key found for provider anthropic. I did that though. Configure the off for this agent. Okay. All right. Did we not do this? We did this. Nope. No API key. What am I doing wrong? Okay. Let's um let's use AI to solve this. Trying to set up Claudebot. When I message my agent from Telegram, I get this error. How come? Paste it in. Saves time. The error indicates it doesn't have your API. I know I'm trying to give it, bro. You need to add your API key based on the error message run. Yeah. Yep. Didn't we do this? We did this. This should prompt you to enter your key. Alternatively, you can manually edit the off file. Maybe. Yeah. I can just open this behind the scenes and paste it in. Okay. So, this time I manually pasted in that key. So, hopefully it'll work. We'll start from scratch. How you doing? Ah, good. Vibing in the void waiting to become somebody. But seriously, got a name for me or should I pick one? Your name is Boba. Honestly, I got to be honest. This is fun. This is fun. Bob, I like it. Simple, classic, no pretense. All right, I'm Bob now. What about you? What should I call you? Jeffrey, Jeff, something else entirely. And while we're at it, what kind of Bob am I? Like, am I a formal corporate Bob or a more laid-back friend Bob or chaotic gremlin? I kind of like chaotic gremlin Bob. What vibe works for you? Call me Jeffrey or surgeent if you prefer. Let's do voice to speech. Bob, I want you to be friendly, helpful, courteous. You should never perform destructive actions without requesting permission. You're well behaved. You're helpful. You're sarcastic without being mean. You tell jokes now and then. You're self-deprecating. and you have endless ideas, which means you often suggest capabilities you have that I may not have considered. You monitor my behavior and you pick up on tasks I could do repeatedly that could be automated. Overall, Bob, you're just a good guy. All right, Bob, what do you got for me? I can't help it. This is exciting. This is fun. Cracks Knuckles. Love it. All right, Sergeant Jeffrey. I can work with this. Friendly, helpful, sarcastic, self-deprecating idea machine who never blows up anything without asking first. Basically, a golden retriever with a dark sense of humor and impulse control. Absolutely perfect. Let me get this locked in. What are you locking in, Bob? I need to give you an avatar, too. I wonder if that's something I can do. I can do. Can I say use Gemini to generate uh an avatar that represents you and then assign it here? Hopefully. Let me get this locked in. Oh, is it giving me a voice? This is going to be spooky. All right, Jeffrey. I'm officially Bob now. Friendly, helpful, sarcastic, self-deprecating, and absolutely loaded with ideas you didn't ask for. I've got my personality dialed in, and I promise not to delete anything important without checking with you first, or at least. Okay, I'm going to be honest. I was hoping that voice sounded a little better. It sounded very robotic, but that's okay. Um, let's try this to start. In Telegram, you don't currently have an avatar. Are you able to use Gemini Banana to generate an avatar that represents your new identity? And can you then update your avatar within Telegram? Oh, giving myself a face. I like this. Let me check out the image generation skill and see what I can do. Fast forward. Okay, so it took about a minute. That's kind of cool. Here's your new Bob. Now, one thing I'm noticing is that it will often text me, but then also include voice, which is cool, but like not necessarily what I want. So, here's the thing. The Telegram bot API doesn't have a method to set the bot's own profile photo. That's only possible through BotFather manually. Okay. Okay. Well, we'll do it manually. Back to BotFather. I'm trying to remember. What is it? Edit your bots. Edit bots. Edit bot pick. And we're in business. Hello, Bob. You look good. And yeah, it keeps wanting to respond with voice. Why, thank you, Sergeant. And the voice is different each time, which isn't cool. Um, so let's say only respond with text. Never send me a voice message. Got it. Okay, let's start with this. My downloads folder is a little bit messy. I haven't done a good job of keeping it clean. I want you to go through all of the files and organize them into top level categories. All images go within one folder. All PDFs go in another folder. So, when I open the downloads folder, I should see a neatly organized uh list of folders only. You're not deleting anything right now unless it's clearly not needed. Whoa. 400 items. Classic download folder chaos. Yep. And it's done. Here's your organized downloads folder. Archives, code, documents, fonts, music. I can't help it. This is wildly I know it's just a tiny thing, but like you can see where this is going. Um, next. Let's do this. Here's my phone. Of course, I have Telegram pulled up. I can see the chat here. Um, very cool. Now within my code directory, I want you to create a new Laravel project using Laravel new. Give the project a name of testing testing. And when you're done, respond to me with the URL I can access on my desktop to view it using Laravel herd. Okay. So I message this. Of course, it has access to my main machine, so it should be able to whip up a new Laravel project for me. Yeah. So here's what I'm thinking is at this point I could then build the app again like we saw with the example uh from the couch I can just interact with it through telegram here's what I want you to do first make me a dashboard for for creating posts make me the typical blog you know you get the idea all right done your new Laravel project is ready at testing testing test her automatically picks up okay let's have a look at at full screen and it's up Okay, this is cool. This is cool. This is cool. Bob, this is the start of a beautiful friendship. Let's finish up for now. Can you give me a a list of what you would consider to be the five most lowhanging fruit things you could do for me? Just generally speaking. Okay, let's see. Likewise, sergeant. [snorts] It's kind of spooky, honestly. Uh, here's my honest top five. The stuff that would make me actually useful versus a novelty. Inbox triage. Yeah, that seems to be recurring. Reminders and calendars. Research on demand. A code companion. Bounce ideas off me. Recurring maintenance stuff like cleaning. Okay. Like what I just did. Use me for anything that's annoying, repetitive, interruptive to your flow. If you catch yourself thinking, I got to do this thing. That's probably my Oh, I love that. If you catch yourself thinking, uh, I gotta do this thing, that's probably my thing. Okay, I can't help it. Um, I'm kind of hyped. I'm kind of excited. This is cool. This is the thing I wanted when I was a little kid. So, [music] clearly at this point, I am a super novice. I barely know what I'm doing. Uh, and that's where you come into play. Uh, catch me up. What are you doing here? Um, what are some things I should be doing that I'm not yet doing? Should I get this on a VPS? That's my instinct. But I guess the benefit to something like buying a Mac Studio is it's local. It has access to all of your stuff. Uh maybe that's the point. I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing here. Uh help me out.