Peter Steinberger
Peter Steinberger is the founder of PSPDFKit (a PDF SDK company) and the creator of OpenClaw — the open-source AI Agent framework that became the fastest-growing GitHub project in history, gaining 180,000+ stars in under 4 months. Known in the Chinese AI community as the “龙虾教父” (Lobster Godfather).
Background
- PSPDFKit Founder: Built PSPDFKit into a successful B2B SDK company (mobile PDF SDK) with a small team. The company provided a case study in sustainable indie software business.
- OpenClaw Creator: Released in late 2025, initially named WA-Relay → Claude’s → Clawdbot → MoldBot → OpenClaw
- Joined OpenAI: February 2026 (announced after OpenClaw’s explosive growth)
His approach to OpenClaw: “短 prompt 胜过长 prompt” (Short prompts beat long prompts). He focuses on minimal, elegant solutions over complex frameworks.
Key Philosophy
On Vibe Coding:
“Vibe Coding is a derogatory term. What I do is Agentic Engineering.”
On Codebase Quality:
“让代码库对 Agent 友好，比对自己完美更重要。” (Making your codebase AI-agent-friendly is more important than making it perfect for humans.)
On the Future:
“80% 的 App 将消亡” — When AI agents know everything about you and can operate everything, most standalone apps lose their purpose.
On Prompt Injection:
Stronger models are more resistant to prompt injection. Weak local models are easier to attack.
The Naming War
OpenClaw’s renaming journey became a famous story in the AI community:
- Started as WA-Relay (WhatsApp Relay)
- Renamed to Claude’s (with CLAWDE logo)
- Anthropic sent a trademark notice — confusion with Claude brand
- MoldBot tried briefly
- Clawdbot — popular with community
- The community warned: “若改名，GitHub/NPM账号会被抢注”
- Crypto speculators immediately grabbed all old account names on GitHub, NPM, Twitter, X — within 5 seconds of the trademark notice becoming public
- Those accounts were immediately used for spam and malware
- Emergency coordinated “war room” operation to atomically rename everything to OpenClaw
- Success — the new name stuck
Related Pages
- OpenClaw Ecosystem — Comprehensive framework overview
- Skills & MCP — Skills system in OpenClaw
- AI Agent Memory — Memory architecture
Sources: OpenClaw Founder Interview, OpenClaw Engineering Practice