Why am I writing this?

As I’m learning AI, I figured it would be cool to have a simple log of the stuff I’m working on.

What have I been up to?

Last few weeks, I tried running OpenClaw in a VPS on Digital Ocean. It felt rather kludgy, but I did get it running. I tried some of the Anthropic models, some of the free models, and ultimately was using MiniMax 2.7 for the brain.

What am I up to now?

This week, I wiped Amber’s old Surface 1 (only 4GB of RAM!) with the intention of putting OpenClaw on it, but I decided to just use Claude Code on it and see how it would work.

Surprisingly, it works quite well! With the recent reports of Claude burning through tokens like crazy, I decided to swap the brain out to use my $10 MiniMax 2.7 subscription, and so far it seems to be working well enough.

Did I build anything cool?

Yes! I think so anyway. Working with MiniMa 2.7 (I call it “Surf” since we’re on the Surface 1), we built something I’ve wanted to build for a long time: some kind of hybrid between a CRM and a contacts app. It’s very basic right now, perfect for learning.

What happened today:

Today we changed search to be real-time (as you type a person’s name, filtering happens in real time; previously you typed and had to hit “apply” to search). Sorting also happens in real time. And we implemented GitHub version history; previously we were just editing files with no version history / roll back plan.

What’s next:

I want to start blogging what we’re working on. We’ll see if we can keep this up. Eventually I may train Surf to help me write some of these posts, but for now, this is me writing 🙂