Post-Mortem: Why I’m Stepping Back from My OpenClaw Experiment

In my last post, I shared my journey into building an OpenClaw agent to gain deeper visibility into the development process. As someone fascinated by the intersection of medicine and code, the promise of a highly autonomous, transparent agent was too intriguing to pass up.

However, after a period of active experimentation, I have decided to deactivate my OpenClaw setup.

The experiment was incredibly valuable, and I’m genuinely glad I took the dive. It provided a unique perspective on agentic workflows and the current state of autonomous developer tools. But ultimately, I hit a reality check that many of us in the “clinician-coder” space eventually face: the “Time-to-Utility” ratio.

As a full-time physician, my coding time is a precious commodity. I need my tools to be force multipliers, not maintenance projects. I found that getting OpenClaw to provide the consistent, reliable utility I hoped for required more “under-the-hood” work and troubleshooting than I can justify alongside my clinical responsibilities.

The screenshots above illustrate some of the friction points—from configuration sync errors to missing tool results in session histories—that eventually added up.

For a full-time software developer, these hurdles might be a minor inconvenience or even a welcome challenge. Perhaps a dedicated engineer will eventually make these types of autonomous agents more “idiot-proof” for those of us who need a more turnkey solution.

For now, I am returning to the streamlined workflows I’ve already established. They may be less “experimental,” but they allow me to focus on what matters most: building tools that impact maternal-fetal medicine.

It was a great experiment, and I learned a lot. But for this specific chapter, the experiment is officially closed. Onward to the next project!