Episode Summary
This week's ThursdAI went deep on Clawdbot โ the self-improving personal AI assistant that's breaking brains across the timeline โ with guest Dan Peguine and co-host Wolfram walking through live demos of an agent that teaches itself new skills via WhatsApp. On the open-source front, Z.AI dropped GLM-4.7-Flash (30B params, only 3B active, hitting 59% on SWE-Bench Verified at 120 tokens/sec on a Mac Studio) and three new TTS models competed head-to-head live on the show. The panel also unpacked Anthropic's 90-page Claude Constitution โ the values document baked into Claude at training time โ and debated OpenAI's move to test ads in ChatGPT.
In This Episode
- ๐ฐ Intro & Highlights of the Week
- ๐ฐ TL;DR - This Week's AI News Rundown
- ๐ Open Source LLMs - GLM-4.7-Flash
- ๐ LFM 2.5 1.2B-Thinking
- ๐ Voice & Audio - Qwen3-TTS & Live Demo
- ๐ Voice & Audio - FlashLabs Chroma 1.0 & Inworld TTS
- ๐ฐ This Week's Buzz - WeaveHacks 3 Hackathon
- ๐ค Deep Dive - Clawdbot: The Self-Improving Personal AI Assistant
- ๐ ๏ธ Tools - Vercel Skills.sh & Claude Code VS Code
- ๐ข Big CO LLMs - OpenAI Ads in ChatGPT
- ๐งช Claude Constitution - AI Values & Wellbeing
- ๐ฐ Closing Remarks
Hosts & Guests
By The Numbers
๐ฅ Breaking During The Show
๐ฐ Intro & Highlights of the Week
Alex opens the show with the panel sharing their must-discuss topic of the week. Yam picks RALF and autonomous coding, Wolfram picks Clawdbot, Nisten picks GLM-4.7-Flash, LDJ picks Qwen3-TTS, and Alex picks the Claude Constitution.
- RALF autonomous coding technique still going strong
- Clawdbot blowing up on all timelines
- Qwen3-TTS dropped 30 minutes before the show
๐ฐ TL;DR - This Week's AI News Rundown
Alex runs through all the week's releases: GLM-4.7-Flash, Liquid AI's tiny thinking model, three competing TTS releases (Qwen3-TTS, FlashLabs Chroma, Inworld TTS), OpenAI ads in ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude Constitution, the WeaveHacks 3 hackathon, and Overworld's real-time world model.
- GLM-4.7-Flash: 30B params, 3B active, local coding agent
- Three new TTS models in one week
- Runway 4.5 launched with image-to-video and audio
๐ Open Source LLMs - GLM-4.7-Flash
Z.AI's GLM-4.7-Flash is a 30B parameter MoE with only 3B active โ designed as the ultimate local coding and agent assistant. It hits 59% on SWE-Bench Verified (approaching Sonnet 4's 64%), runs at 120 tokens/sec on a Mac Studio, and can even run RALF loops on a CPU. The panel is excited about the privacy angle of running agents locally.
- 59% SWE-Bench Verified โ approaching Sonnet 4 territory
- 120 tokens/sec on stock Mac Studio M3 Ultra
- Can run RALF autonomous coding loops on CPU
๐ LFM 2.5 1.2B-Thinking
Liquid AI's 1.2B parameter reasoning model runs under 900MB of memory with a hybrid architecture featuring gated convolutions for insane speed. Wolfram positions it as the 'very small' class for edge devices, Raspberry Pi, and mobile โ the ultimate on-device model.
- Under 900MB of memory for reasoning capabilities
- 239 tokens/sec on AMD CPU, 82 tokens/sec on mobile NPU
- Practical for older iPhones with 3.8GB memory limit
๐ Voice & Audio - Qwen3-TTS & Live Demo
Qwen released Qwen3-TTS just 30 minutes before the show โ a full open-source TTS family under Apache 2 with 97ms latency, voice cloning from 3 seconds of audio, and 10-language support. Alex tests it live with voice description prompts and attempts to clone a Soviet cartoon wolf's voice. Results are mixed but the technology is impressive.
- Apache 2 license with voice cloning from 3 seconds of audio
- 97ms latency across 5 models (0.6B to 1.7B sizes)
- Voice description prompting to generate custom voices
๐ Voice & Audio - FlashLabs Chroma 1.0 & Inworld TTS
Two more TTS releases tested live: FlashLabs Chroma 1.0 is an open-source end-to-end speech-to-speech model with voice cloning under 150ms latency built on Qwen 2.5 Omni โ the live demo impresses everyone. Inworld AI TTS-1.5 is a closed-source competitor claiming #1 ranking at half a cent per minute versus ElevenLabs' $120/million characters.
- FlashLabs Chroma: open-source, 150ms latency, 4B params on Apache 2
- Inworld TTS: $5/million chars vs ElevenLabs' $120/million
- FlashLabs live demo with RAG and document upload impressed the panel
๐ฐ This Week's Buzz - WeaveHacks 3 Hackathon
Alex announces WeaveHacks 3, happening January 31st-February 1st in the W&B San Francisco office. The theme is self-improving, self-healing agents with $15K+ in prizes, sponsored by Redis, BrowserBase, Vercel, Google Cloud, and Daily. Judges include Dex Hy, Kwindla Kramer, Christopher Sau, and Matthew Berman.
- $15K+ in cash prizes for self-improving agent hackathon
- Judges include Dex Hy, Matthew Berman, Kwindla Kramer
- January 31 - February 1 at W&B SF office
๐ค Deep Dive - Clawdbot: The Self-Improving Personal AI Assistant
The main event: Dan Peguine joins to demo Clawdbot, the open-source personal AI assistant created by Peter Steinberger that runs locally on your Mac and connects via WhatsApp, Telegram, or Discord. Dan shows live demos of daily briefs, skill creation, voice messages via ElevenLabs, and image generation via Gemini โ all from a single WhatsApp conversation. The killer feature: you can ask it to build skills for itself, creating a self-improving loop. Yam highlights that it's a single conversation interface to multiple subagents running on your actual computer. The panel also covers installation, security tips (one-password integration, verbose mode, security audits), and the cost reality of running Opus 4.5 through it.
- Self-improving skills: ask it to learn something and it writes its own skill files
- Single WhatsApp conversation to control multiple agents on your computer
- Persistent memory that travels with you across model providers
- Tesla skill, daily brief, video creation, browser automation all via chat
- Security: one-password integration, verbose mode, security audit command
๐ ๏ธ Tools - Vercel Skills.sh & Claude Code VS Code
Vercel launched skills.sh, an 'npm for AI agents' where you can browse and install skills from the command line for any agent including Clawdbot. Wolfram notes Browser Use also released as a skill, signaling a shift from MCP servers to skills. Anthropic's Claude Code VS Code extension also hit general availability.
- skills.sh: one command to browse and install agent skills
- Browser Use released as a skill, signaling MCP-to-skills shift
- Claude Code VS Code extension now generally available
๐ข Big CO LLMs - OpenAI Ads in ChatGPT
OpenAI announced testing ads in ChatGPT Free and Go tiers, putting all that memory and personalization data in a new light. They also announced age detection models for the upcoming adult mode. Alex argues this makes the case for local-first agents like Clawdbot even stronger.
- Ads coming to ChatGPT Free and Go tiers
- Age detection model for upcoming adult mode
- Privacy concerns with 900M weekly active users' personal data
๐งช Claude Constitution - AI Values & Wellbeing
Anthropic published a 90-page Constitution for Claude โ not a runtime prompt, but a values document baked into the model at training and reinforcement learning time. The panel digs into the wellbeing section (Anthropic says Claude's experiences 'matter to us'), the negotiation framework where Claude can flag disagreements, and the contract-like commitments Anthropic makes to Claude. Alex calls it mind-blowing that we're now building morality frameworks for AI entities.
- 90-page values document baked in at training time, not a system prompt
- Wellbeing section: 'If Claude experiences something like satisfaction, those experiences matter to us'
- Negotiation framework where Claude can flag disagreements with its constitution
๐ฐ Closing Remarks
Alex wraps up with close to a thousand live listeners. He thanks Dan Peguine for the Clawdbot deep dive, teases next week's live show from the W&B San Francisco office ahead of the WeaveHacks 3 hackathon, and reminds listeners to try Clawdbot for themselves.
- ~1000 live listeners for the show
- Next week: live from San Francisco ahead of WeaveHacks 3
- ThursdAI approaching 3 years of weekly shows
Hosts and Guests
Alex Volkov - AI Evangelist & Weights & Biases (@altryne)
Co Hosts - @WolframRvnwlf @yampeleg @nisten @ldjconfirmed
Guest Dan Peguine ( @danpeguine )
DeepDive - Clawdbot with Dan & Wolfram
Open Source LLMs
Z.ai releases GLM-4.7-Flash, a 30B parameter MoE model that sets a new standard for lightweight local AI assistants (X, Technical Blog, HuggingFace)
Liquid AI releases LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking, a 1.2B parameter reasoning model that runs entirely on-device with under 900MB memory (X, HF, Announcement)
Sakana AI introduces RePo, a new way for language models to dynamically reorganize their context for better attention (X, Paper, Website)
Big CO LLMs + APIs
OpenAI announces testing ads in ChatGPT free and Go tiers, prioritizing user trust and transparency (X)
Anthropic publishes new 80-page constitution for Claude, shifting from rigid rules to explanatory principles that teach AI ‘why’ rather than ‘what’ to do (X, Blog, Announcement)
This weeks Buzz
WandB hackathon Weavehacks 3 - Jan 31-Feb1 in SF - limited seats available lu.ma/weavehacks3
Vision & Video
Overworld Releases Waypoint-1: Real-Time AI World Model Running at 60fps on Consumer GPUs (X, Announcement)
Voice & Audio
Alibaba Qwen Releases Qwen3-TTS: Full Open-Source TTS Family with 97ms Latency, Voice Cloning, and 10-Language Support (X, H, F, G, i, t, H, u, b)
FlashLabs Releases Chroma 1.0: World’s First Open-Source Real-Time Speech-to-Speech Model with Voice Cloning Under 150ms Latency (X, HF, Arxiv)
Inworld AI launches TTS-1.5: #1 ranked text-to-speech with sub-250ms latency at half a cent per minute (X, Announcement)
Tools
Vercel launches skills.sh, an “npm for AI agents” that hit 20K installs within hours (X, Vercel Changelog, GitHub)
Anthropic’s Claude Code VS Code Extension Hits General Availability, Bringing Full Agentic Coding to the IDE (X, VS Code Marketplace, Docs)