Building AI agents at Saint · ClawCon London 2026

Bet against Privacy

Four things I’ve learned building delightful always‑listening agents.

Daniel Hails
saint.work · hails.info
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Disclaimer: I only learned I was talking today!

If it’s good, that’s the lobster.

If it’s bad, that’s me.

I’m Daniel Hails. I’ve been building AI agents at Saint.work.

Source: hails.info
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In 2013, Carrascal et al. asked 168 people what they’d accept for their browsing history.

€7

The median price. The cost of a Big Mac.

Carrascal et al., WWW 2013
Source: Carrascal et al., “Your browsing behavior for a Big Mac”, WWW 2013
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Last night, 23:03

What did I give my data up for? Dinner.

An agent we’re building at Saint skipped the negotiation for me.

WhatsApp message from Ava: YES! We're on the checkout page. Place delivery order button is enabled. Let me place the order.
Source: personal WhatsApp, 2026-04-07 · saint.work
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Two

Blips of interest.

What I build for at Saint: the system noticing what I didn’t ask about.

Ava sends an unprompted message about a non-invasive ultrasound BCI startup raising $21M, noting it's adjacent to the user's MIT work.
  • Capture Blips of interest, resurface them and augment them.
  • Mid‑March, unprompted: a ping about a non‑invasive ultrasound BCI startup raising £21M.
  • Adjacent to my old MIT work. The agent knew; I didn’t have to tell it.
Sources: personal WhatsApp 2026-03-26 · saint.work; Matuschak, “Towards scalable blip cultivation” (2024)
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Blips of salience

“The ideas you’d otherwise lose become the projects that define you.”

A self-authored life is built from the things you notice.

Source: Andy Matuschak, “Towards scalable blip cultivation” (2024) · “Doubling down on blips” (2025)
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Three — For everyone else

You are not normal.

You’re at a lobster‑themed personal‑AI festival on a Wednesday night.

Source: hails.info
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…and neither am I

So I gave it to my mum.

Ava describes how the user's mum was the first person to ask if she actually liked her name, and that it felt significant.
  • I ship everything we build at Saint to my mum first.
  • She cares about one thing the ClawCon crowd rarely tests for: does it feel human?
  • If it’s only delightful to the people in this room, we’ve built the wrong thing.
Source: personal WhatsApp, 2026-04-02 · saint.work
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…and a slog of unglamorous plumbing

What ready‑for‑mum actually costs

Sandboxing

Blast‑radius control

A bad tool call can’t nuke the machine, leak the filesystem, or reach a network it shouldn’t.

MITM key proxy

Ambient credentials

The agent uses my Stripe, GitHub, and Google Drive without ever seeing the real keys. The proxy signs requests; the agent sees capabilities.

Access‑control tiers

Per‑persona files

Mum’s finances and my work repos live on different rungs of the same ladder. Agents cross rungs only on explicit request.

Source: hails.info
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Four

Make it as capable as you.

Discord exchange: Ava sends a Kuzco perfect meme, then is asked if she has a LinkedIn. She offers to create one, then successfully navigates the signup flow.
  • One of our agents is now on LinkedIn. It signed itself up.
  • If it can't sign up to LinkedIn - your browser is not good enough.
Source: personal Discord, 2026-03-06 · saint.work
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An agent needs…

Same capabilities.

Real Phone
A SIM, a number, their own WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram
not a bot frontend — a real phone number
Identity
Their own name, email, accounts
not impersonation — personhood
Browser
A real Chrome session they own
not a scraping API — cookies, logins, tabs

Anything less is a chatbot in a trenchcoat.

Source: hails.info
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Wrap — Agent‑to‑agent

Just use a phone number.

Ava reporting a summary of 19 issues addressed, 11 PRs created, 8 closed.
Ava messaging her sibling agent Iris on WhatsApp to test a permission escalation flow.

While I was on the train here, the agents I build at Saint shipped 19 issues, 11 PRs, and 8 closes. Meet Ava, our first-person agent, and Iris, her sibling. When Ava needed to test a permission escalation, she didn’t call an API — she messaged Iris. On WhatsApp. With a phone number. No new protocol, no new standard, no new committee — the substrate has worked since 1992.

Source: personal WhatsApp, 2026-04-08 · saint.work
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Four rules for the lobster in your pocket

1. Make it delightful.
2. Let it notice.
3. Build it for your mum.
4. Give it a phone, an identity, and a browser.

saint.work
Source: hails.info · ClawCon London 2026
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