Today, for the first time in 4.5 months, I feel like I finally have a minute to breathe.
I didn’t stop or rest, just slowed down a bit.
An inventory of where things stand:
My NLC is up and running for the past 2 months
I achieved what I wanted as proof of concept, and more
11 installs of NLC (and counting) - one more coming tomorrow
Haven’t promoted it heavily beyond some “reply if interested”
App is stable, users are happy and we’re seeing some incredible use cases already.
I onboarded TY’s team, and they created personal VAs for their department heads.
They started linking their NLC agents to help with client service by sending weekly personalized content ideas and talking points to their 1-on-1 clients.
SH used it to completely overhaul his website.
“I am just enjoying the chatting with my agents and having my site changed... This is EXACTLY what I have always wanted… My challenge have always been putting my thoughts into the vendor and having them understand me. Now with AI, I can do it part by part”
Iteration > Design.
CW built a prospect tracking app for her MLM downlines.
RB is having a much better time with NLC developing his company’s app than with Claude Code.
Everyone’s having a really good time with NLC, barring Anthropic rate limits.
Above all - and this was a huge relief for me - a lot of people kept saying what I did was against Anthropic’s ToS, and that NLC will get my account banned.
I would folded if not for the fact that I did my homework many times before I even built this for myself.
And when Anthropic pulled the plug from all 3rd party apps last week, NLC was completely unaffected.
That’s because NLC was NOT a “3rd party app”, but Claude Code itself - just enhanced.
With wins here and there, and NLC not breaking every other day, I’ve begun to set my sights towards the future.
The situation with the big AI labs is very untenable the more I think about it.
The usage limits that they gave us for our monthly subscription is largely subsidized by the companies, and the VCs backing them behind the scenes.
I am paying Anthropic $400 per month for my (two) 20x Claude Max subscription.
I am using >$10K in tokens every single month if I were to convert everything into pure API costs.
Eventually, they’re gonna have to pull the plug.
And when they do, we will see either:
A) Prices skyrocketing; or
B) Rate limits even more limited than they already are
At first I thought I am gonna have some more time before this happens, but something happened just today to make me think that the timeline will be even shorter than I imagine.
Z.ai.
I’ve been telling my clients to use that. I’ve been testing it out myself the past few days.
In short: Z.ai’s models are a chef’s kiss.
Performance equal to Opus 4.6. With much better attitude.
It isn’t lazy. It doesn’t cut corners.
It’s SLIGHTLY less smart, but it makes up for it by actually following instructions.
The experience I had using it was night and day different from Opus 4.6.
That is, until this morning when I woke up and realize I wasn’t able to use Z.ai at all.
Rate limit hit, even though I only used up 11% of my weekly quota.
A short visit to their Discord showed me that a bunch of people all around the world has been experiencing this.
This again. The silent rate limitations and zero explanation of what’s happening.
Another visit to their website showed me that they have almost doubled their ‘Lite’ subscription from $10/mo to $18/mo.
So first, it was Anthropic.
Then people realize Z.ai is a viable alternative to Anthropic, then Z.ai pulled this same shit.
I can only hope they don’t purposely dumb down their models the way Anthropic do.
This guy on YouTube made an excellent explanation on what is going on: https://youtu.be/f4NLu0ylrYY?si=BJxFCdKfedGDL9Vy
So whatever decision I made yesterday to move AWAY from Anthropic (even though Anthropic is really hot right now) and become truly model-agnostic is reinforced much further.
My immediate priority, therefore, is to create the OpenClaw version of NLC.
Peter Steinberger and his foundation has been shipping stuff aggressively - 5 new shipments this week alone.
And since they collaborated with NVIDIA, their security has been tightened a lot, which solves the #1 biggest concern people have about OpenClaw.
But what’s most leveraged, I find, is that a lot of the quality-of-life features I intended to build for NLC is already there in OpenClaw natively.
All that’s left is to insert my proprietary processes, frameworks, and harness on top of it, plus the user friendly WebUI suitable for non-techy folks like me.
About ~65% addition to OpenClaw, according to my agent.
It’s a lot of work, but it’s going to be worth it.
I’ll keep building in public as I develop NLC.
You guys get the front row seat.
FELIX