I Let an AI Agent Run My Freelance Life. It Almost Burned It Down.

For the past few days I kept seeing OpenClaw everywhere. YouTube, Instagram, that one tech Discord I lurk in but never actually talk in. Everyone losing their minds over it. "It negotiated $4,200 off a car price." "It runs my entire inbox." "It's the future of computing." I had a rough idea what it was, some kind of AI agent. And the intern brain immediately went: if this is basically an automation tool, I can fix my entire chaotic freelance workflow with it. Classic. Give a sleep-deprived software intern a new shiny tool and watch what happens. I'm juggling a software internship by day and freelance client work on the side. My problems aren't glamorous. Client meetings clashing with job interview slots. Cold emails to recruiters I keep meaning to send but never do. Follow-ups falling through the cracks because I'm context-switching between three different versions of my life. So I thought, let me just set it up and see what it does. Two weeks, controlled experiment. The experiment was