Karpathy: "Claws" Are a New Layer on Top of LLM Agents

Karpathy Names a New AI Stack Layer: Claws

Andrej Karpathy recently bought a Mac Mini to tinker with a new generation of AI agent systems. In a mini-essay on X (Twitter), he introduced terminology that Simon Willison believes will stick: "Claws".

What Are Claws?

According to Karpathy, Claws represent a new architectural layer that sits on top of LLM agents, much like LLM agents themselves were a new layer on top of base LLMs. This layer provides:

Orchestration: coordinating multiple agents and tasks

Scheduling: automatically queuing and running tasks

Context management: maintaining persistent memory across sessions

Tool calls: integrating external tools and APIs

Persistence: maintaining long-term state

A Growing Ecosystem

Karpathy notes that an ecosystem is already emerging: NanoClaw (core engine ~4,000 lines of code), nanobot, zeroclaw, ironclaw, and picoclaw. The category's unofficial emoji is 🦞.

Simon Willison observes that "Claw" is becoming a term of art for the entire category of OpenClaw-like systems — AI agents that run on personal hardware, communicate via messaging protocols, and can both respond to direct instructions and schedule tasks autonomously.

Significance

This follows Karpathy's earlier coinage of "vibe coding" and "agentic engineering," both of which achieved widespread adoption. The Hacker News discussion gathered 285 points, reflecting significant developer interest in this evolving layer of the AI stack.