Gate News Report, March 21 — Andrej Karpathy shared his smart home AI agent case on the No Priors podcast. He stated that most smart home apps in app stores “really shouldn’t exist; everything should be API endpoints, and the Agent is the smart glue.”
Karpathy introduced the home Agent “Dobby the elf claw,” built in January this year: using only three prompts, the Agent scanned the local network, discovered Sonos speakers, reverse-engineered their protocol, and took over playback control. Currently, Dobby controls lights, air conditioning, curtains, pool, and security systems via WhatsApp chat, replacing six separate apps. He also integrated visual models to monitor security cameras, automatically sending images to WhatsApp when someone visits.
Karpathy said, “This should be free within a year or two, with no vibe coding involved—it’s basic skills. Customers are no longer humans but Agents acting on behalf of humans. The scale of this reconstruction will be quite significant.”