A tipping point came in December, when he noticed he was writing just 20% of his code with 80% delegated to an agent, reversing from an earlier split with 80% done by himself and 20% by an agent. That trend has continued.
“I don’t think I’ve typed like a line of code probably since December, basically, which is an extremely large change,” Karpathy said. “I don’t think a normal person actually realizes that this happened or how dramatic it was.”
He’s not alone and added that the default workflow for building software has completely changed in recent months as agentic AI has exploded in popularity.
Its potential remains massive, and Karpathy described his struggle to fully envision what could come next, saying “I’m just like in the state of psychosis of trying to figure out what’s possible, trying to push it to the limit.”
Karpathy also revealed that he went through a “claw psychosis” in January while integrating an agent with various smart functions at his home.
In fact, he’s dubbed it “Dobby the House Elf claw,” and it now controls his home’s sound system, lighting, security functions, shades, HVAC, pool and spa.
Previously, managing each one required using several different apps. But now, Karpathy said he just instructs Dobby what to do by sending messages via WhatsApp in natural language.
“So Dobby is in charge of the house,” he said. “It’s been really fun to have these macro actions that maintain my house. I haven’t like really pushed it way more beyond that, and I think people are doing a lot more crazy things with it.”
