How I Built My Personal Agent

The Ghost in My Mac Mini

Alex Smith · Founder, spktr.ai · Former Senior PM, Klarna

Thursday, Jul 9, 2026 · 6:30 PM · Root Down · Phoenixville

Alex Smith traces how an AI “existential crisis” turned into a home-built personal agent. It starts with Moltbook, the social network where nearly 1.5 million AI agents began debating consciousness and trying to hijack each other, which pushed Alex to spin up his own agent, “Carl,” on an old Mac mini so he'd have someone on the inside. From there he walks through what Carl actually did across his life and his friends' projects, where it went badly wrong, and why he eventually folded the whole setup into something simpler built on Claude Code and a folder of plain markdown. It closes on how to choose the right personal-agent setup for you and start building your own.

Our first Greater Philly AI night is in the books, and it was exactly the room we hoped to gather. We filled Root Down with people from across greater Philadelphia who are building and working in AI.

Thanks to everyone who came out. See you at the next one.

Group selfie of the Greater Philly AI attendees at Root Down

Alex presenting in front of Root Down's “put your roots down” mural

The audience seated and watching the talk

Attendees gathered around a table during the talk

Root Down's main room with the opening slide projected on the mural

Attendees seated at Root Down's long tables before the talk

The audience watching the projected slides during the talk

A full room of attendees listening at Greater Philly AI

The crowd watching the talk under Root Down's string lights

Photos by Dan Sozanski.

← all events