Karpathy: Most Apps Shouldn't Exist, 3 Prompts Let AI Take Over Your Entire Smart Home

According to CoinWorld, based on monitoring by 1M AI News, Andrej Karpathy stated on the No Priors podcast that most smart home apps in app stores “really shouldn’t exist; everything should be API endpoints, and Agents are the smart glue.” He shared his 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. Now, Dobby can control lights, air conditioning, curtains, the pool, and security systems through WhatsApp conversations, replacing six separate apps previously used. He also integrated visual models to monitor security cameras, automatically sending images to WhatsApp when someone visits. “This should be free within a year or two, without any vibe coding—it’s basic skills,” Karpathy said. “Customers are no longer humans but Agents acting on behalf of humans. The scale of this reconstruction will be quite significant.”