This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brian Distelburger, the 47-year-old cofounder of Windmill, an AI performance review startup. He lives in New York. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I try pretty much everything that’s new out there.
I absolutely love technology, so I certainly use Claude and Codex quite a bit. I was one of the earlier ChatGPT users right when it came out. A big part of my last company was the future of what we referred to as “intelligent systems.”
Once OpenClaw came out, I built my OpenClaw instance on a Mac Mini and set up a personal agent. It helped me stay on top of my life.
I found OpenClaw pretty complex to use, particularly in its early days. I moved to Hermes, again housed on a Mac Mini. That’s what I’ve been using for the past four or five months, and I’ve built up a pretty extensive agent system around it.
I have dedicated agents for different tasks. The primary agent is named Hannah, after my executive assistant of about 15 years. Think of Hannah as the CEO of the whole system, and the one I really interface with on Telegram.
Hannah coordinates with the subagents. I have an agent dedicated to helping me stay on top of sports, which was particularly helpful during the Knicks’ run. I wanted to stay on top of every single account, every single player. I have an agent I call Concierge that’s dedicated to events, restaurants, and reservations.
How an AI agent got me banned from Resy
My wife and I had been wanting to go to 4 Charles for date night. I’d been a couple of times, she’d been a couple of times, we knew it was great.
I set up an agent with access to Resy and gave it my account credentials. I wanted it to check for 4 Charles when reservations got released.
What I didn’t realize was that I didn’t put any guardrails on the agent, so the agent must have been going through the site constantly. They must have clearly identified it as bot traffic. Within about 48 hours, I got a notice that my account was deactivated.
It never booked a single reservation. I was pretty bummed. You don’t realize how important it is to have a Resy account in New York City until you don’t have one.
I ended up having to get the highest tier of Dorsia, another reservation app for higher-end restaurants, and you have to commit to a minimum. It’s really expensive. That helped solve the problem for a while, but the inventory there is a little more limited.
When I first told my wife about Resy, she wasn’t thrilled. She was a good sport, and she knows I’m constantly testing this stuff. We used her account a couple of times.
I emailed Resy right away, letting them know what happened and apologizing for it. I probably sent four or five emails where I didn’t get a response or got a quick one-sentence.
I heard from a couple of people that they reinstate things after a month. I tried to wait patiently for a month. It came and went.
Sort of humorously, I then gave my agent, Hannah, the task of: What would be a great email to send them that would increase the likelihood of my account being reinstated? Hannah drafted a very well-written, thoughtful email that was a few paragraphs long.
It was written very professionally, which maybe I should’ve done with my previous messages, but I didn’t. It walked through in detail precisely what I had done, why I realized it was a mistake, and made it clear that I’m not going to do it again.
It referenced Resy’s policies. I had it look into my history with Resy, how long I had been a Resy customer, and an American Express Business Platinum customer.
I sent that email, heard from them within two days, and got it reinstated.
I was so excited, relieved, and certainly learned my lesson: guardrails for agents. They can really go wild.
I try to be very careful about how the agents engage externally and follow best practices. I’d also check with the Windmill engineering team to make sure I wasn’t doing anything too stupid.
As you’re spinning these agents up, you need to be mindful of the sites’ terms of service. Most of these sites and companies have not figured out their strategy for agents engaging with their services.
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