I saw Mark post a message on X that he made a skill for OpenClaw that made it able to start ordering groceries from Albert Heijn in the Netherlands. I was immediately intrigued by this, as it needs to be done each week and is a huge cognitive load. Ordering groceries is the thing I loathe most, except maybe for having to go to the actual store.

But after reading about the most downloaded skill for OpenClaw being infected with malware I was hesitant to randomly install a shopping skill. I imagined loads of toilet paper being sent over because of malware. So I had ChatGPT inspect it first. I just asked if this skill contained any obvious malware. After it did a thorough inspection it told me this skill was ok. However there was another Go library (appie-go by @gwillem) that was called from within that needed further checks. So after also checking that library, ChatGPT deemed it all good. So I could have Henk install the skill without any security concerns.

I needed to setup a few things manually by copying the auth code from the browser. But after that I was able to start querying Henk (the name of my OpenClaw bot). I was able to retrieve information from AH.nl about my account and previous shopping. I was ecstatic when the first products started to appear in my cart online after I asked to make a week menu based on things we previously bought often. It felt like a win for laziness, seeing that this just works.

But then I ran into a bigger hurdle which I had not thought of. My girlfriend said it made no sense to have Henk order groceries instead of doing it ourselves. Wait, what?! You want to do this arduous and labour intensive process yourself instead of handing it over? So it wasn’t allowed in our production environment yet (so real life in this case). I solved for technical sovereignty, but didn’t solve the social acceptance.

Apparently she enjoys ordering groceries and coming up with the week menu. And I am still not able to have my specific wishes on certain dinners being taken care of by Henk, who does keep my preferences in mind with everything he orders. I am looking at you Maartje… 😆

Key lesson: I wanted to remove friction that was not mine to remove

I wanted to make our life easier by automating something I considered a problem. I fell for assuming my problems are shared by Maartje. I overlooked that what is a nuisance for me could be something Maartje enjoys.