Peter Steinberger, Founder of OpenClaw, said he banned the GitHub account linked to Perplexity after it submitted what he described as low-quality, AI-generated code through a pull request.
Perplexity had recently demonstrated its new Computer tool, which uses Anthropic’s Claude model to autonomously interact with developer tools. In the demo, the system identified an issue in the open-source OpenClaw repository, forked the repo, wrote a fix, and submitted a pull request.
Big no for spamming our repo with a slop PR. Account banned.
— Peter Steinberger 🦞 (@steipete) March 11, 2026
Steinberger criticised the demonstration on X, writing: “Big no for spamming our repo with a slop PR. Account banned.”
Some users suggested the reaction may have been driven by competition, since Perplexity’s tool could overlap with parts of the developer workflow. Steinberger rejected that claim, noting that he had recently merged a pull request that made Perplexity a first-class search provider in OpenClaw.
“I expect better from them than sending an untested slop PR and thinking that’s okay and something we want to promote,” he said.
For context, Perplexity’s Computer feature can operate developer tools and complete multi-step tasks on a user’s behalf. Instead of only answering questions, as the standard Perplexity search engine does, the feature can interact with tools such as the terminal, code editors and GitHub workflows to execute real actions.
Similarly, OpenClaw handles tasks such as managing email, interacting with messaging platforms, and automating workflows—all through locally running autonomous agents.
It connects a language model, including OpenAI’s GPT and Anthropic’s Claude, with real tools and services on a device or server. Once configured, users can interact with it through chat apps, including WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discord, and prompt it to perform actions.
Recently, Steinberger joined OpenAI to help the company develop next-generation personal AI agents. OpenAI will support OpenClaw as an open-source foundation going forward, preserving its independent ecosystem while bringing Steinberger into its team.
On March 2, OpenClaw reached over 2,45,000 stars, overtaking React, which currently has 2,43,000 stars.
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