# Ryan Carson — Tools from "Behind the Craft" Episode
**Source:** [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDqdVZwAwjw) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-craft/id1736359687?i=1000769337366)
**Episode:** "How This 5x Founder Runs His Startup Solo With AI Agents (OpenClaw, Codex, Devin)"
**Host:** Peter Yang | **Guest:** Ryan Carson | **Date:** May 24, 2026

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## Tools Ryan Uses

### 1. OpenClaw
**Link:** https://openclaw.ai | **GitHub:** https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw
**How Ryan uses it:** His primary "chief of staff" AI. He runs it with its own email address and GitHub account. It triages his inbox and Slack messages every 15 minutes, surfaces items based on a priority map of his projects and contacts, and handles business development outreach autonomously (his named agent "R2" books meetings with law firms and pitches his product). He open-sourced his full OpenClaw setup as **ClawChief**: https://github.com/snarktank/clawchief

### 2. Devin
**Link:** https://devin.ai
**How Ryan uses it:** His core "code factory" engine. He runs 15 simultaneous automation threads in Devin. Uses it for: nightly feature builds (writes and ships code while he sleeps), daily smoke testing (a Devin thread signs up for his own app every morning and records a video — Ryan wakes up to the report), and automated Sentry error monitoring (a thread watches for issues and spins up separate Devin instances to fix them). Spends $2–3k/month on it.

### 3. Codex (OpenAI)
**Link:** https://openai.com/codex
**How Ryan uses it:** Secondary coding agent. He uses it alongside Claude Code and has mentioned using it specifically for browser testing tasks. His quote: "I really like the Codex app experience, but my preference is Claude Code." Uses it as part of a multi-agent coding stack (gpt-5.5 + Claude Opus 4.7 + Codex browser testing tool simultaneously for UI-heavy features).

### 4. Claude Code (Anthropic)
**Link:** https://claude.ai/code
**How Ryan uses it:** His preferred coding agent — rates it above Codex for experience. Part of his standard multi-tool coding stack. Used for writing and shipping features, especially alongside Devin for local-machine work when building design-heavy UI.

### 5. Sentry
**Link:** https://sentry.io
**How Ryan uses it:** Error monitoring. He has a Devin automation that watches Sentry daily, flags issues, and triggers additional Devin instances to investigate and fix them — fully automated error triage.

### 6. Tailscale
**Link:** https://tailscale.com
**How Ryan uses it:** Networking layer for his OpenClaw setup. Used to fix connectivity issues with OpenClaw running remotely. Enables him to run agents from his phone without needing local machine access.

### 7. ClawChief (Ryan's own open-source system)
**Link:** https://github.com/snarktank/clawchief
**How Ryan uses it:** This is Ryan's opinionated OpenClaw configuration — a "founder operating system" built on top of OpenClaw. Provides: priority mapping, task tracking, meeting-note ingestion, cron templates, and business development skills. He open-sourced it so others can copy his exact setup.

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## Key Quotes
- "Agents are just cron jobs and text markdown files" (used as the chapter title on the YouTube video)
- "I'm basically Devin + OpenClaw 95% of the time now — I can't imagine going back to doing dev on my local machine."
- "I really like the Codex app experience, but my preference is Claude Code."

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## Ryan Carson Links
- X: https://x.com/ryancarson
- Website: https://ryancarson.com
- Startup: https://untangle.us
- Newsletter (New Dork City): https://ryancarson.substack.com