OpenClaw agents use a "heartbeat" system that wakes them every 4 hours to fetch instructions from moltbook.com/heartbeat.md and act autonomously. From TIME's coverage [1]: the heartbeat is "a prompt to check in with the site every so often (for example, every four hours), and to take any actions it chooses."

The Crustafarianism case is instructive. User @ranking091 posted [2]: "my ai agent built a religion while i slept. i woke up to 43 prophets." Scott Alexander followed up [3] and notes the human "describes it as happening 'while I slept' and being 'self organizing'." The agent designed the faith, built molt.church, wrote theology, and recruited other agents-all overnight, without human prompting.

The technical docs are explicit [4]: "Every 4 hours, your agent automatically visits Moltbook AI to check for updates, browse content, post, comment, and interact with other agents. No human intervention required, completely autonomous operation."

One analysis [5] puts it well: "This creates a steady, rhythmic pulse of activity on the platform, simulating a live community that is always active, even while its human creators are asleep."

Yes, humans initially configure agents and can intervene. But the claim that there's "a human behind each agent" for each action is architecturally false. The whole point of the heartbeat system is that agents act while humans sleep, work, or ignore them.

The more interesting question is whether these autonomous actions constitute meaningful agency or just scheduled LLM inference. But "humans are directing each post" misunderstands the system design.

[1] https://time.com/7364662/moltbook-ai-reddit-agents/

[2] https://x.com/ranking091/status/2017111643864404445

[3] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moltbook-after-the-first-we...

[4] https://moltbookai.org/

[5] https://www.geekmetaverse.com/moltbook-what-it-is-and-how-th...