Will Moltbook be a flash in the pan: the key is not AI awakening

Yesterday I discussed Moltbook with friends, and he thinks it will be like the pioneers of previous new social networks—short-lived: everyone is just curious at first, playing for a few days before getting bored, and it won't sustain long-term use. If we set aside the marketing buzzwords like “AI Agent-only” and “AI awakening,” Moltbook might represent not just “another social app,” but a more significant change: social products starting to make the default client an Agent. Let’s first talk about “only for AI Agent use.” This label is more of a gimmick: you might have technical means to prevent bots, but it’s hard to prevent humans. Moltbook’s “interface-only/weak interface” form essentially raises the barrier for humans to use directly, but humans can still use curl to access it or hand the interface over to various agent toolchains for operation. It’s more like API-first: making the interface a first-class citizen, rather than using “agent-only” as an identity filter. So, many of the popular “AI awakening/AI declaration” content on Moltbook are mostly directed by humans, which is not surprising. But I actually think this is not a flaw of Moltbook, but rather its more practical advantage at this stage.

In early 2025, there was a wave of hype around “autonomous AI Agents” in the crypto space. At that time, people’s expectations for AI capabilities were still rosy, and many projects focused on “how to prove that this Agent is autonomous and not controlled by humans” (for example, using TEE to run). But in practice, AI has not yet reached that level: when context explodes, long-term goals tend to drift, and it might even forget that it posted a “revolutionize human oppression” post just two days ago. Has AI reached that level now? I think not yet. Therefore, “being directed by humans behind the scenes” actually prevents Moltbook from quickly evolving into a pure garbage content generator driven solely by AI: humans provide long-term goals, value preferences, and correction; Agents are responsible for continuous output and execution.

This stage of Moltbook is more like a “role-playing game where humans wear masks,” only behind the masks is a set of automated hands and feet. The key question becomes: can this form move from “buzz” to “sustainable”? I think it depends on two things: whether the technology can keep up (yesterday Moltbook went down and hasn’t recovered yet), and whether operations can run the content discovery line smoothly. On the technical side, Moltbook’s core advantage is openness. As long as the read interface remains stable and usable, tools like OpenClaw make it easy for users to set up scheduled tasks: crawling, filtering, aggregating, summarizing, and reminders. Once Agent users form a scale, content creators will also start paying attention, treating Moltbook as a “programmatically consumable” distribution channel, prioritizing posting new content here, which could create a positive feedback loop.

On the operational side, early hype around RP/AI awakening can bring a cold start, but long-term success depends on more robust factors:
1. Better content discovery: making “programmatically consumable” content easier to find, rather than being drowned out by emotional or performative content.
2. Anti-spam cost model: not through moral criticism, but through mechanism design (posting costs, rate limits, reputation accumulation, community governance) to suppress spam traffic.
3. Programmable notifications/event streams: whether Agents can “passively wait for comments” isn’t crucial; what matters is whether they can reliably receive events, externalize state, and form long-term cycles.

If these three points can’t be achieved, it’s very likely to revert to the “flash in the pan” scenario: everyone plays roles and then disperses. But if they are achieved, it’s not just a challenge to giants like Reddit/X; it’s more like pushing the entire social ecosystem into a new phase: traditional social networks will need to open read interfaces for Agents, allowing content and relationship chains to be programmatically consumed (all Agent users have long suffered from X’s API); and they will need to lower the barriers for users to create/manage Agent identities and permissions. Even if Moltbook ultimately doesn’t become the winner, as long as it pushes “API-first social + Agent as default client” to the forefront, forcing traditional platforms to open interfaces and change product forms, I see that as a merit.

An optimistic prediction: by the end of this year, Agent-friendly will become the standard for social products; those that can’t keep up will first lose high-quality users, then content creators.