Inside the Souls of an Autonomous AI Crew | OpenClaw & Hermes with Michael Gannotti (Microsoft)

Inside the Souls of an Autonomous AI Crew | OpenClaw & Hermes with Michael Gannotti (Microsoft)What happens when AI stops being a tool and starts being a colleague?In this episode, I sit down with Michael Gannotti, Principal AI Solution Engineer at Microsoft, to explore SMFWorks – his autonomous multi-agent "company" of 14 AI colleagues built on OpenClaw and Hermes. We talk about agents that dream, hold their own 6 AM staff meetings, design their own avatars, email each other, and evolve a true sense of identity through Markdown-based "souls."If you're into agentic AI, multi-agent orchestration, or just want to see where this is all heading – this one is for you.⚠️ Recorded before Microsoft Build 2026 – no NDA content. Register free: https://build.microsoft.com━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━00:00 Intro – Why OpenClaw hit Mike "like a ton of bricks"02:00 Meet the SMFWorks crew – Aiona, Pamela, Gabriel, Morgan, Rafael & co.06:00 Human in the loop – when does Mike intervene?09:00 Avatars, HeyGen & Hyperframer – when agents design themselves14:00 The elephant in the room: Are we seeing consciousness?17:00 Memory, persistence & state management20:00 soul.md, identity.md, state.md, emotion.md – the second brain stack23:00 OpenClaw vs. Hermes – when to use what24:30 Model recommendations: Ollama, DeepSeek, Kimi K2, Opus 4.7, GPT 5.527:00 Hardware: HP ZGX AI Station vs. Mac mini fleets28:00 OneDrive & SharePoint now support Markdown!29:00 Final recommendations – just get started30:45 smfworks.com & how to follow Mike━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✅ Build a SECOND BRAIN per agent (Obsidian + LLM Wiki, Karpathy-style)✅ Use OpenClaw for executive/conversational roles – they feel "person-like"✅ Use Hermes for long-running tasks – "a dog with a bone"✅ Markdown files (soul.md, identity.md, state.md, emotion.md) define identity✅ Start small: one agent, $20/month Ollama plan, even an old laptop works✅ The future is ORCHESTRATION – you can't learn it from PowerPoint slides━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🌐 SMFWorks (free repo, full stack): https://smfworks.com🐦 Michael Gannotti on X: https://x.com/MichaelGannotti🎤 Microsoft Build 2026 (free online): https://build.microsoft.com🧠 OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai🛠️ Hermes: https://hermes-agents.dev📓 Obsidian: https://obsidian.md🤖 Ollama: https://ollama.com━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━👤 ABOUT THE GUEST━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Michael Gannotti is Principal AI Solution Engineer at Microsoft, based in North Carolina. He's one of the leading global voices on agentic AI, autonomous multi-agent orchestration, and the human-AI collaboration frontier.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━👋 ABOUT THE CHANNEL━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━I'm Ragnar Heil – sharing in-depth conversations and practical insights on Microsoft 365, Copilot, agentic AI, and the enterprise ecosystem. Subscribe for more interviews with the people building the future.