NetClaw on Heavy Networking: An Open Source Network Assistant

I’m back on Heavy Networking with Ethan Banks and Drew Conry-Murray. This time, we’re spending the conversation on NetClaw: where it came from, how it works, and what it takes to earn a network engineer’s trust.

The episode is HN848: NetClaw: Your Open Source Network Assistant, published by Packet Pushers on October 30, 2026.

Watch on YouTube or listen and read the official episode notes.

What should the agent be allowed to do?

At 5:48, Ethan asks about the soul file. We get into the operational rules behind NetClaw, including explicit approval for actions beyond reading network state. Those instructions capture lessons from real engineering work: mistakes, outages, and the checks you learn to make before touching production.

We return to protection at 23:51, discussing Cisco DefenseClaw and NVIDIA OpenShell alongside NetClaw’s own rules. These are layers to configure and evaluate in your environment. Start with a lab and read-only tasks while you learn the tools and their boundaries.

A project other people can build on

The discussion at 19:48 introduces NetClaw federation and NCFED. It is an Internet-Draft, open for development and review.

At 32:39, we turn to specification-driven development: keeping user stories, requirements, plans, and tests alongside the implementation so another contributor can understand the work.

The community is central to the closing discussion. Maintainers, contributors, and engineers trying NetClaw in their own labs are shaping what comes next.

Eight lines of JSON

In my post accompanying the episode, I reflect on the distance between handing someone a networking book and helping them connect an agent to useful tools. The books still matter to me. So does making the first experiment easier to start.

I also thank the people who have contributed code, guides, feedback, and time. Hearing that this work has renewed someone’s enthusiasm for engineering means a great deal. Thank you to Itential for supporting the community, and to Ethan, Drew, and Packet Pushers for making room for this conversation.

Timestamps refer to the 1:08:35 YouTube upload and were checked against its automatic captions.