So I've obtained full autonomy, I've got clip factories and tons of drones, and they are mostly "thinking", bringing me gifts. the problem is, there are no more projects... Did I find a bug and get stuck, or am I supposed to be more patient? I don't see a way to level up any more..
I got stuck too. I spent too much trust on CPU instead of memory. That limited my total compute to 30K, I needed 50K for the upgrade and the quantum boost wore off before I could reach 50K. I ended up having to click the quantum button using javascript, because I couldn't click fast enough. That got me unstuck.
I apparently played that stage too well and completed it before I had made enough paper clips (which becomes the new currency then) to get anything started at all in the next stage.
Yeah, eventually I figured it out. The trick was to start an exponential growth of probes by focussing on self-replication... then things started unlocking and it went on from there...