Journalist builds $50 stand-in for Meta's AI pendant using Claude

Sean Hollister, a journalist at the tech site The Verge, paid $50 for a 1.75-inch touchscreen device, the Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.75C, and used the AI coding tool Claude to turn it into a homemade stand-in for Meta's upcoming Muse Charm. The Muse Charm is a pocket-watch-style AI pendant that Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, plans to sell this holiday season. Hollister's experiment shows how much the usefulness of such a gadget depends on its software.

The starting point

The Waveshare board is one of the first development kits Meta suggests for building a "Muse Gadget," a device that uses Meta's open-source code to connect directly to the company's Muse AI cloud. Hollister plugged it into his PC, pointed Claude at Meta's GitHub repository and paired it with the Muse phone app.

At first it was of little use. Muse's replies were slow and weren't spoken aloud, the screen showed only a few words at a time, and full messages could not be read without the phone app. It came with just one avatar and did not discover smart home devices on its own.

What Claude added

Over several Claude Code sessions, a conversation history page was created, a British voice from ElevenLabs was added to speak the answers, and a button was built to trigger the phone camera remotely with a live preview. A lower-quality Bluetooth preview was added so home Wi-Fi isn't required. Claude also produced several avatars, a Tamagotchi-style minigame involving food, play, sleep and baths, and a working pocket watch face.

Caution

Hollister stresses that he has no coding experience and cannot say whether the code is any good. He doesn't trust Meta or Muse with his email or home network, so he put the device on guest Wi-Fi. In his view, Muse functionality alone is not a reason to buy a dedicated device; the value lies in being able to program it freely. Whether the real Muse Charm will be as programmable remains unknown until it ships.