Built, not briefed
A focus device built around an original character. Hand-drawn character art, a single firmware core that ran across the three boards evaluated, shipping on the ESP32-S3, and a real-time pipeline combining speech recognition, a language model and text-to-speech. Designed, written and shipped end to end using Claude Code and agentic workflows.
Build post on LinkedIn, 25 September 2026.
The build
Notes from building it
To stay off the phone. The phone is the thing I am trying not to pick up, so the answer could not live on it. A separate object on the desk is quicker to reach as well: no unlocking, no hunting for an app.
I run a Pomodoro timer on it when I need to focus, and I ask it things when my hands are full. A real example: I was checking whether an egg was still good to eat, and then used the timer to cook it.
The character gives it an identity, which makes it feel personable rather than functional. That is anthropomorphism doing the work. People naturally assign human traits, intentions and personality to machines, and most readily to conversational AI and social robots.
It is an evolving iteration and constantly changing. If it stops serving the purpose, it gets dropped.