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Developer links a vintage teletype to an AI coding assistant for fun
AWS developer advocate Darko Mesaroš connected a vintage DECwriter teletype to a modern coding assistant, letting him interact with AI agents through printed fanfold paper. The project is a personal experiment rather than a practical new interface, but building it gave him a hands-on way to explore how coding agents communicate.
A WiModem232 emulates a Hayes-compatible modem for the serial connection, while a small Rust program adapts output from AWS Kiro’s command-line interface using the Agent Client Protocol. The teletype prints at 30 characters per second, and the setup has no buffering or retry mechanism for dropped data. Mesaroš says the approach could also work with other coding assistants that support ACP.
In short
- A DECwriter teletype now connects to a modern AI coding assistant.
- A Rust program adapts Kiro output for the slow terminal.
- The experiment helped its creator learn ACP and serial debugging.
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Originally published by The Register as “Vintage fun: Prodding AI agents using retro hardware just because you can”.