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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.
Explained simply
A teletype is an old-fashioned machine that sends and receives text over a connection, printing it on continuous paper. DEC made the DECwriter model used in this experiment, while the WiModem232 acts as a bridge between the machine’s serial connection and modern computer equipment.
AWS developer advocate Darko Mesaroš connected the teletype to Kiro, a coding assistant that can use AI agents to help with programming tasks. A small Rust program translates messages from Kiro’s command-line tool into a format the teletype setup can handle; the Agent Client Protocol is a way for software to communicate with AI agents.
The experiment is a way to explore how coding agents communicate, rather than a practical replacement for a screen and keyboard. Because the teletype prints slowly and the setup cannot recover dropped data, it also shows some of the limits of using older equipment with modern software.
Read the full article at the source →
Originally published by The Register as “Vintage fun: Prodding AI agents using retro hardware just because you can”.