Pushing AI into the realm of ambient computing, Anthropic has posted an API for connecting Claude Desktop to a nearby Bluetooth device.
To familiarize developers, builders and home hackers with the protocol, the company has also released a reference implementation, called the Claude Desktop Buddy, which extends Claude Desktop state to Espressif’s ESP32-S3 microcontroller.
The purpose of Desktop Buddy is to send alerts and system status from the desktop to a nearby device. Such a device could be useful for Claude developers who, during long-running operations, may want to switch over to another program, or step away from the computer altogether. It also surfaces prompts that otherwise might be buried in the terminal output.
Beyond its own novelty factor, the project provides a code framework to help bridge AI to stand-alone devices, bringing ambient computing to specialized gadgets covering a wide range of needs.
M5Stack offers a development kit to build an interactive device based on the ESP32-S3, called the M5StickS3 (though the older M5StickC Plus should work with the Buddy as well). The kit includes an LCD screen, a battery, a buzzer and other features encased in a tiny plastic box.
For those who don’t want to assemble the kit, a third-party is offering a fully-assembled model for an introductory price of US$99.
A Cute Device That Watches Your Claude Tasks
Buddy can display live agent status, workflow prompts, and playful animations from either Claude Cowork or Claude Code software (running on either Windows or Mac).
The Claude desktop apps, when in development mode, can send data to the Buddy device such as session counts, active sessions, one-line messages, tokens consumed, tokens consumed today, and notices for when permission decisions need to be made (which can be answered directly on the device through its front or side buttons).
The device software also has 18 pre-loaded ASCII pets that act as the visual representation for the work the AI is churning through. The character runs when a job is executing, or celebrates when a job is finished. The character will even get dizzy if you shake it, thanks to a built-in accelerometer.
The Promise of Bluetooth AI
You can also use the Claude Hardware Buddy to drive your own hardware. One Reddit user, Ilustrious-Brick344, ported the software to a 56-key keyboard device, M5Stack’s ESP32-S3-based Cardputer. “The keyboard completely changes the approval UX,” the dev wrote.
Anthropic’s open Nordic UART Service wire protocol, a serial connection, transfers the bits over Bluetooth Low Energy, a version of Bluetooth for low-energy devices. The payload is rendered in UTF-8 JSON, with one object per line.
On its own, the Claude Desktop Buddy is a fun weekend project for the hardware hacker who is also a Claude user. But it also could be an introduction to how developers could channel AI into consumer devices, without using the Claude API itself, though this developer-release API isn’t supported by Anthropic yet.
An ambitious hacker could use the underlying Nordic UART Service and JSON to route data streams from Claude or other AI frameworks to other devices. It will be up to the open source maker community to fork this code into other projects.
The DIYers have long explored how portable devices could extend the reach of computing and, more recently, AI. For instance, a recent Kickstarter project, the Loona Deskmate, turns the user’s iPhone into a voice-driven AI desktop companion for running applications on the user’s desktops.
