How this “non-coder” used Cursor to add AI to retro hardware

1. 0:00 – 2:00

   Intro

   1. MRMaddie Reese0:00

      I've always felt jealous of people who could code, and then when I finally was able to kind of join that world, I just started thinking, "What else was inaccessible to me that's completely accessible now?" And hardware was one of those things.

   2. CVClaire Vo0:14

      Can you pull up your Print Me a Message?

   3. MRMaddie Reese0:17

      Here is the webpage where people can send me a message, and just go to maddiedreese.com/message, and you fill in your name, you fill in whatever you wanna send, and then print the ticket, and it prints out on my desk.

   4. CVClaire Vo0:30

      I love it. So we're gonna test it. I have your Message Maddie website up. I'm gonna click Print Ticket.

   5. MRMaddie Reese0:39

      There you go.

   6. CVClaire Vo0:39

      Oh my God, it's so fast. So walk us through how we might build something like this. [upbeat music] Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive, here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today, I have a really fun episode with Maddie Reese, who's building the hardware projects of my dreams using some retro gear that you might not expect. If you've ever wondered, "What's my friend's coffee order?" And then thought, "It would be amazing if they had an API that told me," this is the episode for you. Let's get to it. Quick word from today's sponsor, Firecrawl. If you're building with AI agents, you've probably hit the same wall. Your agent needs data from the web, but the right pages are difficult to find, buried in JavaScript, or blocked behind logins. Firecrawl is a web data API that lets agents search, scrape, and interact with the web at scale, and get that clean, structured data they can actually use. Over a million developers, including myself, build on it. It's open source, and it's free to start. Stop fighting the web for data, and start powering your AI agents and apps with Firecrawl at firecrawl.dev. Use code HOWIAI to get 10,000 free

2. 2:00 – 3:53

   Maddie’s AI pill moment

   1. CVClaire Vo2:00

      credits today. Maddie, welcome to How I AI. I was so excited when you agreed to hop on the podcast, because I think you do some of the funnest projects in AI that I've seen lately. And what I love about what you're doing is you're intersecting software builds with hardware builds in a way m- I personally have felt has been really inaccessible until about the last six months. So what brought you to all these fun hardware projects?

   2. MRMaddie Reese2:30

      Kind of my journey was that I always felt jealous of people who could code. [laughs]

   3. CVClaire Vo2:35

      [laughs]

   4. MRMaddie Reese2:35

      Um, and then when I finally was able to kind of join that world, I just started thinking, "Oh, well, well what else was inaccessible to me that's completely accessible now?" And hardware was one of those things. Uh, so I just got really, really into it. It started with my printer, and it kind of snowballed from there into a bunch of weird things.

   5. CVClaire Vo2:56

      Well, I, I wanna pause about what you said, which is you were jealous of people who could code, and then all of a sudden that became accessible. What was your journey there? Just tell us, like, how you got from being jealous to hacking hardware projects personally.

   6. MRMaddie Reese3:10

      Honestly, through my dad. Um, my dad introduced me to Lovable about a year ago. He's been really into AI for a while, and he goes, "Hey, did you know this, this is possible now?" And I was like, "No, I had, I had no idea. Oh my God, what do you, what do you mean?" I spent days just on Lovable, like, just locked in my room, just completely just building things. And then I kind of started exploring, like, okay, what, what's next? What can I... What else can I do with this? What, uh... What... How can I expand kind of my, my knowledge in this? And it's been my whole life ever since.

   7. CVClaire Vo3:48

      I, I love it. Ever since the, the magical last, last year, you have completely-

   8. MRMaddie Reese3:52

      Exactly

3. 3:53 – 11:10

   The thermal receipt printer: live demo and how it works

   1. CVClaire Vo3:53

      ... changed your whole life. Well, show us the printer, because I want one of these things.

   2. MRMaddie Reese3:58

      Yes.

   3. CVClaire Vo3:58

      And I... We gotta show it on camera.

   4. MRMaddie Reese4:01

      Here you go.

   5. CVClaire Vo4:01

      For people that can't be, can you describe it?

   6. MRMaddie Reese4:04

      It's just a little mini thermal printer, a thermal receipt printer. It's really tiny. It fits in my hand.

   7. CVClaire Vo4:10

      And can you, can you pull up your Print Me a Message flow, and just walk us through, like, what was the idea and how did you end up building this?

   8. MRMaddie Reese4:18

      Here is kind of the, the webpage where people can send me a message, and you just go to maddiedreese.com/message, and you fill in your name, you fill in whatever you wanna send, do a little captcha here, and then print the ticket, and it prints out on my desk. Honestly, I just wanted some way to interact with people that was kind of more physical, because everyone that I had been talking to about these kind of things, I, I knew online. Like, everyone I'd been talking to about vibe coding and AI, apart from my dad, um, I had been talking to them online, and I wanted some way to kind of bring that into the physical world. It was something I knew was... couldn't be too hard, right? Uh, like, people, people use printers all the time. That's how printers work, is you, you send something in-

   9. CVClaire Vo5:06

      [laughs]

   10. MRMaddie Reese5:06

       ... from your computer to print out, right? So I knew it couldn't be too difficult.

   11. CVClaire Vo5:11

       I love it.

   12. MRMaddie Reese5:11

       But-

   13. CVClaire Vo5:12

       So we're gonna test it.

   14. MRMaddie Reese5:13

       Yeah.

   15. CVClaire Vo5:13

       I have your-

   16. MRMaddie Reese5:13

       Yes

   17. CVClaire Vo5:13

       ... Message Maddie website up. I'm gonna click-

   18. MRMaddie Reese5:15

       Awesome

   19. CVClaire Vo5:16

       ... Print Ticket. Oh my God, it's so fast.

   20. MRMaddie Reese5:20

       There you go. It's so fast.

   21. CVClaire Vo5:21

       I know.

   22. MRMaddie Reese5:21

       So-

   23. CVClaire Vo5:21

       The front door.

   24. MRMaddie Reese5:23

       There we go.

   25. CVClaire Vo5:24

       It says, "Hey girl, hey."

   26. MRMaddie Reese5:24

       Thank you very much. And you're welcome for joining How I AI. Thanks for having me.

   27. CVClaire Vo5:29

       [laughs] That is so adorable. I went to the Code with Claude event, and they gave these little, like, cardputers, and my nine-year-old immediately snagged it. And we've been trying to figure out a way for it to be, like, a messaging device, and we-

   28. MRMaddie Reese5:46

       Oh

   29. CVClaire Vo5:46

       ... hooked it up. It, like, runs through a Mac Mini in our house, and then it, like, federates out to Telegram for us. But how cute would it be for him to be able to, like, type little notes to me down in my office? I just think that's so cute. And so I have to ask, are you getting a lot of messages?

   30. MRMaddie Reese6:03

       I'm getting a ton of messages.
4. 11:10 – 17:23

   The pager project

   1. CVClaire Vo11:11

      And so speaking of fun, you have done the thing that I actually really want to do, which is, you know, all of us parents on, in my, in my age bracket are trying to give their kids what we're calling, like, '90s childhoods, um, where they're, like, not on the laptop, and they have just a little bit more anago- analog life. And when I was a kid, I had a pager, and you have built a Message Maddie pager. Um, and so can you walk us through, 'cause you said, before we joined the show, you said there was, like, a little bit of trickiness to getting the right pager, and there's, like, a pager, um, mafia or something [laughs] that you have to get through. So walk us through how we might build something like this.

   2. MRMaddie Reese11:54

      To set the scene, there is kind of one paging network left. So pagers go over, like, radio transmission through s- on specific networks. So there is this one paging network, and it's called Spoke, and that is where, um- There might be some other smaller ones, but they're the big one. That is where all of your pages will likely get sent through if you decide to buy a pager and get it set up with this network. But they don't sell, like, the pagers themselves. You have to go through, like, authorized resellers, um, and that's what I did for this. So I bought it through a, an authorized reseller who typically sells to, um, hospitals, hospitals and doctors and things like that. Um, so they, they weren't quite, um, accustomed to dealing with me. Their website looks like it hasn't been updated since, like, the late '90s, honestly.

   3. CVClaire Vo12:48

      [laughs]

   4. MRMaddie Reese12:48

      And that was the most modern-looking one I could find. That's why I went with them.

   5. CVClaire Vo12:53

      [laughs]

   6. MRMaddie Reese12:53

      And it truly, it truly was, um, was something to behold. Their email address, I believe, was pagers123@gmail.

   7. CVClaire Vo13:03

      [laughs]

   8. MRMaddie Reese13:04

      Um, got the pager finally. It comes set up with a network, it get, comes set up with an email address and a phone number, which is great. So I have it set up kind of as a, um, as a Twitter pager. I use the Twitter API to send notifications to my Resend email, and then it sends it to a Gmail account, because the email address that comes with the pager doesn't accept new custom domain emails, uh-

   9. CVClaire Vo13:34

      [laughs]

   10. MRMaddie Reese13:34

       ... because it's, it's, it's, it's very outdated. It's US- USA something .net is the, um, is the domain for the email address they gave me. They're very restrictive, um, [laughs] restrictive email. But the Twitter pager, I'll kind of read through it here. So every interaction that anyone has with my Twitter account, um, or my tweets gets sent as an API event to a Cloudflare worker. Um, the worker does some things, sends it through Resend as an email. Resend sends the email from a custom domain to a Gmail address, and the Gmail address sends it to my pager email address. So I have to go through multiple steps to get it. A- but then after that is when it finally displays on the pager. Or-

   11. CVClaire Vo14:23

       Oh my gosh.

   12. MRMaddie Reese14:24

       Yeah.

   13. CVClaire Vo14:24

       I have to tr- so while you're telling this, I have to pull up and see if I can make this work. [laughs]

   14. MRMaddie Reese14:28

       Yes. We'll see, we'll see. Uh, sometimes the service is a little spotty. That's the only issue I've-

   15. CVClaire Vo14:34

       Uh-huh

   16. MRMaddie Reese14:34

       ... I've really run into, because it's, um, the pager network is just not, not super big. But we'll see, we'll see if it pulls up.

   17. CVClaire Vo14:42

       This episode is brought to you by Customer.io. You're here because you'd rather use AI than talk about it. With Customer.io, you describe the campaign you want to build, and the AI agent creates it for you, the audience, the messages, and the timing. You review it, make any changes you want, and launch. Instead of spending hours stitching together tools and workflows, you can focus on the work that actually drives growth. Every campaign is tied back to results, so you can see what's working and what to do next. More than 9,000 brands use Customer.io to turn the data they already have into messages customers remember. Visit customer.io/howiai to try it today. Customer.io, more impact from every message. And what I love about this story that you've told me is that you're like, "This thing is so outdated and so hard to hack, but I know it's possible to get from Twitter to this pager. I may have to, like, traverse a bunch of very weird things. I may have to do weird things, but it's okay to do weird things because AI is coding it, and it's fine. All I want is the ultimate kinda like endpoint." And so what I, I love about your approach is saying, like, "I don't care if it's n-" Like, of course it's not practical to, like, send it to Cloudflare and then Resend, and then proxy it through a Gmail, and then send it to the official... Like, of course that's not practical. But guess what? It's fun. It's fun. And so I think your, like, idea of just throw out the idea that this has to be, like, practical or even, like, reasonable code, and just build the thing that you want, especially if it's for fun, I think is really exciting. Okay, I sent you an at message. We'll see if it comes through. I will also send you a little page through your, through your website, and we will see if it be- ... Does it beep? Like, does it literally go, like, "Beep beep"?

   18. MRMaddie Reese16:38

       Oh, it does.

   19. CVClaire Vo16:39

       Or does it not?

   20. MRMaddie Reese16:39

       I have that turned off because it's annoying, but it does.

   21. CVClaire Vo16:42

       [laughs] Now, what's nice about the pager is, like, you can carry it around, right?

   22. MRMaddie Reese16:50

       Yeah. Uh-huh.

   23. CVClaire Vo16:51

       Do you strap it on, like, your, like, your jeans and walk around? [laughs]

   24. MRMaddie Reese16:54

       So it has, it has, you know, the little, little thing, the little clamp. But, um-

   25. CVClaire Vo16:58

       Yeah

   26. MRMaddie Reese16:59

       ... I have been discovering a lot of my pants don't have belt loops.

   27. CVClaire Vo17:04

       [laughs]

   28. MRMaddie Reese17:05

       What's the deal? So, like, that was my plan. Um, and then I, like, put on my pants, I get dressed for the day, and I'm like, "Where do I clip this on?"

   29. CVClaire Vo17:12

       Where do I clip my pager on?

   30. MRMaddie Reese17:14

       Exactly. It's ridiculous.
5. 17:23 – 19:05

   Why she uses Cursor’s clean agent view instead of terminals and browsers

   1. CVClaire Vo17:23

      this, like, agent view, because I am, like, an opposite cursor. I am in terminals open, codes open, files are open, browsers open. Like, I am in aggressive cursor version. You are in, like, very zen cursor version. Explain to me why this appeals to you.

   2. MRMaddie Reese17:39

      I want just this one view where I can just kind of brainstorm and get all of that through. Like, if I don't need to be seeing anything else yet, um, I don't wanna have it up because it kind of distracts me. But later on in the process, I'll definitely pull up some terminals i- um, depending on what I'm working on, uh, or a browser or anything like that. Um, but just for the starting kind of go, I wanna just have it kind of clean and be able to just go, "Okay, let me, let me get through my brainstorming. Let me get a solid plan for this," and go from there.

   3. CVClaire Vo18:14

      I love it. And then are you reading the code or you're just like, "If it pages, I'm happy"?

   4. MRMaddie Reese18:19

      Yes and no.

   5. CVClaire Vo18:20

      Yeah.

   6. MRMaddie Reese18:20

      I mean, I don't fully understand it. I've learned so much, um, more, like I have a ton more knowledge than I did at like the beginning of this journey, and I can kind of understand some things. Kind of like how growing up in San Diego, you kind of, you pick up a little bit of Spanish and can kind of understand it, but you can't, like, really speak it. That's kind of where I'm at with code right now.

   7. CVClaire Vo18:43

      I actually l- really love that, that comparison. And you know what? I mean, I think it's good enough to be able to, for stuff like this, like just grok it a little bit, you know?

   8. MRMaddie Reese18:52

      Exactly.

   9. CVClaire Vo18:52

      Just understand a little bit. Enough to, enough to do some damage is what we want.

   10. MRMaddie Reese18:55

       Exactly. Exactly.

   11. CVClaire Vo18:57

       Well, we'll wait and see if you can like, you know, wave the pager by the window and see if it gets, it gets service. No big deal that it didn't go through, but I wanna talk about your third

6. 19:05 – 22:57

   The personal API: coffee order, pets, favorite snacks, and more

   1. CVClaire Vo19:05

      project-

   2. MRMaddie Reese19:06

      Yes

   3. CVClaire Vo19:06

      ... which I also love, and you have to tell us about the problem statement of the Maddie API, because I think it is adorable-

   4. MRMaddie Reese19:14

      Yeah

   5. CVClaire Vo19:14

      ... and such a good idea.

   6. MRMaddie Reese19:16

      Thanks. Thank you. Okay. So kind of how I, I started out with this is I had this idea about personal APIs, and that stemmed from kind of the, this problem that you have where you, you wanna do something nice for someone, get them a coffee or buy them like their s- take them to their favorite restaurant and make a reservation, but you don't really remember, like, what their coffee order is or what their favorite restaurant is. And you wanna do something nice, you don't wanna bug them about it, um, so I was like, well, what if there was a way where you could just hit an API and you get all this information about them? I kind of see it as a way to, like, bring people closer together. Like, my initial thought was like, oh, that's like too clinical and too, too weird. But then I was like, well, no, this is, this is a way to kind of reduce that friction of like-

   7. CVClaire Vo20:08

      Mm-hmm

   8. MRMaddie Reese20:09

      ... of, oh, I wanna do something nice, but I don't wanna bother them, so I just won't do anything at all. In this case, you would just be like, "Oh, I wanna do something nice. I'll hit the API, I'll get their coffee order, and then we can meet up." Right?

   9. CVClaire Vo20:21

      I mean, you're speaking to the one person in the, or on the Earth that's like, "Of course, that makes so much sense." [laughs] Don't page me and make me call you and tell me your coffee order. I love it. Okay. So, so you have an API endpoint, and like, tell me what you-

   10. MRMaddie Reese20:39

       Yes

   11. CVClaire Vo20:39

       ... have decided belongs in your personal API.

   12. MRMaddie Reese20:41

       Okay. So we have the basic stuff. We have my coffee order, very important. And then we can kind of go through here. So we have dates I'll be in San Francisco. Currently has a question mark-

   13. CVClaire Vo20:51

       Okay

   14. MRMaddie Reese20:51

       ... 'cause I don't know when I'll be back. My pet info, this is very important, so it has my pets.

   15. CVClaire Vo20:56

       Oh.

   16. MRMaddie Reese20:56

       We have Mabel, uh, Lola, and Moon.

   17. CVClaire Vo21:00

       Cute.

   18. MRMaddie Reese21:00

       Very important if you know me. Let's do favorite snacks. This is very important. My, uh, Orville Redenbacher Simply Salted popcorn, coated in specifically Bragg's nutritional yeast. Delicious. Time zone, this one's kind of just a, a nice to know-

   19. CVClaire Vo21:17

       Practical one

   20. MRMaddie Reese21:18

       ... kind of thing w- for when people are scheduling meetings.

   21. CVClaire Vo21:22

       Oh, what's your-

   22. MRMaddie Reese21:22

       Favorite restaurant

   23. CVClaire Vo21:23

       ... favorite restaurant in San Francisco? I gotta see.

   24. MRMaddie Reese21:25

       Oh, yes. Okay. I have-

   25. CVClaire Vo21:27

       Oh

   26. MRMaddie Reese21:27

       ... two. So it's called, one's Rocket Sushi, and it's literally just a, like a sushi place where the food gets served on a rocket conveyor belt. They have, um, the most delicious, I think it's called hiyayakko.

   27. CVClaire Vo21:40

       Mm-hmm.

   28. MRMaddie Reese21:40

       It's to- it's cold tofu with, um, some kind of, uh, some sort of like cold broth. Depends what it is.

   29. CVClaire Vo21:48

       Yeah. Oh, interesting.

   30. MRMaddie Reese21:49

       But yeah, it's delicious.
7. 22:57 – 28:04

   Lightning round and final thoughts

   1. CVClaire Vo22:57

      some posts. Um-

   2. MRMaddie Reese22:58

      Exactly

   3. CVClaire Vo22:58

      ... I love this so much. This is super cool, Maddie. I just, I appreciate, just to recap your story for people, like jealous of people who could code. Dad says, "Hey, have you heard of Lovable?" You go super deep, it opens up your mind, and then you're, like, imagining just fun things that you can surround yourself with that spark joy. And what I love about what you're doing is, like, it's not disconnecting you from people. It is actually creating connection points between you and, and the world in a really human way. I sent you a very sweet note. I sent you a pager. Like, I'm gonna page you every now and then, because I think this is so fun, and it's just this, like, really novel way to come up with new connection points and also be creative, which is one of the things that I just love the most about, about AI. Well, let's get you to two lightning round questions, and I will get you back to your projects. Um, my first one is, if you had or could build any dream hardware project, what's on your mind right now?

   4. MRMaddie Reese23:58

      I want a dot matrix printer, the ones that can-

   5. CVClaire Vo24:01

      Yeah

   6. MRMaddie Reese24:01

      ... do, like, the big banners. I'm envisioning something where people will send me banners, but, um-

   7. CVClaire Vo24:07

      Yeah

   8. MRMaddie Reese24:08

      ... no.

   9. CVClaire Vo24:09

      [laughs]

   10. MRMaddie Reese24:12

       So I'm gonna have to come up with something, with something else, um, to do with it, but I know I want one, so one of these days-

   11. CVClaire Vo24:18

       I wanna admit that the-

   12. MRMaddie Reese24:18

       ... I'm gonna get it

   13. CVClaire Vo24:18

       ... the sound is so, so, so enjoyable. It's z, z.

   14. MRMaddie Reese24:23

       Yeah.

   15. CVClaire Vo24:23

       So you're, like, really into these, like, retro hardware pieces-

   16. MRMaddie Reese24:27

       Yeah

   17. CVClaire Vo24:27

       ... where you just wanna, like, surround yourself with Like kind of fun retro pieces, but then intersect them-

   18. MRMaddie Reese24:33

       Exactly

   19. CVClaire Vo24:33

       ... in, in a new way. I know that, um, the Anthropic team, there was a, a Monet exhibition here in San Francisco, and they, like hooked up the typewriter.

   20. MRMaddie Reese24:42

       With the typewriter.

   21. CVClaire Vo24:43

       And I just-

   22. MRMaddie Reese24:44

       Yeah

   23. CVClaire Vo24:44

       ... think those things are so delightful. Um-

   24. MRMaddie Reese24:47

       Oh my God, yeah

   25. CVClaire Vo24:48

       ... okay. So we're gonna, we're gonna have to brainstorm something for your-

   26. MRMaddie Reese24:51

       Exactly

   27. CVClaire Vo24:51

       ... dot matrix printer. Um, you know what? You should pr- you should have Cursor print out an explanation of the code it wrote for you, so you can-

   28. MRMaddie Reese25:01

       That's right

   29. CVClaire Vo25:01

       ... like write it up and read it. Something f- I don't know, something fun. Or banner. I don't know, banners could be really great.

   30. MRMaddie Reese25:06

       Yeah.

Episode duration: 28:05