Meta is offering the Muse Charm, a small pendant designed to carry its Muse AI assistant, and aims to sell it for the holiday season. The Verge journalist Sean Hollister took a different route: he bought a $50 development kit compatible with Meta’s platform, then transformed it using Claude, Anthropic’s programming assistant.
The starting point is the Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.75C, a 1.75-inch touchscreen shipped from China. This case, used for testing voice-controlled AI applications, is among Meta’s official suggestions for building a ‘Muse Gadget,’ a device that connects directly to the Muse cloud thanks to Meta’s open-source code and tokens. The journalist notes that the whole thing looks a lot like the future Muse Charm.
Upon arrival, the device seemed of little use. Setup was simple: just plug it into a computer, ask Claude to check Meta’s GitHub repository, then pair it with the Muse mobile app. However, while Muse took voice commands for audio clips to transcribe, responses were slow, and the assistant didn’t speak aloud. The screen displayed only a few words at a time, and only one avatar, Jolly, was available. The device also couldn’t detect connected home objects, unlike Amazon Echo or Google Home speakers.
A few AI-assisted programming sessions largely filled these gaps. Claude added a conversation history page, accessible by swiping, as well as a voice synthesis from ElevenLabs that reads responses aloud. It also created a remote photo preview, with high quality over Wi-Fi and a less detailed version via Bluetooth. The journalist states he then requested a series of avatars and a Tamagotchi-style mini-game, with hunger, boredom, and dirtiness, as well as a pocket watch displaying the time with three hands, created in fifteen minutes according to him.
Persisting Limitations
The journalist acknowledges having no programming experience and not knowing if the produced code is of good quality. ‘It could be fatally flawed,’ he writes. He also says he doesn’t trust Meta or the Muse agent with his email or home network, especially after the case of a tester whose personal address was allegedly disclosed. He therefore placed the device on his home’s guest Wi-Fi network.
These experiences lead Sean Hollister to downplay the interest of Muse itself. In his view, the appeal of a dedicated device lies in what a phone cannot do, like being completely reprogrammed. He therefore wonders if the commercial Muse Charm will be as freely programmable, or if its buyers would be better served by a development kit. He adds that we’ll have to wait for the device to go on sale to find out.
