Honestly your favorite video game controller would not be terrible for this use case. Plenty of easy to hit buttons, built in mic with mute, ergonomic, easy to connect. Saving the shortcuts is the only thing you might have to setup more than once.
The quest for a good voice command tool for developers (and others) has been on for many years. Dragon and Talon are 2 that immediately come to mind, mainly for the "others".
Keyboard parts based macropads are the original idea and have been around long before AI. Single purpose marketed versions are the lazy implementations - you can already get any keycaps you want and swap them on to your 10 year old macro pad (or spend a little more for ones with traditional screen based buttons).
It is a joke, and not a joke. It is absurd, and also real. It is satire, and also commentary. It is, as you say, pollution, and also no different from the pollution in both product and byproducts of the vibe coded output itself.
They could have something better like the work louder equivalent (Creator Micro V2). Fun fact: before buying work louder I bought the keychron K0 Max (since I own the keychron k3 max) but couldnt really use it with my claude code (no native integration what`s so ever). Also there`s no set of keycaps so that I can fully customize it.
We have one of those at work that we use to trigger milestone actions, like deleting old resources after having the approval from all the stakeholders, or removing access to an awful manager who's finally leaving
I don't like the physical feeling of pressing it, but the whole ceremonial with the coworkers is quite satisfying!
Selling an old, unfunny joke for $35.00. Functionally this is entirely useless. Who is this for? You'd be much better off with a keyboard that fits in your pocket-- that's what I use, lol
Need one that mixes it with a stream deck (e.g. lights up when a session is ready for input). You could even have that as one dedicated button with press to shuffle sessions. Would make a slightly larger version (keypad or in-between the two) more valuable
I was thinking of hacking a Bluetooth ring with sleek buttons to do this, when I'm working with agents I wanted something right at hand to handle recording audio and sending inputs. 2 remapped keyboard keys and handy is my current good enough.
Ha, pretty much my exact experience. No ring just, just considered some remappable Bluetooth keyboard and a nearby mic. Decent idea though, might steal that one.
Pretty weird to see "Hacker News" coming out of the gate strongly against what appears to be a fun, cheap, extensible little hardware accessory. This is hardly the first accessory keypad to ever be made, and it's neat to see the AI use case driving people to mess around and try some ideas in this space.
To me - and I would guess this is why others don't like it - this is the distillation of AI slop.
People get the value of AI all wrong. It's not supposed to be a one-and-done button. This is why people think AI will make us dumber.
AI is best as a tool to probe the extents of your own understanding of a problem and identify gaps and vagaries. You should interact with it with a full keyboard mentality like you would a fellow human.
I dunno. I'm hardly some "run 20 agents overnight" kind of guy and I'm not an ASI guy, but this sentiment sort of reads like a monk who makes a living copying manuscripts, dictating how the new printing press technology should be used.
We are about three or four years in to a technology that has the potential to be world altering! This is absolutely the time to experiment with form factors and techniques, and challenge our own assumptions of what it is we actually do.
And even if you reject all of that, a utility like this one isn't even incompatible with your vision! Couldn't you program a key to say "explain this concept in clearer terms"? However you work with the tool, this gives you ways to use it better. That...seems really nice!
That's fascinating to me. I'm hitting usage limits on Claude Max and I think we've basically reached the singularity. I was moved to write an essay about it.
I'm fully there with ya but I don't understand how a device with such limited expressive power is bringing anything to the table. If you're just using voice, just use voice? Sure, in some sense, it's always cool to try ideas. But IMO anything new would try to improve on subtlety and richness of communication.
Speech can do it all but eventually fatigue sets in if you do try to do it all with speech. Like RSI from too much typing but much faster. Best to use speech for the occasional long prose and steering, and something else for the yes/no/accept/decline options so the throat gets reasonable breaks.
Have actually vibe coded a few "apps" for this. Most recent being a weather app that switches to radar view when I tap the knob and allows me to turn the forecast through time.
Now I need to go make the "make no mistakes" macro for fun!
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 35.4 ms ] threadone SKU more is really not that much overhead for keychron if you look at their catalog
We no longer define jokes based on "real vs not real".
you don't need to buy one, but keychron's going to be ready for the next ai company that goes looking for a promo product supplier
Professions including software development moving towards not needing a full keyboard to interface with a computer.
I briefly considered making one of these for my electronics company https://store.n8ech.com, but found that there are plenty of available options like the AhaKey https://finalkeystudio.com/products/finalkey-x-ahakey-x1-vib... out of I think the Philippines.
This one is going to be a pass.
edit: fixed now.
“Customize each key for macros, keyboard inputs, gaming controls, or shortcuts through Keychron Launcher for faster, more efficient control.”
I understand the novelty factor, but this product just creates pollution.
I don't like the physical feeling of pressing it, but the whole ceremonial with the coworkers is quite satisfying!
"Make it better"
"Add more bling"
"Nevermind, go on"
"Ship to production"
People get the value of AI all wrong. It's not supposed to be a one-and-done button. This is why people think AI will make us dumber.
AI is best as a tool to probe the extents of your own understanding of a problem and identify gaps and vagaries. You should interact with it with a full keyboard mentality like you would a fellow human.
We are about three or four years in to a technology that has the potential to be world altering! This is absolutely the time to experiment with form factors and techniques, and challenge our own assumptions of what it is we actually do.
And even if you reject all of that, a utility like this one isn't even incompatible with your vision! Couldn't you program a key to say "explain this concept in clearer terms"? However you work with the tool, this gives you ways to use it better. That...seems really nice!
I'm fully there with ya but I don't understand how a device with such limited expressive power is bringing anything to the table. If you're just using voice, just use voice? Sure, in some sense, it's always cool to try ideas. But IMO anything new would try to improve on subtlety and richness of communication.
The value of keys is writing, supporting a composition and editing workflow.
Have actually vibe coded a few "apps" for this. Most recent being a weather app that switches to radar view when I tap the knob and allows me to turn the forecast through time.
Now I need to go make the "make no mistakes" macro for fun!