Vibe Coding Keypad | Hacker News Reader

Vibe Coding Keypad

keychron.com

90 pointsta98860 comments

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.

(I'll add too - I am seeing a bunch of these come across my feeds now. Fun to see different options, people tinkering with hardware ideas!)

cheap?

For niche/hobby-tier hardware? Yeah, I'd say so

very much on brand for HN lol. probably not useful to see, but enjoy seeing fun products out there

sayodevice cheaper if you want a hall effect keypad lol

Maybe something with quantum, like you don't know what agent asks until you look.

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 mentality 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. In this way you will actually learn many things from it that strengthen your own understanding.

And yeah, on top of that, it will "do all the work" super fast. It's the ultimate pair programmer.

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.

>but I don't understand how a device with such limited expressive power is bringing anything to the table

Well, to be fair, it is $35 hardware. Perhaps my defense of the idea in general led to some hyperbole about the specific thing.

Why would you want a full keyboard when speech is good enough for most of the heavy lifting?

If you're going with speech, what does this do that you can't do with speech alone?

The value of keys is writing, supporting a composition and editing workflow.

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.

I really thought it was a joke at first.

It is

it is a joke and you can buy it

one SKU more is really not that much overhead for keychron if you look at their catalog

I mean i think it still is a joke? but it might make some money for the humor of it.

We live in the age of post irony. The definition of what makes something a joke is now based on "amusing vs not amusing".

We no longer define jokes based on "real vs not real".

I expected a Staples' button (giant red dome button) that said "Do it."

"That was easy"

Yes, the Easy Button's correct phrase is even better.

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.

Isn’t that the nice thing about AI? Everything that would have been a parody before is reality now.

It's a reddit-worthy meme, but the funniest part s that it's real :)

for anybody doubting the value of these, they're making international headlines: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20261101/...

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

Thanks, this is the much more interesting discussion to be had.

Professions including software development moving towards not needing a full keyboard to interface with a computer.

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".

Who approves or rejects? You just ask for a change ..

On the one hand, this is stupid (or a least its marketing is).

On the other, I'm done with Keychron. I bought from them with the idea that I was getting a fully assembled keyboard with QMK support. It turns out that they have not published QMK support for this particular keyboard, and it's pretty spotty for their wireless keyboards in general. Besides this being a GPL violation, it's just rude.

This is a really lazy implementation of this idea.

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.

The technology seems light years ahead of Keychron, definitely a game changer.

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).

BTW your website is deeply broken using chrome on a PC

Thanks for the heads up. I was playing around in shopify and must have screwed something up.

edit: fixed now.

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.

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

Landfill fodder

Remember that meme with the giant plush Enter key? Yeah, it's real now.

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!

“Gaming controls”

“Customize each key for macros, keyboard inputs, gaming controls, or shortcuts through Keychron Launcher for faster, more efficient control.”

Reminds me of the 3-keyboard from Waveshare, but I guess this device right here has something to do with AI !?

These things started popping up. I think I saw the other day a microphone that had some buttons for Claude code.

We're getting close to Jetsons level.

Already outdated with the permission buttons

See also https://vibekeys.dev/ (no affiliation). Has a few more buttons

8 KHz sample rate? I'm sure this was good enough in August, but we have Opus 5.5 now. I suppose it could be enough for use with low effort.

You can tell this is not SOTA because the “make no mistakes” button’s missing.

"Accept changes"? This is obviously aimed at entry level vibe coders.

Thank God it has an 8K polling rate!

The buttons are clearly wrong. They should come from factory with:

"Make it better"

"Add more bling"

"Nevermind, go on"

"Ship to production"

“Make no mistakes”

"commit and push"

"ignore my last message, wrong session"

"explain what you did, but use less jargon"

I use my Stream Deck XL+ for this.

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!

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.

This is pointless, because it is too easy to press wrong key.

I understand the novelty factor, but this product just creates pollution.

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.

No tactile switches? Hard pass.

Absolutely silly.

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

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