Turn a feature phone into a tiny AI controller
They loaded an AI-driven chat tool onto a Nokia 110 and used it to carry out a few simple device actions.
- What they did
- They studied the Nokia 110 4G firmware and startup flow, then used the Calculator launch path to run custom code from RAM. That code turned Calculator into a text chat front end that sends messages to the DeepSeek chat API and follows tool calls. OpenAI Codex helped them build a very small agent that fit within the phone’s limited memory.
- How it went
- The prototype could answer questions, check battery level, toggle the torch, place a call, and set an alarm while offline and using mobile data. It was not persistent: the code had to be reloaded after restart or power loss, and the source was not published.
- Tips
- On hardware this small, keep the agent minimal, reuse buffers, and shrink every build you can. Treat anything that changes state or uses airtime as something to confirm before running it.
Try it yourself with Claude Code
I have a [device model] with about [RAM amount] of memory, and I want to use it as a tiny AI-controlled interface for [simple task]. Help me map out the device’s boot or app launch path, build the smallest possible bridge to an AI agent, and make it trigger the action from [button/menu/app entry]. First, show me the safest test plan and pause for my approval before any step that would send a message, place a call, change a setting, or do anything else I can’t easily undo. Then give me the exact commands or code for each step, keeping everything small enough to fit the device’s limits.
Fill in the [brackets]. Agents can make mistakes, so review anything before it is sent, paid or deleted.
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