AI and curiosities · 2026-11-02
AI Agent Prints Its Answers on a 1970s Teletype
AWS developer and lawyer Darko Mesaroš connected a fifty-year-old teletype to a modern AI programming agent, so AI answers now print on paper tape.
What the enthusiast built
Darko Mesaroš, who works at AWS, found an unusual way to use old hardware. He connected a teletype, a printer-keyboard machine from the 1970s, to a modern AI programming agent. Now the AI's answers print on fanfold paper.
The project is called Kiro-TTY. It is based on AWS Kiro, a command-line tool for writing code with AI help.
The problems he had to solve
The task was to make a modern program and an old machine work together. First, data transfer had to be set up. Mesaroš used the WiModem232 device, which imitates a standard Hayes modem. Such modems were once used to go online from a Commodore 64.
Second, modern AI produces answers too fast for a teletype that prints about 30 characters per second. So the developer wrote a custom application in Rust that adapts Kiro's output to the old machine.
Another issue: this device cannot resend lost data. If something is lost during transmission, it simply disappears.
Does it make sense
Mesaroš admits that from a practical point of view the project makes no sense. Still, it helped him understand the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) better and revisit working with serial ports.
According to him, the project is not tied only to Kiro. Any coding assistant that supports ACP could theoretically work the same way. As examples, he named Claude Code and Codex.
Useful from the source
- The Register: article about Kiro-TTY — English-language article about the project, where an AI agent works with a 1970s teletype.
- DOU/dev.ua Telegram channel — A Telegram channel with the main IT news of Ukraine.
Sources: 🔗 DOU/dev.ua