OPEN HARDWARE · OPEN FIRMWARE · OPEN HOST

OPEN WALKIE TALKIE

▮ PRESS START

The open-source handheld radio for your AI agents.

A palm-sized deck with a touch screen, a scroll wheel and a push-to-talk key. It shows which agent needs you, and your voice goes to the one that does.

Get the Source Try It Live Download for Mac

macOS 13+ · Apple Silicon + Intel · open firmware

  • 2.16"AMOLED
  • 6+1KEYS · WHEEL
  • USB-COR BLUETOOTH
  • 100%OPEN
SCROLL

Hardware open. Firmware open. Host open. Hold, talk, release. Who needs you, at a glance. A blueprint anyone can replicate.

CHAPTER I

THE TAB PILE

Three agents running, one of them stuck on a question, and you are scrolling terminals to find out which. The deck is the radio that tells you.

THE OLD WAY

A desk full of terminals

N TABS

  • Which agent is waiting? Scroll to find out.
  • Permission prompts buried under other work
  • Every prompt typed, every reply read
  • You are tethered to the screen
  • Nothing you can take apart or rebuild

Fast agents. Slow you.

OURS

Open Walkie Talkie

1 DECK

  • One screen, every agent, who needs you first
  • Questions become cards. One press answers.
  • Hold PTT and talk. Hear the reply.
  • Walk the room on Bluetooth, dock on USB-C
  • Open hardware, firmware and host. It's yours.

A blueprint anyone can replicate.

CHAPTER II

THREE CHANNELS, ONE JOB EACH

The screen is the status board. PTT is the radio. The buttons are the decisions. Read the conversation, see who needs you, and respond from the deck.

Push to Talk

Hold the key from any face and the screen becomes a LISTENING overlay. Release it and the transcript stays visible while recognition finishes. The deck's microphone streams to your Mac, the words land in the active agent as its next prompt, and the reply can be spoken back through the deck's speaker.

At rest. Hold the key to open a session.

The Roster

Every agent is a channel. A red dot is a question, green is ready, blue is working. Questions sort to the top, so the row you see first is the one that needs you.

QUESTION · READY · WORKING

Cards

A permission request or a multiple-choice question becomes a card. Scroll to a choice and press ENTER, tap it, or answer by voice. Only a person can approve a Claude Code or Codex permission card.

ONE PRESS · FULL CONTEXT

The Wheel

One detent, one row. Hold SHIFT and the same wheel slides between faces: Agents, Omarchy, Macropad, Usage, Settings. Double-tap SHIFT to reorder them.

SCROLL · SHIFT+SCROLL

Macropad Face

Nine keys on the touch screen, each with a label and a keystroke. The host posts the chord to your desktop. Edit a key on the deck itself and dictate its label with PTT.

⌘⇧4 · TAP OR BIND

Usage Face

Your Claude and Codex rate-limit windows as bars, with the active account and countdown to each reset. The host reads them with the logins you already have, nothing else.

SESSION · WEEK · RESET

Cable or Air

Plug in over USB-C and the host writes a report in under a millisecond. Unplug and the same link, voice included, rides Bluetooth LE. The host takes the cable whenever it is there.

USB HID · BLE · 1209:5754

CHAPTER III

TRY IT

The deck's grammar, in miniature. Drag or scroll the wheel, press the keys, or use your keyboard: ↑ ↓ scroll, ↵ enter, esc cancel, ← → channels, hold shift to change faces, hold space to talk.

AGENTS 19:42
    • ghostty · claudews 1
    • ghostty · codexws 1
    • firefox · docsws 2
    • kicad · main-revbws 3
      Codex · cohdl-apiLISTENING

      ▮

      release PTT to send

      touch screen · scroll wheel · PTT · ENTER · ESC · SHIFT · two front keys

      deckd · HOST LOG · channel 5 v0.1
        —

        CHAPTER IV

        TALKS TO YOUR AGENTS

        The host service, deckd, runs on your Mac and owns the link. Agents reach the deck through hooks or through an open API on a local socket.

        AGENTS

        Claude Codea plugin with hooks
        Codex CLIthrough its app server
        Your scriptJSON-RPC on a local socket
        + any agenta curl one-liner can be one

        AND THE REST OF YOUR DESK

        Omarchya Hyprland remote face
        Keystrokesmacropad chords on macOS
        Spoken repliesApple voice, or your own API key
        On-device speechApple recogniser, Whisper opt-in

        Speech recognition runs on your Mac. Your transcript goes to the agent you choose.

        CHAPTER V

        THE FACES

        Rendered by the firmware itself, pixel for pixel, from the same code that drives the panel. Tap the stack, swipe it, or use the arrows.

        The Agents roster: four agents with coloured state dots, the first one asking a question
        AGENTS · HOMEWho needs you first. Questions sort to the top; the bar at the left marks the active channel.
        A question card with three choices, the first one recommended
        QUESTION CARDScroll, ENTER, or tap. The card locks while the host confirms, then the view goes back to the channel.
        The LISTENING overlay with a waveform and a transcript typing in
        LISTENINGHold PTT from any face. Release to send. The last reply stays at the bottom so you know what you are answering.
        The Macropad face: a 3 by 3 grid of labelled keys with keystroke glyphs
        MACROPADNine touch keys, each with a label and a chord. SHIFT+CANCEL opens the key editor on the deck.
        The Usage face: provider bars with percentages and reset countdowns
        USAGEOne bar per rate-limit window, with the countdown to its reset. ENTER probes both providers at once.
        The Omarchy face: workspace chips and a window list
        OMARCHYA remote for a Hyprland desktop: workspaces and windows, as the host pushes them.
        The face manager: the strip of faces as tiles, ready to reorder
        THE MANAGERDouble-tap SHIFT. Reorder, add and remove faces, up to eight. Agents and Settings stay pinned.
        Two faces mid-slide, caught halfway through a SHIFT+SCROLL
        MID-SLIDESHIFT+SCROLL, caught halfway. One detent per face, hard ends, no wrap.
        1 / 8
        • PANEL480 × 480 on 38.8 mm, about 12 px per mm
        • TYPENoto Sans, rasterised ahead of time; no font engine on the chip
        • STRIPUp to eight faces, three of them Macropads
        • NOTICESA toast for four seconds, then a drawer; red while a question waits
        • IDLEBack to the roster after 120 s without input
        • DARK SCREENOnly PTT wakes and acts. Everything else just wakes.
        • FIRST RUNA short tutorial, discovered by using it, not by reading
        • RENDERSThese images come from tools/preview-all.py, the firmware drawing on the host

        CHAPTER VI

        THE BLUEPRINT

        Not a product you wait for — a repository you clone. The board, the firmware, the host service and the wire protocol, all in one tree.

        INVENTORY · openwalkietalkie MIT + CERN-OHL-P
        • openwalkietalkie/ The board, firmware and Mac app, together. Clone it and go.
        • hardware/rev-b/ The main board, Rev B: a KiCad project with Gerbers, BOM and pick-and-place. CERN-OHL-P 2.0.
        • hardware/rev-a/ Where it started: CoHDL schematic sources, four fabricated releases, the case CAD.
        • src/ Rust firmware on embassy: the faces, the HID link over BLE and USB, the bond journal, power.
        • native/ The RT-Thread image with Bluetooth audio, mounting the same UI core.
        • host/ deckd and the Mac app, Rust + gpui: the link, the Claude Code and Codex adapters, voice, the open API.
        • docs/deck-protocol.md The wire contract on channel 5. Read it and your script is an agent on the deck.

        Software under MIT. The board, the case and every design file under the permissive CERN Open Hardware Licence. Build it, modify it, sell it, no permission required.

        The hardware design started in CoHDL. The Rev A schematics are source code in the open-source hardware language at cohdl.org, checked by its compiler; Rev B is hand-placed and routed in KiCad from that lineage.

        ★ Get the Blueprint on GitHub ▼ Download for Mac Join the Discord

        The Mac app includes deckd, automatic app updates, and firmware updates for Rev A and Rev B. The source includes the tools for an initial USB-C or UART flash.

        CHAPTER VII

        THE REAL THING

        From the board to the enclosure, the editable designs are in the repository. These are renders from the Rev A hardware sources.

        Rev A main PCB rendered from its KiCad design
        MAIN BOARD · REV AA KiCad render of the Rev A main board. Its editable layout and fabrication outputs are in the source.
        Rev A encoder PCB rendered from its KiCad design
        ENCODER BOARDThe scroll wheel lives on a separate encoder board, connected to the main board by a flex cable.
        Rev A BodyV6 enclosure design preview
        THE ENCLOSUREA BodyV6 design preview. The repository includes the editable Fusion source and STEP exports.
        1 / 3
        • BRAINSiFli SF32LB52x, Cortex-M33, 16 MB flash, 8 MB PSRAM, running Rust on embassy
        • SCREEN2.16" CO5300 AMOLED, 480 × 480, with CST9220 touch
        • PCBFour-layer main board and a two-layer encoder board, both in the repo
        • CASE3D-printed BodyV6.13; the Fusion source ships with the hardware
        • AUDIOMP34DT05 PDM microphone and an NS4150B speaker amplifier
        • LINKUSB-C and Bluetooth LE, one HID device: VID 1209, PID 5754
        • BATTERY3.7 V, 500 mAh cell, charged over USB-C
        • STATUSRev A prototypes on the bench · Rev B main board designed

        READY TO TALK

        GET THE APP

        The first official release is being finalized for macOS 13 and later. Downloads will be available here shortly.

        Apple Silicon · preparing Intel · preparing

        The app will be available for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. You can explore the source and try the interactive deck while the release is prepared.

        The app includes automatic updates and board-aware USB firmware updates for Rev A and Rev B. Initial flashing requires a compatible bootloader. Explore the source →