Meta lets developers build their own hardware for Muse

Meta’s Muse, a personal AI agent that books travel, fills out forms, and shops on a user’s behalf, has already proven popular with the masses. On Friday, the company introduced Muse Gadgets, an open-source project that lets developers build their own hardware to connect to Muse — a side project aimed squarely at tinkerers and hackers.

Meta is providing open-source firmware, the low-level software that runs a device, along with a Linux software development kit and a handful of project ideas to get users started, including giving Muse a color e-ink display or loading it onto a stick that plugs into a TV’s HDMI port. There don’t appear to be many limits beyond that: users can set up a low-cost hobbyist computer like a Raspberry Pi or an off-the-shelf ESP32 board and connect Muse “to your displays, buttons, sensors, actuators, and whatever else you’ve got lying on your workbench,” according to Meta. The company has also set up a Discord channel to support users building their own gadgets.

Meta has tried the approach itself. Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, said in a post on X that the company built a gadget called Muse Home Link, a USB-C-powered device that lets Muse connect to a home network and talk to smart devices on it, including speakers and smart TVs. Meta made 5,000 Home Links and is giving them away free to Muse subscribers while supplies last, according to Friedman, who said the device would ship in a few weeks. Friedman’s post about Home Link drew nearly 30,000 views within a few hours — enough interest, by that measure, that the free units likely didn’t last long, though Meta hasn’t confirmed as much.

Muse Gadgets may not have wide appeal, but it fits into Meta’s broader push to make Muse more than a standalone chatbot. The company isn’t limiting that push to everyday consumers: earlier this week it introduced Muse for Small Business, a free tier with usage limits that connects Muse to tools such as Shopify, Dropbox, and Slack, and it has launched a new business unit, Meta Enterprise Platform, to sell its AI offerings to businesses and corporate customers.

Why it matters

Opening Muse to hobbyist hardware signals Meta wants its AI agent embedded everywhere — on desks, TVs, and now hacked-together gadgets — as it simultaneously courts consumers, small businesses, and enterprise customers with the same underlying product.