Summary
How I AI host Claire Vo interviews Maddie Reese, a self-described non-coder who has used AI tools including Lovable and Cursor to build hardware-software projects that blur the line between retro technology and modern AI infrastructure. The episode opens with a live demonstration of Reese’s thermal receipt printer project: visitors go to maddiereese.com/message, fill out a form, and a ticket prints on Reese’s physical desk in seconds. The build runs on a simple web form connected to a thermal receipt printer, with the entire stack assembled without prior coding experience.
The more technically involved project is Reese’s working pager, which receives Twitter notifications in near real time through a multi-step pipeline: Twitter API events hit a Cloudflare Worker, which routes through Resend using a custom domain, then to Gmail, then to a Spok network pager email address. Reese walks through the practical friction of setting this up — including the pager reseller market, which primarily serves hospitals and uses infrastructure that looks unchanged since the late 1990s — and how she navigated it. The architecture required multiple forwarding hops because the pager’s assigned email address only accepts messages from specific domains.
Beyond the technical specifics, the conversation explores what it feels like to debug hardware failures versus software bugs, the emotional texture of building physical things, and how Reese’s entry point through Lovable led her to progressively more complex projects. It’s a practical illustration of how AI-assisted coding tools are enabling a new class of builder to cross into hardware territory that previously required embedded systems expertise.
📺 Source: How I AI · Published July 27, 2026
🏷️ Format: Hands On Build
