AI project #5: vibe coding or vibe saving?

◆

August 31, 2026

this AI coding shit is really pretty fantastic.

i have one of these Tidbyt LED displays. It’s super simple, very retro, and kind of dumb and I love it so much. i really enjoy having a passive display that rotates superfluous news items, weather, stock tickers, sports scores, whatever.

however the screen that i pay attention to the most is probably my solar status monitor, which shows me how much energy my panels are generating at any given time, and the current capacity of my battery

alas, a couple of years ago, Tidbyt was aquired by Modal, and they stopped making them. everything still works, but now the issue is that eventually things might stop working since there’s no active development or fixes being put in.
and then it happened:

The community Tidbyt “Tesla Powerwall” app broke in June 2026 (403 forbidden) when Tesla tightened its cloud API (HTTP/2 requirement
plus client_id/audience changes). That app renders on Tidbyt’s cloud backend
against owner-api.teslamotors.com, which can’t be patched from outside.

wat do? claude to the rescue!
it coded up a local-only Tidbyt app that reads from the local proxy that reads directly from the powerwall, extracting live solar/Powerwall data, and then generates an animated image that is then pushed out to the Tidbyt:

claude refused to use the existing status board format due to copying concerns, so i made it create a brand new one, which honestly looks even better (after dozens of iterations). it’s even adaptive so only parts that are active will show (e.g. if it’s nighttime, then there’s no sun and no numbers from the panels).