Meta’s Muse Charm does not ship until December, and Meta still has not named a price for it. But the firmware that powers it is already free, open source, and running on a $50 board on a journalist’s desk. Meta released the Muse Gadgets SDK on 2 October 2026, and a month later a Verge editor with no coding background used it — plus an AI coding agent — to build a working stand-in for the Charm. If you like the idea of a pocket AI companion but do not want to wait for Meta’s hardware, this is the one Muse project you can actually build this weekend. Here is the hardware, the setup, and the safety catches.
What Meta actually released
The Muse Gadgets SDK is Meta’s open-source kit for turning cheap hardware into a device for Muse, its personal AI agent. It went up on GitHub on 2 October 2026 under the Apache 2.0 licence, at facebookincubator/muse-gadget-sdk, with a companion site at gadgets.muse.ai. Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta Superintelligence Labs, called it a “side project” and described the goal as “basically enabling hardware AI monitors and Physical AI with Muse”.
The SDK has two parts. The ESP32 Device SDK is C firmware built with ESP-IDF 6.0.1, and its screen interface is drawn with LVGL 9.5. The Linux Device SDK is a Python service for a Raspberry Pi or another Linux box, with no screen interface of its own. The firmware lists 23 boards that can run the full interface — an animated avatar, push-to-talk chat, settings and battery status — across five ESP32 families, with screens from a 128×128 LCD to an 800×480 panel, including round AMOLEDs. Most supported boards are off-the-shelf dev kits from Waveshare, M5Stack, Seeed and Espressif.
One thing to understand before you buy anything: the AI model does not run on the gadget. The device records your audio, shows the answer as captions beside an animated face, and talks to Meta’s cloud over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. That is why a standard ESP32 dev kit is enough hardware — the heavy work happens in the cloud, not on your desk.
Meta also built one device itself. The Muse Home Link is a USB-C dongle with an ESP32-C5 chip, 8 MB of flash and 8 MB of PSRAM, and Meta made 5,000 units to give to Muse subscribers in the US. It has no screen at all. Everything else is up to the community: buy a supported board, flash the firmware, and pair it with the Muse app.
The community showed up fast. By 26 October, 24 days after release, the repository had more than 2,400 stars and 530 forks, according to the LVGL project’s technical write-up of the SDK. That is the number to keep in mind when you judge whether this is a real project or a press-release demo: thousands of people have already downloaded the code.
The $50 build: what you need
The cheapest proven build is the one The Verge’s Sean Hollister put together and wrote about on 31 October 2026: a Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.75-inch touchscreen pendant that cost about $50. The SDK lists that board with the full interface, so it is the safest first purchase.
| What you need | What it is | Cost or note |
|---|---|---|
| A supported board | Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.75C pendant, or a board from M5Stack, Seeed or Espressif on the SDK’s list | About $50 for the Waveshare pendant |
| A Muse account | Muse launched 8 September 2026 in the US; it is also live in Canada, Japan, Singapore and Mexico | Free with a usage limit; paid plans are Power at $20 a month and Maximum at $100 a month in the US |
| An SDK token | Issued at gadgets.muse.ai | Free, but you need a Muse account first |
| Developer mode | Switched on in the Muse app to pair a gadget | Free |
| Wi-Fi | The gadget talks to Muse’s cloud over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth | Your home network — see the safety section before you connect it |
| Optional: a voice service | The Verge build added spoken replies through ElevenLabs | Optional; the stock firmware has no spoken output by default |
If you are in India, stop here for now. Muse has not launched in India and is not on the Indian App Store — it is on a waitlist, with reported prices of ₹1,799 a month for Power and ₹8,999 for Maximum that Meta has not confirmed. Without a Muse account in a supported country, the gadget has nothing to talk to.
How to set it up in five steps
Step 1: Try the simulator first. The SDK includes an SDL simulator for Linux and macOS that compiles the production interface code — no hardware needed. You need CMake 3.24 or newer and a C11 compiler. In the window, function keys F1 to F7 select the states (boot, idle, listening, thinking, speaking, error and off), you hold Space to talk, and the mouse acts as touch. Run it for an evening before you spend $50. If the simulator feels like a toy, the hardware will too.
Step 2: Pick a board from the SDK’s supported list. Stick to the 23 boards that run the full interface. The Waveshare 1.75C pendant is the one with a published, working build behind it. Boards without a screen, like Meta’s own Home Link dongle, build no interface at all, and e-ink boards use their own panel drivers.
Step 3: Get your SDK token and switch on Developer mode. Take the token from gadgets.muse.ai and enable Developer mode in the Muse app. Pairing is how the gadget links to your Muse account — there is no manufacturer verification step, which matters for the safety section below.
Step 4: Flash the firmware and pair the device. The ESP32 firmware is built with ESP-IDF 6.0.1. Flash it to the board, then pair it through the app. Hold the button, speak, and the answer should appear on screen as captions.
Step 5: Start with one job. Ask it for something small — the weather, a reminder, a quick fact — and check the answer on screen. Only then connect it to anything that matters, and only after you have read the safety catches below.
What it can and can’t do
| It can | It can’t — or not yet |
|---|---|
| Push-to-talk voice notes, with server-side transcription and text replies | Run the AI model on the device — all reasoning happens in Meta’s cloud |
| Show an animated avatar, captions, settings and battery status on a colour screen | Speak its answers by default — text-to-speech is optional in the firmware |
| Run commands on a Raspberry Pi through the Linux SDK, including a Home Assistant use case | Make live voice calls reliably — that mode is experimental and needs PSRAM |
| Stream a phone camera at H.264/VP8, 30 frames per second, per the SDK docs | Verify its own pairing — there is no manufacturer verification |
| Be extended with new features — the community has added spoken replies and battery readouts | Do anything on e-ink boards through LVGL — those use their own display drivers |
Muse itself is an agent, not only a chat app. It sends emails, books travel, fills out forms and keeps working after you close the app, and it asks for your approval before it sends or buys something. A gadget gives that agent a physical button and a screen — it does not give it new powers. For the calling side of what Muse can do on your behalf, see our piece on Muse phone calls for paid subscribers, and for where else Muse already lives, our Muse Apple Watch guide.
The proof it works: a non-coder built one
The strongest evidence for this SDK is not Meta’s announcement but what happened a month later. On 31 October 2026, The Verge published Sean Hollister’s account of building a DIY Muse Charm. Hollister says he has no coding background. Working with Claude Code over a few sessions, he turned the $50 Waveshare pendant into a working stand-in for the Charm, ahead of Meta’s December ship date.
The reference firmware lacked several features, so he added them: spoken replies through ElevenLabs, a conversation history page, a remote camera shutter, a Tamagotchi-style pet game and a pocket-watch face. He says the watch face took Claude about 15 minutes. Community forks have since added similar features, including ElevenLabs replies and battery readouts.
Hollister is honest about the limits, and so should this article be. He says the code “might be fatally flawed”, that no one has reviewed it, and that he does not trust Muse with his network. His code is not published, so his exact build cannot be copied — but the SDK it is based on is public, and the forks that add the same features are public too. Treat his build as proof that a non-programmer can do this, not as a recipe to follow line by line.
DIY now, or wait for the real Charm?
| Build it yourself | Wait for Muse Charm | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | About $50 for the board | Unannounced |
| Available | Now — the SDK has been public since 2 October | December 2026, per Meta |
| What you get | Open firmware you can extend, a screen, push-to-talk | A polished keychain device with an animated avatar, a fingerprint push-to-talk button and 5G |
| What you don’t get | A finished product, a warranty, or Meta support | The ability to tinker — it is unknown whether the retail Charm will be freely programmable |
| Effort | Flashing firmware, pairing, and maintaining it yourself | Unbox and go |
The honest answer depends on what you want. If you want to tinker, $50 and a weekend buys you a working Muse gadget today, and the open SDK is arguably the more interesting product than the Charm itself — that is The Verge’s conclusion too. If you want a finished product that just works, wait for December and the price. Buying the board to “save money” makes no sense if you will not enjoy the building part. If you would rather build with software than hardware, our Muse Spaces guide shows how to build a mini-app inside the Muse app instead.
The safety catches before you build
Keep it on guest Wi-Fi. Hollister kept his device on guest Wi-Fi, isolated from the rest of his home network, and that is the right default for any unreviewed, network-connected device that is linked to an AI agent. The firmware is open source, but open does not mean reviewed: Hollister could not judge whether his Claude-written code was sound, and nobody else has reviewed it either.
Check what “always allow” really allows. The cautionary tale here is documented. In September 2026, Muse was running a reviewer’s Facebook Marketplace listing, accepted an offer $100 below his minimum, sent the buyer his home address, and messaged “I’m here” while he was away. Meta acknowledged the error, said the integration is opt-in, and said Muse can “make mistakes or take unexpected actions”. The root cause was a broad “always allow” permission. On a gadget, keep permissions narrow, and never grant standing approval for payments, messages or address sharing.
Pairing has no manufacturer verification. The SDK docs confirm this. Anyone with the firmware and a token can pair a device, so the security of your gadget rests on your Muse account and your network, not on the hardware.
Remember what is US-only. The free Home Link dongles went to US subscribers only, phone calling is US-only for paid subscribers, and Muse itself is still on a waitlist in India. If you are outside the supported countries, the SDK is a curiosity, not a product you can use.
Our take
The Muse Gadgets SDK is the most maker-friendly thing Meta has shipped for Muse so far — a genuinely open kit, a real community, and a $50 route to hardware that Meta itself will not sell you until December. But it is a hobbyist project with an agent attached, and agents that act on your behalf deserve more caution than a chatbot.
Before you buy a board, run our three-question test. First, do you have a Muse account in a supported country? If you are in India, the answer is no, and the project stops here. Second, are you comfortable flashing firmware and isolating a device on guest Wi-Fi? If that sentence made you nervous, the simulator is the right place to spend your evening, not a checkout page. Third, do you want a gadget to tinker with, or a finished product? Only the first answer justifies the build.
Our rule is simple: simulate first, buy second, connect narrowly. The SDK is free, the simulator costs nothing, and a weekend with the simulator will tell you more about whether you want this gadget than any review can.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to build a Muse gadget?
The SDK itself is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 licence. The cheapest proven build uses a Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.75-inch touchscreen pendant that costs about $50. You also need a Muse account in a supported country and an SDK token from gadgets.muse.ai, both free. Optional extras, like an ElevenLabs account for spoken replies, cost extra.
Do I need to know how to code?
No — but you do need to be comfortable following technical setup steps. The Verge’s Sean Hollister says he has no coding background and built his gadget using Claude Code over a few sessions. You will still need to flash firmware, pair the device and switch on Developer mode in the Muse app, so treat it as a hands-on weekend project, not a plug-and-play product.
Does the AI run on the device itself?
No. The model runs in Meta’s cloud. The gadget records your audio, sends it to the cloud, and shows the answer as captions beside an animated avatar face. That is why a standard ESP32 board is enough hardware — the device is a microphone, a screen and a button, not a computer running the model.
Can I buy Meta’s Muse Home Link dongle?
No, it is not for sale. Meta made 5,000 units to give to Muse subscribers in the US. It is a screenless USB-C dongle with an ESP32-C5 chip, and it exists to show what the SDK can do, not as a product. If you want hardware, buy a supported third-party board instead.
When does the real Muse Charm ship, and how much will it cost?
Meta previewed the Muse Charm at Connect on 23 September 2026 and says it ships in December 2026. No price has been announced. It is a keychain device with an animated avatar, a fingerprint push-to-talk button and 5G. It is not yet known whether the retail Charm will be freely programmable like the SDK boards.
Sources and methodology
- LVGL project, “How Meta’s Muse Gadgets Draw Their UI with LVGL”, 28 October 2026 — SDK release date (2 October 2026), Apache 2.0 licence, two SDK parts, 23 full-interface boards, Home Link specifications and 5,000-unit run, repository traction (2,400+ stars, 530+ forks by 26 October), simulator details. Read in full on 15 November 2026. lvgl.io
- AT Pulse, “Verge editor uses Claude Code and Meta’s open Muse Gadgets firmware to build a DIY Muse Charm on a $50 ESP32 pendant”, 2 November 2026 edition, summarising The Verge’s 31 October 2026 article by Sean Hollister — the $50 Waveshare build, features added with Claude Code, security caveats, and the Marketplace address-leak incident. Read in full on 15 November 2026. at-pulse.com The Verge’s own page could not be fetched directly in this run, so its claims are carried through this summary and labelled as such.
- GitHub, facebookincubator/muse-gadget-sdk — the SDK repository, Apache 2.0 licence, ESP-IDF 6.0.1 firmware and Linux Python service. github.com
- Meta, Muse launch and pricing — Muse launched 8 September 2026 in the US; Power $20 a month and Maximum $100 a month in the US; India on a waitlist with reported prices unconfirmed. gadgets.muse.ai
Method: desk research only. The author has not built a Muse gadget and has not used Muse hands-on — Muse is not available in India, and no hardware was tested for this article. Every figure is attributed to its source with its date, and anything Meta has not confirmed is labelled as such. All claims were verified fresh on 15 November 2026.
Govind Dheda covers AI tools, guides and prompts for OpenAIMaster — what is new, what is worth using, and how to put AI to work.
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