What they built.
Matt Webb made a small clock that transforms a glance at the time into a piece of generated writing. His 2023 account names gpt-3.5-turbo and shows poems produced for the physical display. The starting material is deliberately small: the time and a description of the room.
The project continued beyond its first demonstration. Webb later called it Poem/1, and his August 2026 post describes shipped clocks, network faults and a firmware update. That progression makes the example useful: the creative interaction worked, while keeping a connected object running required ordinary product maintenance.
The maker publishes examples from the working clock and a later maintenance account. This establishes an implemented object, without independently measuring its reliability.
Read the maker's prototype accountHow the tools work together
The clock supplies a factual input to a text-generating model and displays the response. Its minute-by-minute refresh creates variety, while the room description gives the writing a local setting. The prototype used a Raspberry Pi and e-paper screen; the model did not measure time itself.
Workflow at a glance
Supply the time and setting
The prompt contains the current time and a short description of the clock's surroundings.
Generate a short poem
The historical model produces a rhyming couplet; Webb tested wording that changed its tone.
Display and observe
The e-paper screen shows the result. Webb published examples and described failures such as incorrect times.
How you could adapt the idea
For a small experiment, first test a few supplied times in a text interface and compare the returned time with the input. Choose a tone and display format before buying hardware. This is an editorial adaptation of the pattern, not a reproduction of the production clock or a current cost estimate.
Effort, cost and limitations
- Effort
- The original requires hardware and API programming. The later product needed network recovery fixes and firmware updates.
- Cost
- Webb reported $1.80 per day for his 2023 prototype. That is a historical operating observation, not a current API quote or total hardware cost.
The maker observed poems that misstated the time. Treat the output as creative text.
The original model and hardware describe the prototype, not the current production backend or a verified kit available today.
Go to the original work.
Maker's prompt, model, output and historical costsMaker's account of the prototype becoming Poem/1Hardware vendor's illustrated prototype accountMaker's firmware maintenance and shipped-product updateSource-backed editorial account; PrisAIm did not run or independently benchmark this implementation.