Rabbit’s Subsequent AI Gadget Is a ‘Cyberdeck’ for Vibe Coding

AI devices could be a collective flop up to now, however that hasn’t stopped the businesses that make them from persevering with to attempt their hand. Rabbit, for its half within the AI gadget dialog, is taking one other stab. The maker of a small handheld AI gadget known as the R1 is seemingly within the technique of designing one other piece of AI {hardware}, however this time round it’s all concerning the vibes.

https://twitter.com/rabbit_hmi/status/2017082134717223008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Project Cyberdeck, as Rabbit is asking it, is one other small, seemingly handheld machine that’s targeted on utilizing AI to code. Unlike the R1, which doesn’t have a keyboard—only a scroll wheel and a few buttons—Project Cyberdeck is being envisioned with a keyboard to kind with. In Rabbit’s phrases, the machine may very well be used for stuff like “command-line workflow” and can have “native AI agents” in addition to instruments like Claude Code, although you’ll apparently be capable to select the fashions you run.

Rabbit is particularly calling its machine a “cyberdeck,” which is historically a customized mini pc constructed on a Raspberry Pi, however there’s no phrase on what’s inside Rabbit’s potential model. The firm does say—and I quote—that it’ll include a “really great screen” and a 40% hot-swappable keyboard, which sounds cyberdeck-ish, I suppose. Based on the sparse image Rabbit shared, it seems to be like Project Cyberdeck folds open clamshell-style, however I haven’t seen any indication of a trackpad, so I’m undecided the way you’re alleged to interface with it—hopefully not your voice, please God.

The particulars, as you’ll be able to inform, are skinny, however I believe that’s what Rabbit desires proper now. Project Cyberdeck sounds very very like a piece in progress, simply based mostly on the language that Rabbit is utilizing to explain it. In its thread, Rabbit says they’re “designing” Project Cyberdeck, which leads me to imagine it doesn’t completely exist but in a bodily sense. It additionally says that they’re “exploring a portable cyberdeck.” Not probably the most concrete technique to describe a product you propose on promoting, however hey, I suppose it’d gin up curiosity.

Interest from whom, although, I do not know. As some individuals in Rabbit’s thread on X have already identified, the entire level of “vibe coding,” which is AI-speak for utilizing a chatbot to slop up some code for you, is that it may be finished merely with a immediate by way of the cloud. You don’t want a cyberdeck to try this, however perhaps somebody on the market will need a devoted machine for some purpose. Raise your hand in case you exist.

If Rabbit goes to make a cyberdeck, I ought to hope that it’ll do extra than simply use AI to code stuff, since there’s already a fairly rad and fruitful crop of cyberdecks in existence that may do extra than simply churn out shoddy code. Let’s be sincere, although, Rabbit doesn’t have a stellar monitor file up to now. The R1 fell flat each in gross sales and within the estimation of most individuals who tried to make use of one, and whereas it didn’t attain Humane ranges of shame, the corporate is clearly not doing so sizzling. This previous November, some staff went on strike after Rabbit failed to, um, pay them.

I’m not a businessperson, however I’m going to go forward and say they need to most likely get that entire paying their employees factor so as first earlier than they begin churning out new merchandise.