Hey everyone, recently the AI hardware space has seen a lot of ""vaporware"" projects that only exist as 3D renders, making people rightfully skeptical. To prove we aren't just selling a PPT dream, today there is no marketing BS. I just want to show you Kitto, our AI hardware project that took 14 months to build—a raw prototype with a naked circuit board and messy jumper wires, and the technical story behind it.

About 14 months ago, this project started as a pure technical challenge aimed at solving a real-life pain point. I have two real cats running around my house, and many of my friends absolutely love them. However, they couldn't keep pets themselves either due to severe allergies to pet dander or because their busy work schedules left no time to care for a real animal. That sparked an idea: why not combine the nostalgic vibe of the 90s Tamagotchi with modern AI to build a 2026 cyberpunk-style desktop electronic pet?

I didn't want to just build a screen that plays looping videos; my technical goal was to create a sense of life that is fully code-driven, backed by deep Agent capabilities. To tackle this challenge, we grinded on the underlying logic. What you see in the video is our core testing board. To accurately render the subtle micro-expressions of a cat, we used a 410×502 high-definition Retina display. For physical interaction, we integrated capacitive touch sensing. When you pet it like in the video, it doesn't just trigger a single pre-rendered animation. Instead, our custom animation state machine dynamically splices together multiple subtly different motion fragments in real-time to generate infinite variations of reactions—all entirely driven by code. For voice interactions, we even implemented an algorithm that extracts lip-sync phonemes so its mouth movements align naturally with the generated speech.

But turning these technical concepts into reality almost broke me. Our four-person team handled all the hardware and software development. I dumped most of my savings into prototyping and even got scammed by a fake contractor. Buried in code and soldering, I became extremely anxious. My marketing skills were a complete disaster, and some terrible AI-generated copy I posted earlier even made people mistakenly think this was a cash-grab scam. It wasn't until recently, when a friend couldn't stand watching me struggle and quit his job to handle operations, that I was saved from breaking down and could focus entirely on refining the tech and developing our planned 50+ Agent functions.

Once the technical prototype was running, I actually tried reaching out to VC. But taking venture capital meant compromising for ROI and cutting geeky but ""unprofitable"" features. I truly enjoy the process of turning a tiny chip into a tennis-ball-sized robot, and I want its technological evolution to be driven by real community feedback, which is why I ultimately chose Kickstarter.

Today, we've finished the pricing and set up the KS pre-launch page for Kitto. Moving forward, besides perfecting the underlying code and those 50 Agent interactions, we plan to release trendy shells (like a Zaun-style street graffiti look) and even a rotating base that bobs its head to music. How far we go depends on real market feedback. What do you guys want to see next? A breakdown of our code logic, hardcore dev logs, or voting on shell designs? Let me know!

Here is our cyberpunk cat for allergy sufferers, and the 14-month struggle behind it