Has anybody been doing anything fun with Claude Code plus Maslow?
Wes wrote:
Has anybody been doing anything fun with Claude Code plus Maslow?
not that has been reported. We have copilot tied in to github so that it
attempts to solve issues that are posted. It has worked pretty well
David Lang
Here is a video with an overview of how that process works:
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Yes, its about 85% complete. I just need time to finish it.
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Awesome. I will check into this soon.
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Quick progress update on the Claude Code experiment.
The biggest milestone today: Claude Code drove a full firmware downgrade end-to-end. The v1.15 → v1.20 upgrade I did earlier had broken Apply Tension on my machine (full writeup in [25745]). Today I had Claude Code:
- Inventory what was on the controller — partition layout, files in littlefs, network state, settings dump
- Back up the live maslow.yaml, config-bak.yaml, preferences.json, and index.html.gz over HTTP before touching anything
- OTA-flash the v1.15 firmware bin via POST /updatefw
- Diagnose a soft-brick after the flash (turned out: power-cycle once, comes right back)
- Restore the matching v1.15-era maslow.yaml (a v1.20 yaml on v1.15 firmware was the second issue I had to clear)
- Run Retract/Extend/Apply Tension and read the live measurement log to confirm we were back to “Ready to Cut”
- Review the gcode for my next cut before I pressed play
After all that, I just ran two cuts back-to-back from the same template file — both came out perfect. First clean cuts on the rebuild.
Made some more progress. Now I have Claude automatically grabbing the newest toolpath in my downloads folder that I export from Krabscam. It analyzes it for potential issues based on the current context and what I’ve been doing. It sends it to the Maslow and automatically starts cutting.First attempt went perfectly. Fingers crossed it continues to work. I’ll keep you posted.
I’ve been continuing to use Claude for my cutting and simultaneous documentation/organizing/troubleshooting.
On the last round, I had to cut some new and different-sized triangles out of my foam material, so I had Claude help me with it end-to-end.I started out by giving it the measurements of the triangle and then iterated with it on how to nest that shape in the most efficiently.It’s nice not having to mess around with Krabscam or Inkscape or even have to move the toolpath files onto the Maslow manually.
One cool thing: that was pretty handy. Instead of cutting up the entire design in one go, I had it break it apart into individual cuts. If it cut successfully, it would ask me if I was ready to go through with the next cut.
I like being able to just say, “Do this whole cutting path at 2 mm depth please.” And have it do exactly what you said was a magical feeling. I have since added a couple more safeguards where it will ask for a few confirmations before proceeding with the cut.
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Is Claude actually controlling the machine?
Yes; I asked claude to monitor the coms between desktop browser tab and maslow… so it learned the various commands that happen when buttons are clicked. I’m basically talking with the claude cli as the main way to do my cutting now… I do keep the browser tab open to monitor things from there too.
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Oh my god you are living in the future. That is wild!
Can you tell me more? Like what does the end to end process of cutting something look like?
Yeah, happy to lay out the whole thing. Easiest way is to show you the before and after.
How I used to do it:
- Take the measurements for the new triangle I wanted to cut.
- Draw it out in Inkscape with the Path tool. This part always confused me a little — I could never quite tell which side of my line the Maslow was going to cut on.
- Export that, import it into KrabzCAM to make the toolpath.
- Import that into the Maslow, then run the cut.
How it works now:
I open up Claude Code and open my Maslow project. I tell it something like “open our command center and get ready to resume cutting the same shape we were doing yesterday.” Then I go out and make sure all the belts are clear. It applies tension, and (hopefully) I get the “ready to cut” notification. I’ve still been double-checking that in the regular Maslow browser dashboard — though when I’m feeling adventurous I don’t even bother going in there, I just tell it to apply tension. Then I tell it to fire the cut. When it’s done I come back to the computer and report whether things look good or if something went off the rails.
You may have seen the post where I had the Maslow crashing at the same spot in a cut, twice in a row. I just asked Claude to rearrange the cutting order of the last three cuts. My command center keeps an image of each cut plus an animated toolpath preview, so I could actually watch what the new order would do and predict it before committing. Once I was happy with it, I told it to re-fire in the new order — and that one finished clean.
For a brand-new triangle size, I give it the new dimensions and then we iterate on nesting it onto the sheet efficiently. Honestly it’s not great at the nesting on its own yet — I usually have to suggest the smart way to use the material. I give it some rough annotations and it figures out the details from there. Then I have it cut a 2mm-deep test version first. I measure that, and if everything checks out I tell it to bump it to full depth and fire away. When I hit trouble, I just explain what happened and what I did to fix it, and I have it log all of that — keeping track of which cut was a test and which was the final working one, because that gets messy fast.
About that “command center”: it’s nothing fancy, just a human-readable HTML page — and Claude Code maintains it for me. It updates the page as we go, so it always holds my history of past cuts, the cutting animations, and image representations of each one. It also keeps my reference facts — which bit I’m running, my bit inventory, router speed, etc. I even had it spider all my forum posts so it knows my whole issue history. On top of that, it analyzes the cutting path for potential problems and runs a checklist of things to verify on the Maslow before a cut, to head off issues before they happen.
I also used it to upgrade the firmware and try to get the machine calibrated — and then ultimately to downgrade back to the earlier version that didn’t have the calibration problems.
All that said — this is still very much a big beta test for me. But I can already see how this kind of approach would be a really nice way for other people, especially newcomers, to interact with the machine. I’m pretty happy with the workflow at this point.
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I feel like you are truly living in the future.
Instead of relying on software that is meant to be general purpose you can basically ask it to build exactly what you need and then you have all the features that are important to you and nothing else.
What an incredible experiment!