BYO Agent with M5Stack Stick 3
Sunday tinkering post by **Mark Dembo** (Head of Solutions, Developer Platform & AI at **Cloudflare**) published on **June 7, 2026** on his personal blog. **Narrative**: inspired by **Steve Ruiz**, the author buys a small **M5Stack Stick 3** device (~€30) and, taking advantage of the release of **Opus 4.8**, builds himself a **DIY AI agent** "out of pure curiosity, with no goal." **Iteration 1 (45 min)**: he throws the device's documentation at **Claude Code**, which generates Python scripts (~200 LOC, *"zero blast radius"*) displaying the weather in Munich, then in several cities; a **Cloudflare Workers + Workers AI backend** adds **text-to-speech (TTS)**, **push-to-talk** (speech-to-text), and a central **small LLM** to answer questions. **Iteration 2 (a real agent)**: moving from REST endpoints to **WebSocket** transport via the **Cloudflare Agents SDK** + **Dynamic Worker execution** → the ***"Code Mode"*** pattern (the agent writes and executes code to accomplish its task). The agent then answers questions with public data (11! = factorial, Champions League winner via `fetch()` on Wikipedia, weather for any city). **Iteration 3 (real powers)**: connecting to **Todoist** via an **MCP OAuth** flow → 50 tools all at once, hence two problems: **context bloat** and **risk of real damage**. Solution borrowed from Cloudflare's **MCP Server Portal** + Claude connector settings: per-tool **Always allow / Ask for approval / Disable** (*Disabled* tools never enter the context; an **LLM classifier** only accepts distinct "allow" grants, and **default = deny**). **Stated stance**: reducing his role to ***"idea generator, executor and judge"*** (and rarely technical guide), a "human-in-the-loop" flow he considers not very *"2026"* (copy-pasting into UIFlow). **What he did NOT do**: no latency/streaming optimization, no optimistic LLM calls, no evals, ***"I did not even look at the code once."*** **Wonder**: €30 + one Anthropic session window + a few cents of Cloudflare inference → an object that listens and talks, controlled in natural language; *"the true unlock is how accessible it is."* Sharp contrast with [[thomas-pragdave-failing-faster-code-rot-ai-velocity-2026-06-06]] (here *"zero blast radius"* justifies never looking at the code); concretely illustrates *Code Mode* / *"the agent just writing and executing code"*, the **MCP** pattern ([[claude-skills-bigger-than-mcp-willison-2025-10-16]]), *Ask for approval*-style tool governance ([[uber-engineering-agent-identity-crisis-zero-trust-spire-2026-05-21]]), and the *systems around the model* doctrine from [[dropbox-okumura-beyond-code-generation-engineering-productivity-ai-agents-2026-05-28]].
**Mark Dembo** (@darkmembo / @mdembo) · **Head of Solutions – Developer Platform & AI** chez **Cloudflare** (auparavant auteur sur le blog Cloudflare). Billet personnel publié sur son blog *markpauldembo.com* le **7 juin 2026** (description : *« Thoughts about tinkering on a Sunday »*).