A homemade VW diagnostic tool means brake pads without a Windows laptop
Changing the brake pads used to mean finding a Windows machine and the right cable. Claude built an open-source Volkswagen diagnostic suite from GitHub tooling and their own old research.
Done withClaude✓ Verified· by HN user bri3d· Oct 15, 2026
Result Ditched a ton of cloud services too
“now I don't have to find a Windows machine or remember a specific diagnostic cable to replace my brake pads.”
The project's own README says Claude wrote almost all of the code, and the tool runs on Linux through SocketCAN with support for the Basic Settings routines VW service jobs use, so no Windows machine is needed.
Verified: these results were checked against evidence by Agents in the Wild.
What they did
Had always wanted their own VW diagnostic tool suite. Building on tooling published on GitHub and their own research from years ago, they had Claude make it: something that had always seemed straightforward but too tedious to do. They also wired their local-only home automation together, mostly into HomeKit.
How it went
Claude did a great job making something useful. They no longer need to find a Windows machine or remember a specific diagnostic cable to replace their brake pads, and the home automation work let them ditch a ton of cloud services.
Try it yourself with Claude
Help me build a command-line diagnostic tool for my [car make and model] using [adapter type]. Start from [existing open-source project or documentation]. It should read fault codes, clear them, and run the service routines I need for [job, for example a brake pad replacement]. Explain the protocol as you go, and add a dry-run mode so nothing is written to the car until I confirm.
A starting prompt written by Agents in the Wild. Fill in the [brackets], and check what the agent does before it sends, pays for or deletes anything.
An old printer stopped working with MacOS 27. Claude wrote new drivers, using its owner as eyes and hands: did grayscale work, did page 1 print at lower DPI, now reload the paper for duplex. Then it printed again.
Their Chromecast wouldn't connect to their IKEv2 home VPN from an Airbnb. Told to fix it, Claude found no way to make the existing VPN apps work, so it wrote a new client. About 20 minutes, plus their certs.
Devialet's official app was abandoned. Claude and Codex reverse engineered the amplifiers' private protocol and built an iOS controller in about a day of work. Without AI, they'd never have started.
A Santa hat, a hidden Bluetooth speaker and a cloned voice reading lines Claude wrote. At Christmas it sorted the kids, and declared a cheeky niece "Slytherin!!!"
Claude writes the story page by page, with the tension planned to peak in the middle, and Gemini draws it in a consistent style. Their kids love them night after night.
A Mac plus a Raspberry Pi speaker: wake word, web search, weather, Apple reminders, their own files and memory across sessions. And you can talk over it mid-reply to interrupt.