I want to ask my car how many miles it has

Over the weekend my dad and I did some work on our car. When we do that, we write the mileage in a logbook.

This morning he texted me to ask how many miles were on the car. I didn't know, so I got up from my desk, walked out to the garage and looked.

On the way back I was thinking: why couldn't I just ask the car?

Ask your stuff

I spend most of my day talking to Claude Code. I ask it about my code, my pull requests and my servers, and it goes and finds out. If my car had an agent built in, I could ask it the same way:

How many miles are on the car?

And it would just tell me. No trip to the garage.

The mileage is only the start. The car could tell me when the oil was last changed, whether a tire is low, or what that warning light means. And it doesn't have to stop at the car:

• The fridge. Do I have eggs? Is there enough milk for the weekend? I could ask from the grocery store instead of guessing.
• The TV. When is the game on tonight, and what channel?
• Anything else I own. The furnace, the washer, the water heater. Each one knows things about itself that I currently have to go and look at.

What I want isn't another app for each device. I want each thing to answer questions about itself, so I can ask from wherever I already am. For me, that's a terminal.

Someone build this

I haven't heard of anyone working on this. I'm sure someone out there is thinking about it, and I hope they are.

Most of what I write here is from the builder's side. This one is from the customer's side. As a consumer, this is the AI idea I'm most excited about: not a smarter chatbot, just the things I already own being able to answer a question.

If you're working on it, I'd love to hear about it.