One dev reverse-engineered his LG TV with Claude Code and rebuilt Plex: 3s startup, 60fps, fully open source
salgar · x · 2026-10-09
The quoted core story: annoyed that the Plex app took 30 seconds to load on his LG TV, a Reddit user reverse-engineered the TV and built a native Plex client from scratch using Claude Code, Opus and Fable — starting in C, moving to Rust, and ending up writing his own OpenGL UI framework along the way. Same TV, same hardware: profile picker loads in 3 seconds instead of 30, runs at 60fps, supports 4K, Dolby Vision and Atmos, fully open source. Firmware reverse engineering, media playback, GPU profiling, shader optimization and UI architecture were all done with AI tools — one person doing the work of an entire engineering team.
The reposter, Trond Wuellner, ties this to his "AI Predictions for 2026" essay arguing 2026 is the year "Software redefined Hardware," predicting the rise of the full-stack designer (tools like Lovable letting designers ship alone), deeply personal assistants, and more, citing Cursor's $500M+ ARR and 85% of developers using AI coding tools regularly.
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