Teaching an LLM to Speak Vestaboard Note: Building Vestaboard AI

- Vestaboard is a hardware device that hangs on a wall and displays text messages using physical flipping tiles (like a split-flap display). It's often used for showing family messages, weather, calendar updates, etc. - The article describes teaching a large language model (LLM) to format text specifically for Vestaboard's very limited display — 6 rows x 22 characters, with support for 64 colors (tiles can flip to show colored backgrounds). The challenge is making the LLM produce concise, well-formatted output that fits within those constraints. - The author built a custom tool ("Vestaboard AI") that uses an LLM to take freeform input (like "remind the family about dinner at 7") and automatically generate properly formatted Vestaboard messages — handling truncation, alignment, and color usage. - This is a practical example of "prompt engineering" and output constraints: teaching LLMs to adhere to strict formatting rules for specialized hardware, rather than just generating freeform text.