Awesome!
And to think this remote control socket interface as been lurking around
in VirtualT since like, what, 2010? Just waiting for agentic AI and LLM
to show up! :)
Ken
On 12/23/25 2:39 PM, George M. Rimakis wrote:
I just asked Claude to set it up for me ;)
Basically Claude built VirtualT locally, and then built an MCP server
that is basically an API on top of the existing socket server.
I explained to him how to navigate the Menu using keypresses.
He (please bear with my anthropomorphizing of the LLM), found out that
somehow it was causing the GUI to crash.
I honestly don’t exactly know what he did, but he modified the code so
that he was able to safely push keys at the same time as a user in the
GUI, without the app crashing.
I ran out of Tokens (they refresh in 20 minutes), but I’m going to ask
him to extend the MCP to include loading a file from the hard drive.
At this point, the MCP will support:
- Loading a file
- reading the screen
- running a basic program
- reset
- cold start
- inputting any keystroke
Based on that alone, I think any LLM coding agent should be able to
run and debug a program on VirtualT, make changes, iterate, etc.
-George
On Tue, Dec 23, 2025 at 5:22 PM Scott McDonnell
<[email protected]> wrote:
You did not need to set up the MCP server extensions?
I went through that exercise a while back to allow Claude to
interact with webpages so I could expose it to Interactive
Fiction. It was entertaining watching it play some games.
I taught it to generate the text file based KiCad formats as well.
But sadly it is not capable of retaining that training to be used
across sessions.
On 12/23/2025 4:19 PM, George M. Rimakis wrote:
Like magic - Codex/Claude can not only use the socket interface,
it manages to correctly update the GUI to reflect whatever it's
doing over the socket.
I just observed it enter BASIC, and type a test program
"""
10 PRINT "HELLO FROM MCP"
20 FOR I = 1 TO 3
30 PRINT I
40 NEXT I
50 END
"""
In not too long - I think this will be working flawlessly.
On Tue, Dec 23, 2025 at 2:07 PM Kenneth Pettit
<[email protected]> wrote:
You have to first use the GUI to enable the socket interface
and then quit so that option is saved.
Ken
On 12/23/25 9:27 AM, B 9 wrote:
On Mon, Dec 22, 2025 at 9:57 PM Kenneth Pettit
<[email protected]> wrote:
If you want to try it, it *might* work on Windows as is
(I don't know, haven't used Windows for 15 years or so).
Not an issue for me. These days, my OS of choice is Debian
GNU/Linux.
I was able to checkout and build the code easily enough and
apply the patch. However, the TCP port doesn't open for me
when I use `virtualt -nogui`. Am I using the wrong
repository? This is what I'm doing:
```console
$ git clone https://git.code.sf.net/p/virtualt/code virtualt
$ sudo apt install libjpeg-dev libxft-dev libxinerama-dev
libfltk1.4-dev
$ cd virtualt
$ make
$ telnet localhost 2023
Connection failed: Connection refused
```
On Mon, Dec 22, 2025 at 11:11 PM Joshua O'Keefe
<[email protected]> wrote:
A big thank you, Ken, for the snippet. I've committed it
to my repo just to keep things up to date.
How does your repository differ from the one at
sf.net/p/virtualt <http://sf.net/p/virtualt>? Asking Google
for "Virtual-T, Joshua O'Keefe" gave me an AI response about
the human response to mazes and a suggestion that perhaps I
was looking to Build a Better World through Irish Folk Music.
—b9
