The Physical Agent Harness: Why Project Mirage’s 'Dune' Keypad Matters
The AI hardware conversation has spent the last year obsessed with wearables—smart pins and pendants trying to replace your smartphone. But for developers, the real operational bottleneck isn't checking the weather on the go. It is the physical friction of constant context-switching at the desk: jumping between IDEs, GitHub, terminals, and back-to-back meetings. This week, Project Mirage —a startup founded by former Ultrahuman VP of Hardware Apoorv Shankar—launched a piece of hardware that approaches this problem differently. Instead of an ambient wearable, they built Dune : a highly specific, context-aware desk tool that acts as a physical extension of your agent harness. What is Dune? Dune is a minimalist, three-button keypad for Mac. It is tiny (40mm wide), built from CNC‑machined anodized aluminum, and plugs directly and flush into the side of your laptop via USB-C, requiring no battery or external cables. Unlike a standard macro pad where you ...