It started with a simple question: "What if I could bring back Teletext?"

Ayomidotun Ayoku — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 21:33:48 +0000

Remember Teletext? That blocky yellow text on your TV that showed news and weather before the internet existed? I brought it back to life using Kiro, and honestly, it was one of the most enjoyable coding experiences I've had.

The Idea

Teletext died in 2012. I wanted to resurrect it - but with a twist. What if you could travel back in time and see what Teletext would have shown on any date in history?

So I built exactly that. Live news, weather, crypto prices - plus a Time Machine that lets you explore any date from 1940 to yesterday.

What Made This Fun

MCP Servers Changed Everything

Here's where it got interesting. Kiro has these things called MCP servers that extend what it can do. I used two that made a huge difference:

Ref MCP let me search documentation without leaving my editor. When I needed to figure out GSAP animation syntax or how the Wikipedia API worked, I'd just ask and get the exact docs I needed. No more tab-switching between Stack Overflow and my code.

Firecrawl MCP helped me scrape and research the original Teletext design. I could pull in reference images and documentation about how the real thing looked, then use that to guide the implementation....

AND MANY MORE MCP

Instead of guessing and fixing, I was researching and building. Way more fun.

Steering Docs Are Like Cheat Codes

I wrote 7 markdown files that told Kiro exactly how I wanted things done. Colors, animation timings, code patterns - all documented once.

The best one was my GSAP guide. I wrote down the correct syntax (lowercase power2.out, not the old Power2.easeOut) and Kiro never got it wrong. Twenty-plus animations, zero syntax errors.

The Time Travel Animation

This was my favorite part. I described what I wanted:

Screen blurs
White flash
Years count backwards (2025... 1990... 1969...)
Historical events appear

Kiro built it. First try. Watching it work felt like actual magic.

The Numbers

772 passing tests
6 API integrations
20+ animations
5 days of building

What I Learned

AI coding assistants aren't magic boxes. They're collaborators. Give them clear instructions and they'll surprise you. Give them vague prompts and you'll spend hours fixing things.

The MCP servers were the unexpected hero. Being able to research without context-switching kept me in flow state way longer than usual.

Try It [ https://teletext-reborn.vercel.app/ ]

The app is live. Go travel back to July 20, 1969 and see what happened. Type "BURST" for a surprise.

Building this reminded me why I got into coding in the first place. Sometimes you just want to make something fun.

DEV Community: Ayomidotun Ayoku

It started with a simple question: "What if I could bring back Teletext?"