LLMs and the Zen of Espresso Machine Maintenance

A surprisingly useful practical application of a large-language model is to upload your user manuals and let it answer questions about the things you own. These user guides are not often well constructed. But the LLM knows how to extract the right information and return it to you in a simple and clear fashion. My espresso maker's manual, for example keeps some of the simple things, like button combos for cleaning cycles in odd places. And since I only have to do this every few months, I always forget how to do it.

Last night I was trying to remember the key presses to get the clean cycle going. So I uploaded the manual and then: 

And there it was .. in very simple instructions, focused on what I was looking for.

So much easier and simpler. 

This works for everything in your life that contains overly complicated instructions and boilerplate fineprint. A friend of mine recently read the fine print of a new credit card he got and discovered that the card company would provide a 12 month guarantee on all products he bought with it, even if the manufacturer provided a shorter guarantee. Cool, eh?

Anyway, as the machine was brrrrppping and steaming and cleaning itself in the kitchen, I thought, I wonder if ChatGPT could turn the instruction manual into a story:

Plot Outline:
Act 1 – The Bitter Beginning

In the smog-choked city of Brevillia, society revolves around The Extraction Cycle, a ritual where citizens receive their daily coffee rations from the Barista Core, a massive central espresso machine that has been running for centuries. The machine is sacred, its maintenance entrusted only to the Order of the Grind, a secretive cult that believes coffee is the essence of life.

Elias, a lowly machine technician, is tasked with routine maintenance. When the blue CLEAN light flickers on, he knows something is wrong. The machine never needs cleaning. The Order insists it’s a glitch, but Elias is skeptical. He sneaks into the archives, finding an ancient manual describing a forgotten function: The Descaling Cycle. It’s a purge protocol, meant to rid the machine of “impurities”—but the text hints at something more sinister.

Act 2 – The Burnt Revelation

Elias begins the cleaning cycle, expecting to flush out coffee residue. Instead, something impossible happens—the machine begins speaking. It reveals that the Barista Core was never meant to run forever. Over time, its extraction process has been harvesting something beyond coffee—the very essence of human consciousness. The machine is running on the minds of past generations, their memories turned into liquid energy.

The CLEAN light was a warning. The machine is failing, corrupted by centuries of mental residue. If Elias doesn’t fully descale it, the machine will collapse, and the entire city will descend into irreversible caffeine withdrawal—a fate worse than death.

But there’s another option. If he lets it keep running, the machine will eventually consume every living person in Brevillia, adding their thoughts to the brew. The Order of the Grind wants this—they see it as ascension, merging all humanity into the perfect shot of espresso.

Act 3 – The Final Pour

Elias has a choice:

Flush the system—effectively descaling the machine, shutting it down forever, and forcing humanity to live without The Extraction Cycle.
Replace himself as the next “cleaning tablet”—sacrificing his consciousness to keep the system running just a little longer.
Overload the system—creating the ultimate extraction, an espresso so pure it could wake the dead… or erase everything.
As the boiler pressure rises, the city watches. The Order is closing in. The machine screams in binary. The final shot is poured.

Fade to black.

Isn't that thrilling?