He forked his file manager and had the AI add the column view it never had
The Nautilus file manager never offered a miller columns view. He forked it and had the AI add the feature, and the fork is publicly available.
429 new ideas this week
Level up how you use AI
Real things everyday people got it to do, and how to try them yourself.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
The AI changes my Home Assistant for me when I ask, dashboards included
He runs the AI on his PC with ha-mcp on the same machine, so the AI can reach into Home Assistant and make the changes he asks for. He keeps it on his own PC only, and says a new dashboard is done as soon as he describes it.
His local AI sorts his note vault and works through his small jobs list
His local AI sorts and cleans his Obsidian vault, suggests links between notes, and works a todo list of small jobs for him. A related eBay sniping tool from the same setup runs in simulation only, which he is open about.
The AI keeps his home lab's inventory and documentation current on its own
AI agent populates and keeps updating home lab inventory and documentation in Netbox.
The AI turned an email of stage times into a project for each set
He had an email with stage times and used AI to tidy it into a Stage, Day, Time, Artist list. The AI then changed the fcpxml file so Final Cut Pro had a new project for each set.
She let the AI order her new business cards; they arrived black-and-white instead of turquoise and oddly cropped, unusable
A Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist's first-person diary of living with AI: she gave it her email, credit-card statements and bank account; it surfaced a tax advisor's email she would have missed and offered to cancel a forgotten trial subscription, but failed at Amazon shopping (blocked) and online doctor booking. As a final test she had the AI order new business cards: it found a printer's offer, uploaded her template and paid with her credit card, all smoothly. Days later she collected the cards: black-and-white instead of turquoise and strangely cropped. Not usable.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI drafted a two minute screencast from my raw screen recording
Jon Udell recorded himself doing a final audio pass in Bram Studio, then had the AI draft a screencast from the capture. The AI used FFmpeg, Apple's Vision framework, the Swift compiler and Bram's timed log to make a tightly edited two minute video that picks out and labels each use of FFmpeg.
The AI helped write the scripts that tested a puzzle image for hidden data
A puzzle solver designed tests for whether a circulated image hid steganographic data, and used AI to help write the scripts and qualify signal and noise across JPG compression formats. He ran the tests with standard tools on every copy of the image he could find, and nothing extracted from any of them, which settled that the image itself carries no hidden payload.
The AI reads his job site photos and CRM notes, writes the client report and sends the invoice
He runs a small home service business. On site his crew capture photos and notes into a CRM; the AI reads the CRM over a connector, studies the photos and writes the full client report he used to write himself. When the report is done he tells the AI to send the invoice, and it builds the Stripe invoice from the project notes and sends it to the customer.
The AI ran Blender and built my dental design tools
A dental worker had the AI run Blender on his own computer and write Python add-ons for his design work. It built a tool that turns a shell into a based model, one for basic aligners, an automated baseplate designer, and a custom impression tray designer. A fifth add-on, for copying dentures, did not come out as well.
Ask the AI what in my 1,412 unread emails actually needs me
Josh Dubowsky connected the AI to his Gmail and asked what he needed to deal with that week: six items came back in about nine seconds and five were right, but the sixth claimed he had confirmed attendance at an October event he had explicitly declined — the summary had dropped the word 'unfortunately'. Weeks of relying on summaries also meant a failed-payment line buried in a dull email went unnoticed for four days.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI helped him build a tool that swaps his keyboard between two computers on its own
A man's Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad can only pair with one computer, and the switching tools he found needed both machines awake to work. He used AI to help build his own tool, which moves the pairings to whichever computer is active based on sleep, wake and display events, and he put it on GitHub for anyone to use.
The AI built the focus app he now uses every day to get good work done
Got the AI to build a focus app for his Mac; he uses it daily and says he does more good work with it.
Recompiling a classic SNES game with an agent's help
Recompiling the Lion King SNES game with an agent.
The AI built a bundle of my five products and it went on sale
A solo seller had the AI package his five ZIP products into one bundle, Frank's Complete Library. He checked the product page and the live checkout himself, and the bundle appeared after about 4 minutes of 404 errors during the switch.
The AI and Siri both failed to put his son's basketball calendar on the family calendar
The AI and Siri both failed to add his son's printed basketball calendar to the shared iCloud family calendar; his wife added all the events manually in 20 minutes.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
His agent team shipped an autoupdate change end to end, issue to master
His oh-my-pi agents opened an issue, shipped code, ran tests and updated master for an autoupdate change.
Found a kid-friendly peanut-free sheet-pan dinner from her saved IG recipes, built
Self-described non-cook (just learned what a skillet is) named her agent 'MOTY' (Mother of the Year). It surfaced a sheet-pan dinner recipe from her saved Instagram posts, built a grocery list from ingredients she already had, placed the grocery order pending her approval, and later gave her cooking-timing reminders while she cooked.
An agent added source control to his editor project, months of work in about 2 weeks
Agent integrated libgit into his IDE project to add source control, work that would have taken months by hand, done in about 2 weeks of calendar time.
We audited Datasette with AI and shipped two security releases
He ran an extensive audit of his Datasette software using AI Fable 5.1, GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-6 Astra, then fixed a range of bugs the audit found. The fixes went out as the Datasette 1.0a39 and 0.65.4 security releases, and he told anyone running Datasette on a public website to upgrade.
Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.