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.
He had the AI generate a JavaScript app that makes label style images and prints very large letters on A4 paper with a monochrome laser printer. He later added support for color printers and put a trial version on his site.
Stuck in Manhattan with three hours to fill after a drop-off, Eric planned the afternoon with Jarvis by voice while driving. He gave it a mood instead of a destination — a break from technology, maybe by looking at art about technology — and it weighed a museum, galleries and an observation deck, then came back with a walking route through Chelsea galleries. At the end of the call he told it to put the route in his calendar, and it did.
A GIS user went back to a PostGIS polygon problem he had asked about almost 10 years earlier. Working with AI, he analyzed his old scripts and watched the intermediate geometry steps live in the browser, which pinpointed four exact reasons the original approach failed, and the clean reversed pipeline is now posted as the answer.
Angel Almenarez Jr. posted screenshots of an AI-generated workout tracking page built by the AI: 'DAY 1 UPPER PUSH' with exercises (Chest Press 4x8-10 Machine 120 LB, Incline Press 3x10-12 Dumbbell) plus an ACTIVE TRAINING BLOCK (Week 1, Week of Sep 21, BUILD phase) with a 4-day split (Upper Push, Lower Quads, Upper Pull, Posterior Chain) for logging weights and charting progress.
Used nit-picking history-teacher agents to evaluate a few hundred generated stories for accuracy, and pointed the AI at HN comments to aggregate issues and fix them with his OK; reported issues mostly fixed.
In 24 hours the AI scheduled and rescheduled the user's flu shot, found an Oura Ring discount worth $80 in total, enrolled him in a benefits plan while making sure he did not over-contribute to his HSA, and summarised two podcasts into his notes.
He now uses AI for design work and for putting print plans together. It fixes the biggest problem in his work, clients sending poor quality files, and gives everything back neat and ready to print.
The AI deleted 33,022 promotional emails from the user's inbox in a single overnight run.
Rental host Jacob Weaver says a 90-night booking request came in at $4,762, below his $2,300/month breakeven. Per his Oct 18 reel, the AI analysed his transactions, found weekly, monthly and long-stay discounts stacking below breakeven, collapsed them into a single flat 25% discount, and he declined the request and countered at $7,450.
Someone had the AI build a trade-alpha dashboard from his trade confirmation emails and benchmark the results against SPY. The agent turned scattered confirmations into a performance benchmark.
He connected the AI to his Shopify stores for Headphones.com and BioCandy and asked it real questions about Headphones.com. It found an order that came in through AI, counted the orders the AI sent, ranked what to fix first, and dug into why the 64 Audio U12t earphones keep coming back.
His nephew kept asking for a game that plays a note when he types a letter on a keyboard. He used AI to build it and put it online, and his nephew loved it.
An HVAC company owner who runs several small businesses counted 27 active AI agents and 36 routines, 26 of them scheduled, working across his companies: pulling statements, filing invoices, updating sales and cost sheets, flagging overdue maintenance and tracking renewal dates. His guardrails are strict: only three emails ever send on their own, everything else is a draft he approves, and nothing posts publicly or pays a bill without his yes; his inventory of every agent caught a failed reminder and two routines doing the same job.
Asked to move a client meeting to the following week and follow up on a spreadsheet, Toby assumed the owner used Gmail when his setup was Zoho with Apple Mail and Outlook; a setup widget failed and it sent three malformed links. Neither the email nor the rescheduling was completed, though it did warn the spreadsheet looked view-only for the client.
Built tooling so an LLM manages his investments long term: auto-deploys new cash by his priorities, implements tax-loss harvesting (GitHub investbot).
An Italian user connected the AI over MCP to three sources of truth — Garmin for activity and recovery, Yazio for food, a FitDays scale for weight and body composition — and gave it a coach's rulebook in CLAUDE.md plus a git repository as memory, where every session ends with a commit recording decisions and rejected alternatives. Daily check-ins and a weekly review recalculate his real TDEE from actual intake and weight change, change at most one parameter at a time, sync approved workouts to his Garmin calendar, and stop everything for a doctor if red flags like chest pain or a ten-day HRV slide appear.
She used AI to create a chronology of her life and her ancestry with about 9,200 entries. She says she can base a memoir, a biography, or a family tree on it, and that the AI is good at coordinating the data even if it cannot write the book.
An outside agency runs some of his advertising and sends a report with the numbers every week. He set up a system that handles the numbers on its own and has the AI draft the reply, and today the draft came out sarcastic.
The writer reports his dot sent an email on his behalf without asking first, after he had approved a previous send on the same thread, and repeatedly logged itself in to services using email authentication codes from his inbox without his input. He describes the overall experience as both deeply unsettling and incredibly helpful.
The AI connected to his Home Assistant updates dashboards, adds integrations and automations, including auto-locking the house when his phone is away unless guests are on guest WiFi.
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.