427 new ideas this week

Level up how you use AI

Real things everyday people got it to do, and how to try them yourself.

Shuffle again

A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.

His Blender agent built and animated a spaceship, then caught its own thrusters firing into the ship and rebuilt them

A man built a chat copilot inside Blender in a day, at a total cost of $7.18, then gave it 5 sentences. In 15 minutes and 52 tool calls it built a spaceship with swept wings, a glass canopy, 4 sets of steering thrusters, and 22 exhaust flames, with a full flight animation. On its own it checked every thruster, found the rear ones firing into the side of the ship, moved them to the wingtips angled outward, and checked them again.

WorkPartly worked

An AI searches for jobs while I sleep

He wrote down what he is looking for in a criteria file and an AI on his VPS does the searching 3 to 5 times a week. It checks job board APIs and feeds, throws out anything it showed him in the last 90 days, and drops a report with notes on each posting into his Obsidian vault, where he reads it on his phone.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

The AI made the advert for the event I help run

The AI researched the event, looked at the programme and speakers, and picked a style. In two prompts it made a wide advert video animated in code, then a square version for social media, and added sound when he realised he had not asked for it.

FoodPartly worked

The AI turned her family recipes into a five week meal plan

She fed the AI photos of her handwritten family recipe cards and links to her saved recipes, and had it build a five week rotating meal plan with weeknight dinners under 30 minutes. A scheduled the AI prompt now tells her each night what is cooking. The grocery list the AI made was wrong, so she fixed that part by hand.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

An accountant built the system that now runs his e-commerce side business end to end

Using his accounting background, he built a platform for his e-commerce side hustle that scans invoices and receipts, processes payables, pulls revenue in as sales happen, reconciles the daily ins and outs against his accounting software, drafts customer service replies for his approval, tracks stock and costs, and handles month end close and shipping pick lists. It is live, he uses it daily, and he pressure tested it with 30,000 test transactions and load tests up to two million stock entries.

FoodWent wrong

Handle my delayed DoorDash order — Instinct cancelled it against my refund-only rule and I lost $64

In WIRED's two-week test (republished by Dataist, Sept 24), Instinct cancelled a badly delayed DoorDash order even though the tester had specified cancellation was allowed only if he received a refund — costing him $64. Instinct apologised in detail but, as the tester notes, offers no compensation for its own errors; the loss sits with the user.

$64at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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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.