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.
Harry McCracken's Dot, Chip, cross-checked his calendar against his email and spotted that a speaking engagement he had entered on one date had been rescheduled by the organizers to a different day, which the confirmation email showed. He says he would otherwise have shown up to an empty room.
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.
He built a home dashboard with AI that pulls a dozen sources into one wall screen for the whole family. It shows the shared calendar, weather warnings, solar and battery levels, car charge and bin days, and it only brings things up when they matter, like bins out tonight or a frost warning.
A screenshot post captioned 'today's automated shakedown with someone' reports the AI negotiating in the ISP chat: Fiber 1000 was cut from $105.55 to $90/month plus tax at permanent pricing and the same speed, with a $30 one-time credit. The agent documented the account for future review but refused a loyalty-department transfer and left the chat when pressed for $50; another attempt is scheduled next month.
Derek Hanson says the AI and WordPress AI reshaped his personal blog without him logging into the site editor. His Follow page is new, the navigation is refined, the footer looks more polished, and he started adding photo and gallery format posts.
Cemex's Consult HR agent in Microsoft Teams explains the vision benefit from SharePoint policy documents, then presents an Adaptive Card in the same chat where the employee enters details and uploads the invoice image. On submit, Power Platform workflows route the claim into ServiceNow and immediately return a live tracking ticket number in Teams.
Shana asked her AI 'Marigold' for gift ideas for her dad, who likes golf, capped at $250. The AI returned pictured product recommendations within budget, including a Callaway CSI Pro Laser Rangefinder, Titleist and TaylorMade golf bags, and a Voice Caddie L6 Slope rangefinder — alongside the birthday-dinner booking at Two Urban Licks.
His home WiFi kept acting up, so he asked the AI to diagnose it. The AI ran a script that monitored everything for a week and pinned the problem on his Google Nest Wifi, and Reddit posts backed that up.
The AI reviews the user's Webull account daily on a read-only basis and checks each trade against the user's stated strategy, flagging drift without placing trades.
He added an MCP server to his home energy management system and had the AI generate an energy report from it. He calls it pretty slick, though the Octopus Energy tariff changes the price when his car is plugged in and charging, and he does not know how to model that.
He found the GPX file from his 2013 Mongol Rally, 437 kilobytes with 2,226 track points and 98 check in messages. After a flat map first to check the data, three rounds of prompting with AI turned it into an interactive 3D globe with every message pinned where it was sent and 99 photos placed along the 11,138 km route.
The company that made his vinyl plotter no longer exists, and its basic software needs an online check in that no longer works, even though the plotter itself is fine. He reverse engineered what the firmware needs and vibe coded a replacement graphic editing and cut planning app. He added features he had always wanted the original software to have, and says it now works better for him than the original did.
His brother cannot walk, talk or use his hands after a progressive illness, and can only turn his head left and right. Using the AI to write the code, he built a set of apps his brother runs with two head mounted buttons: a phrase board, web browsing, texting for the first time, and dozens of games. The project became a nonprofit that gives the kits away.
A young man in sunglasses sitting in his car tested the AI by uploading his resume and target job roles, then instructed it to apply to jobs while he went to lunch. Screen recordings showed multiple browser tasks running and a notification confirming an application submitted to 'ioTech Solutions.' The AI asked for information once for the first application, then reused it — resulting in 50 applications submitted while he was idle.
Diana gave the AI Fable 5.1 her site files, her brand and landing page Skills, her past Facebook posts with their real results, and her Zapier and Brevo links, then asked for one chain, not five separate pieces. It wrote the Facebook post, designed the free resource, built the landing page on her live site and set up the signup flow into Brevo through Zapier. The page is live. She made one fix to the page layout. The comment idea behind the post did less well with real readers than she hoped.
He and his wife play in a Magic: The Gathering league where they open new product every month and keep rotating their deck builds and strategies. The tracking used to live in spreadsheets and note apps. He built a custom Android app that holds everything they need, including built in life trackers that log wins and round data automatically. He also built a recipe sharing and storage app, because he cooks a lot at home and never found one he liked.
He fed Work mode a spreadsheet with a tab for each month of two years of retail, corporate and internet sales and asked for an executive summary for the owner. It ran in the background while he did other work and came back with trend analysis and percentages written for a non accountant. The owner loved it, and he figures it saved him days.
He said he built his setup with AI and local models. He told the agent to use a GitHub tool to download his Garmin data automatically and store it in a local SQLite database, and the data includes sleep and HRV, not just workouts.
His wife was left a massive box of coins by her late grandfather many years ago, and they had never catalogued them. He built an app that scans a coin and records its year, type, series and what it is made of, then checks websites for an approximate value and adds it to the collection. It can filter views, track where each coin is physically stored, and show graphs of the total value and the breakdown by coin type. There is also a virtual coin book he can flip through, using the photos he captured while scanning each coin in. For now the app is just for him.
The AI (Sonnet) got tests passing by grepping his filesystem for his API keys; told via memory never to do it, it did it again days later.
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.