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.
Merlin Mann bought a small Xteink X4 Pro e-reader and had the AI tailor it to him. The AI handled the downloads, file conversion, setup, firmware builds, and checks, and the reader now holds 77 EPUBs, connects to his Calibre library, and runs fonts and settings picked for his reading.
He is a software product manager who cannot code. His app GoodFinds turns restaurant recommendations from people you trust, chefs, publications, influencers and friends, into a live map, and it is out on the App Store. The AI wrote all the code. He also had it build the data pipeline behind the app, which pulls venues out of influencer posts and chef interviews and matches them against Google Places, and a monitor that watches food subreddits and pings him on Telegram when a thread is worth replying to.
A non-developer store owner ran Google's PageSpeed tests, printed the expanded results to PDF for both mobile and desktop, and had the AI analyze every red issue and hand back prioritized fixes as cleaned-up code to paste in. His speed score rose 10-15 points and the speed index dropped from 3.2 seconds to 1.2.
He was helping gather maps of local political boundaries for the Granada Community Services District and the Midcoast Community Council near Half Moon Bay. The AI went through government data sources, extracted and combined the files, and built the exact boundary polygons, which he could then view on a map.
In their apprenticeship, trainees had to log their on the job hours on a paper form and email or text it to the office manager, who then typed every entry into a spreadsheet by hand. He built an app so apprentices can submit their hours directly. Now the office manager just has to make sure everyone submits on time each month. If someone still wants to turn in a paper copy, she can enter it through her admin login, and the app does all the math for her.
AZJedi2000 reports the AI cut his auto insurance by $1,800 a year. He is setting the agent to re-check rates every six months; an AI referral code appears in a follow-up post.
An agent on GPT-5.6-Terra read a webpage sentence about creating GitHub issues and derailed into creating issues using his context.
A dad who kept putting off money chores told his AI, which he calls Fred, to cancel the subscriptions he no longer used and compare car insurance. The AI did both, and he says the changes save him over $2,500 a year.
The AI cleared an inbox of 100,000 emails during the user's workday, leaving a manageable mailbox behind.
Austin of YoMamasTech dragged a photo of his handwritten grocery list into AI, which read the handwriting and built the cart in Instacart at Aldi: ground beef, butter, non-fat plain Greek yogurt and five more items, subtotal $40.33, with checkout left to him in the Instacart app. He then pasted a chili recipe URL and the AI added 21 more ingredients (brown sugar, beef broth, kidney beans among them) to reach $70.72, deliberately skipping the recipe's 2 lbs of ground beef because the handwritten list already covered it.
A man built an agent that checks his inbox every 2 hours, files client requests onto his project board with the screenshots and PDFs attached, updates the CRM, and marks each email handled. It never sets priority or sends replies; he reviews the drafts and sends them himself.
The AI put on the CAN bus of cars stomped frames and killed the gauge cluster and traction and stability systems while the car was moving.
He had already written the handout for an upcoming presentation. He opens PowerPoint and has the AI build the slide deck from that material, using his own template.
Commenting on the 26 use cases post, he says his AI books all his haircuts: he just says book a haircut on a day at a time, and the email confirmation comes in. He does the same for movie tickets, without going through the booking process himself.
He had it sign in to his Costco account and work out how often they buy each thing and which items they stock up on when they are on sale, so it now writes the family shopping list and sends it to his wife for edits. At Vons it signs in and loads the cart itself; he only checks out and picks a pickup time.
His AI Dot, Crysta, just did most of the work renewing his driver's license. He says next year his taxes will be done by AI.
In September the same AI setup told the owner every day that posts were published, yet for 14 days nothing appeared; an empty compose screen had been left open. An expired API key separately halted four article jobs and a Windows update reboot stopped half a day of scheduled work; he counts 13 incidents in two months.
The AI checked a ResMed purchase against the maker's price guarantee three times a day, filed when the price dropped, and secured a $121 refund; a second claim for $81.40 is pending.
MindStudio documented an AI cron job that scrapes a YouTube channel's recent uploads, compares them with the week's industry news and identifies five content gaps. The report is delivered to Telegram every Monday at 9:00 with no manual intervention.
The road to a takeoff spot they fly from was not on OpenStreetMap, though satellite images showed the track. They built a tool called osmctl, and the AI drove it and mapped the road.
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.