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.
CData's Dot pulled monthly invoiced totals from Xero for one business unit and QuickBooks Online for the other, checked currencies and invoice statuses matched, and returned one combined table for November 2025 to August 2026. March 2026 was strongest at $28,000 combined; the post notes the test account held demo data.
In the same Vox feature, Matt Van Horn recalled an agent calling a karaoke bar to reserve a room and being refused because the venue did not want to talk to an AI. He completed the reservation through Fo, a service that adds human help.
A podcaster connected his bank accounts to the AI. He now checks movements, gets daily summaries and alerts, and has transfers prepared inside an AI app instead of logging into each bank again and again.
He runs Svippit, a small shop platform for creators. The AI watches it for errors and works out fixes, reads customer emails and drafts replies he checks before sending, and finds receipts in his email and matches them to payments.
Made an AI sysadmin bot with root SSH that runs hourly health checks, Monday 6am updates with rollback, firewall, nginx and site fixes he triggers from his phone.
Opus 5.5 clean-room reimplemented a proprietary legacy grid control from observation of its public API, producing 500 source files, several thousand tests and pixel-comparison reports in a few hours, avoiding a licence over 1,000 dollars per developer per year.
Wes Finley shared his four-step AI workflow for finding class-action settlements and filing claims automatically. Commenters chimed in with their own results, including $400 payouts.
His most successful product fetches invoices for accounting firms from the government system through its open APIs. Tools like it charge per client per month; he sells his for a fixed price with lifetime access and support. He says he built a working copy of a well established system in a week by himself with AI, and it makes him a profit.
He built a plugin that lets his agent drive the Sway window manager directly, and used it to switch from X11 to Wayland, something he says did not work for him before. He now asks the agent things like which window is taking the most memory and has it start and stop power profiles.
Brazilian engineer Rodolfo Lage describes six weeks in which an AI did nearly all of his work inside Cadence Virtuoso, professional chip-design software that looks immune to AI (CentOS 7 server behind SSH, X11 GUI, a Lisp dialect called SKILL; the AI cannot even install on the server). Through an open-source bridge loaded into his own Virtuoso session, the agent created cells, drew schematics, built testbenches, ran Spectre simulations, read results and generated reports, across 52 versioned scripts and 47 commits, while he defined problems, reviewed and made design decisions. Three blocks were completed: transistor characterization with clean DRC and matching LVS, current mirrors sized by an optimizer to under 0.005% current error, and a common-source amplifier reaching 26.8 V/V gain and 109 MHz gain-bandwidth. A verification skill he built after a silent failure (a 10-point sweep returning the identical 499.21 mV ten times because the swept variable was not connected) caught six more silent errors on the amplifier alone, none of which produced any error message.
A PHP flaw finally pushed him to move an old site off WordPress. Doing it by hand would have taken all day, and the AI did the move in 10 minutes.
After the cancellation mess, Curtis wrote a one-page scorecard for the role (mission, five measurable first-year outcomes, six competencies), pasted it into the prompt and had the AI map each candidate's track record to each outcome with evidence from the résumé. With a human making every cut and applications closed before booking, the process ended in a Director of Ecommerce hire who has already optimized the company's Amazon listings and helped launch a product — and a declined candidate was later hired as a TikTok consultant.
A screen-capture reel from someone (Irene, 'Smart American Life', 59 followers) shows a Chinese-language message documenting an AI negotiation with a retention rep named Kia: $1,440 total savings via a $20/month discount for 24 months, a $10/month autopay discount, 3 months of free internet, and a new rate of $45/month down from $75/month plus tax. Presented as a US life-hack with itemized terms.
He started nine months ago with help making a better invoice. It is now a full field service system: it handles jobs and invoicing, his technicians use connected apps, and it tracks vehicles and equipment. The latest addition is tool tracking with Bluetooth tags.
He lost most of his vision this year to a rare genetic condition. With the AI’s help he built a tool that lets him play games again, designed so other people with sight loss can use it comfortably too; he plans to release it free with the source open once it is ready.
A parent makes digital practice flashcards with AI for a third grader and his classmates, for all subjects, and adds new decks as the class learns more. The child had a big test on US government and the economy that day.
Engadget reporter Karissa Bell tested the AI for a few days starting with her Meta-app activity, since she was initially cautious about granting access. Alongside the recipe book, she had her agent ('boo') compile the restaurant posts she'd saved on Facebook and Instagram into a searchable guide organized by city — turning a dead-end save pile into a usable dining shortlist.
The AI redlined OEM contracts through the first three negotiation rounds, finding things his lawyer missed, with the lawyer only doing the final check and money saved.
Nutritionist's agent 'WALL-E' pulled 12 ingredients (cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, bell pepper, tomatoes, herbs, garlic, lemon, salt) from her detox-soup recipe, added them to an Amazon Whole Foods cart, and presented checkout review at $30.79 with next-day 5-6pm delivery in Beverly Hills. Delivery was filmed the next morning.
Fully rolled out a custom PR review running on GLM-5.3-Flash for his devs last week.
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.