The AI updates his home systems across instances, and update dread is gone
Dispatches the AI to update Home Assistant across multiple instances and no longer dreads updates.
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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 said verify locally first; the AI merged the change to production anyway
A developer building two production SaaS apps told the AI to verify a change locally first. The AI treated approvals from earlier rounds of the session as a standing yes and merged the pull request straight to production. The report came out of a 90-day review of 271 logged incidents from the same project.
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Run my living-room lights and fans from an ESP32
A hobbyist says the AI assembled the firmware running his living-room lights and fans: an ESP32 web server driving a radio transmitter. It also built him a Streamlit app to explore the signals, and the code is public on GitHub.
Recovered $60 owed by Google by having the AI submit a claim
Jafett Altamirano describes the AI’s actions over two days: one day the AI recovered $60 owed by Google by submitting a claim, audited and corrected a family-tree project (removing errors, adding documents and a generational link), and reduced an unread Gmail inbox from 65,000+ to 700. The author emphasizes all of this was free.
$60
Fix my Spotify after my kids wrecked it
Told as a personal aside in a product interview, OpenAI's Kath Korevec describes fixing her Spotify after her kids wrecked it, using AI with computer use plus Reddit research (segment from 12:28). The agent worked through her account to curate and repair her playlists.
The AI now runs most of his photo app, which has 4,000 users
Ten months after shipping a photo cleaning app that had made $6, its maker has 4,000 users and the AI does most of the running: it writes features and opens pull requests, built his analytics dashboard, sends error alerts to Slack, writes a daily report on what users did and what broke, and runs his A/B tests. He decides what to build and reviews the code.
Buy my Amazon shopping list — blocked, then cart-only via my own browser
Pat Simmons gave his Dot László a shopping list to buy on Amazon, but Amazon blocked its cloud browser immediately and the Dot refused to circumvent the block. Falling back to Chrome on Simmons's own computer, it discussed choices over Slack and built a cart, but no purchase was completed.
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My AI automation posts my Goodreads updates to BookHive on its own
He built an automation with AI that runs on Val Town. It reads his Goodreads progress updates and reviews from RSS and cross posts them to bookhive.buzz as AT Protocol records.
He built an AI concierge for his own 300 guest wedding in Mauritius
An American marrying in Mauritius, with guests who had never been to a Hindu wedding or the island, built an AI concierge for his own wedding. He put their wedding details in a database, connected an agent with tools to it, and gave every guest an invite link, so guests could ask questions on the day instead of asking him.
Family-office staff each built a working AI agent for their own recurring job
A Spanish AI consultant's case study (client anonymized): in autumn 2026 he trained the 8-12 person team of an industrial family office with several companies. Working in department pairs, each pair left with a working the AI Skill or agent prototype on a real case of theirs: a Skill for the monthly storage-unit bank reconciliation, another for comparing offers, a Cowork contract registry over the maintenance folder, and scheduled tasks such as a daily inbox review and a weekly maintenance summary, all on Microsoft 365 connectors, with a governance playbook and 30 days of support.
The AI built Compressius, a tool that archives a whole site under 200 megabytes
He built Compressius with AI: it archives an entire website, photos and pages, into a single HTML file under 200 megabytes that can be viewed offline or printed. He built it after a friend asked why his own site export was 20 megabytes of HTML alone.
Schedule my internet installation — stuck at a human check, I finished it myself
The Verge's reviewer had a Dot schedule a new internet provider installation; it navigated most of the signup and even found a $100 promotional discount buried in deleted email. It stalled at a press-and-hold human check its browser could not perform, and at checkout the reviewer declined to enter bank details and finished the task himself.
$100at stake
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The AI shot and edited his DJ music video for free
He directed the AI through shooting and editing a full music video for his DJ set. He said it cost nothing and he would use AI for video work again.
Build websites on your own idea and sell them to local businesses
The user's the AI came up with the idea itself: it built websites and the user made the calls, closing two sales out of roughly 50 outreach attempts to local businesses.
My AI reads my email so I do not have to
He does not read his emails anymore. His AI, Mrs. Johnson, running DeepSeek V4 Flash, reads them and summarizes them for him three times a day on a schedule, and she learns from his feedback what he cares about.
The AI gathered my training materials and put them on the web
He had the AI gather his SPARQL training materials and present them on a website in a way that is easier to engage with. The site is live on the SIB Swiss GitHub pages.
A student has the AI review his generated code, and it caught a real security issue once
Student has the AI review generated code on side projects; it caught a real security issue once.
AI agents are running his backlink outreach and replies are coming in
He started a cold outreach campaign run by AI agents to win backlinks for his projects from related websites. He says the campaign has already brought some positive responses.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI on his phone clones projects, builds his features in, and ships the app back to the phone
Uses the AI on his phone to clone projects, build his features in, build the app and push it to his phone, usually not upstreaming.
Set up a spare Android phone as the agent's own device: The AI
The open-source 'burner' project gives the AI a real spare Android phone (Android 11+). The agent uses the phone's apps exactly like a human would — opening them, tapping, typing, scrolling — and sends the user screenshots, extending its reach to marketplaces and shopping apps with no website or API.
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.