429 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.

HobbiesWent wrong

The AI could not sort the pages of my gig cheat sheet

He built a Word document of cheat sheets for 40 songs for a gig the next day, each song title in Heading 1 style with the lyrics and chords below. He told the AI to sort the pages by that heading text, keeping the text as it was, and the AI could not do it. He says the graphics in the document block the sort.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

My to-do list and morning brief print themselves every morning

The AI built him a set of local jobs on a Mac mini, and no model runs inside them. New Todoist tasks print as small tickets within half a minute, and at 7:30 each morning a brief prints and arrives by email with the day's calendar, overdue tasks, weather for two towns, and two clients' numbers from the day before, each set against its seven day average.

Built a $600 family calendar display for $80

His wife wanted a Skylight wall calendar, the kind that costs about $600. He built his own for $80 on a 32 inch smart TV, with the family calendar, chores, meals, the home cameras, and voice control, and says AI did most of the building.

$520

The AI traced our 1689 book to a castle library sale

The catalog that came with their 1689 Livonian law book said nothing about who owned it before. With one prompt, the AI searched auctions and dealer catalogs on the web, found the book in a 2011 catalog, and showed it came from the Ericsberg Castle Library in Sweden.

Compare festival rentals, and flag which walk home is unlit

Eric's daughter and her friend needed lodging for a music festival in Europe during her study abroad. His Dot, Jarvis, priced four places and annotated each with whether the walk back from the shuttle has streetlights after 10 p.m. When a provider replied in French, Jarvis read it, updated the comparison and said what changed: one rental ruled out, another cheaper but with a longer, uphill, unlit walk home. Eric finished the checkout himself.

FamilyPartly worked

Check in with my dad weekly about selling his business and report back to me

Simmons asked László to check in with his father once a week about the business sale and report back, judging his father more likely to talk it through with an AI checking in than to raise it with his son. The article records the arrangement being set up, not its later results.

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

Find the illegal rent increases hidden in my lease and emails

After a $400 rent hike, a tenant fed the AI his full lease plus three years of landlord emails; overnight it matched open repair requests to a clause barring increases while repairs are open, totalled $6,200 overcharged across 18 billing cycles, and drafted a demand letter. He later used it to coordinate 14 other units, and the landlord’s lawyer reportedly confirmed the numbers, with $91,400 at stake building-wide.

$6,200one time

My Dot built me 1,400 sales leads in five hours

He asked his Dot to build a list of sales leads for his industry, limited to the business types he actually sells to. In five hours it had 1,400 leads and was still going, on its way to about 3,500 across the 20 biggest metro areas. He had paid $223 for about 350 leads before, and the Dot's list was cleaner.

Ordered 12 detox-soup ingredients ($30.79 total) for next-day Whole Foods delivery from

Plant-based nutritionist Natalie Golba typed a request to her AI 'WALL-E' in iMessage; it pulled 12 ingredients (cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, bell pepper, tomato, cilantro, dill, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, salt) from her detox-soup recipe into an Amazon Whole Foods cart totaling $30.79, and footage shows the groceries delivered the next day.

$30.79
FamilyPartly worked

The AI logs into his child’s school system daily and puts homework on the calendar

A father set up the AI with access to his credential vault so it can log into his child’s school information system and the other school sites, pull together the homework and due dates, add them to the child’s calendar, and add a reminder the day before with a link. He modelled the workflow out formally and set it running daily.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing 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.