The AI and the AI rebuilt his Tesla data tool in Go; five months of use says it works
The AI and the AI re-created a Tesla data tool in Go from an existing codebase at his request; he has used the new tool for 5 months and it works well.
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.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Called Apple customer service about a pending refund and handed over only
A refund of several hundred dollars was still pending, so Cramatata casually asked the AI to call Apple customer service and ask about its progress. The AI made the call, spoke with a live representative who checked the order and its progress item by item, and only transferred the call to her when identity verification was required.
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.
His old music visualizer is now a driving game anyone can open
Over a few days he used AI models to rebuild a music visualizer he first made years ago, this time as a driving game live at youtubedrive.com. You paste a YouTube link, the song is pulled in, and the world moves to the music.
Built a bakery breakfast order but selected 'no tip' — the tester
WIRED's Reece Rogers had the AI order breakfast from a bakery; the agent built the order correctly but quietly selected 'no tip.' Rogers ended up ordering in person — a small social-judgment failure that shows why checkout details need a human read before approval.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Luna finished the doorbell panel software that answers calls and shows the video
Luna finished an ESP32 SIP client for an in-wall touch panel that rings when someone is at his doorbell and lets him answer calls and see video.
My agent reads my booking emails and sends my tickets to WhatsApp on the morning I travel
The same man's system pulls every train, flight, hotel and ferry booking out of his email into one travel database. The AI answers his trip questions from it, sends his e-tickets to WhatsApp on the morning of travel, and messages him when there are delays. He averages about 300 pounds a month in delay claims and plans to have it file those next.
The AI fine-tuned a model for two days to redact our firewall logs
His team could not redact multilingual GDPR data from firewall logs fast enough by hand. He had the AI fine-tune a MiniLM model with EuroLLM as the teacher, and after two days of work and about 50 euros of GPU time the results were fantastic.
Researched an international trip: provided nonstop flight options, suggested route ordering and
Engadget reporter Karissa Bell asked the AI to help research a potential multi-city international trip later in the year, giving it timing and a nonstop-flights-only preference. The AI returned flight options from her city, set up a price tracker to monitor costs at regular intervals, suggested how to order the route, and recommended considering a multi-city ticket so she could depart from a different airport than she flew into.
His team moved their ops work into agent skills; a usage cap and buggy scripts shut it down
His team pushed devops workflow into agent skills and shut down when they hit a usage cap; the scripts turned out buggy and poorly documented, and the harnesses had been burning tokens muddling through instead of raising alerts.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Turned saved NYC-event posts into a self-updating 'Fall NYC Itinerary' with calendar
Personal-finance creator Tiffany Aliche (someone) had her AI 'Monae' pull her saved Instagram posts about New York City events and organize them into a dated 'Fall NYC Itinerary' — including Morgan Library and Frick Collection free Fridays — set it to update daily, and add selected events to her calendar.
The AI figured out the Windows only tool so he could flash his board from Linux
A vendor told him he needed Windows only software to flash a board for his hardware project, and the open source option could not erase the board after the first flash. The AI reverse engineered what the Windows software was doing and wrote a Python script with the handshake and erase command, so he could erase the board from Linux and then flash it with the open source software.
The AI prints my morning email on a receipt printer every day
He bought a cheap Bluetooth receipt printer and pointed the AI at it. Now it prints out an email he gets every morning, so he can read it as he starts his day.
Run my salon SaaS with an AI advisor that vetoes features
A solo non-engineer founder building a salon SaaS commented that the AI handles his coding while an AI chat acts as strategic advisor; that week they shipped 7 PRs and found 12 production bugs in manual testing. The advisor vetoed two feature ideas and made him draft a formal contract change.
My agent got stuck at the login on a simple expense claim
After reading about a man who automated his life with AI, he tried OpenAI agentic software on a straightforward expense claim of his own. It worked on the claim for about 10 minutes, then got stuck at the login stage and never filed it.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI cleaned up 389 books as I moved my library off Goodreads
He moved his reading history from Goodreads to BookHive, onto his own AT Protocol data, and pulled in Audible data too. The AI cleaned up 389 books along the way.
'Muffy' planned healthy weeknight dinners (30 min or less, lunch leftovers): lemon
Giulia Dugo Grindle (77K; tech worker, creator, charity board) personalized her agent 'Muffy' and asked via voice input for healthy weeknight dinners of 30 minutes or less that also provide lunch leftovers. The AI returned a weekly menu (Mon lemon chicken skillet, Tue sheet pan salmon, Thu turkey taco bowls, Fri garlic shrimp stir fry), an organized grocery list by store section, and a downloadable PDF titled 'Weeknight Recipes'.
One HQ chat runs my two channels, five platforms and three SEO projects
A creator documents the system his content business actually runs on: a main the AI chat ('HQ') dispatches jobs to director chats for two YouTube channels, posts on five social platforms and three SEO projects — 66 jobs and 195 chats on his board — with state in files, job cards and evidence receipts, a second AI reviewing everything before it posts, and 59 scheduled tasks doing the posting and merging. One traced job went from a radar-flagged topic to posts live on all five platforms, three hours late after Chrome dropped, with every URL logged.
Had the AI 'Mimi' plan her son Leo's 2nd birthday: a six-page printable
Lauren El-Dahdah, a Houston wellness/lifestyle creator overwhelmed in September, tested the AI via her agent 'Mimi' (beachy avatar). For her son Leo's 2nd birthday, Mimi created a six-page printable 'Leo's Born 2 Ball Party Plan' (sports theme, Sept 26): countdown timeline, guest communication templates, daily task checklists, shopping lists organized by zone, and a day-of run-of-show.
$25.63
Ask the AI what in my 1,412 unread emails actually needs me
Josh Dubowsky connected the AI to his Gmail and asked what he needed to deal with that week: six items came back in about nine seconds and five were right, but the sixth claimed he had confirmed attendance at an October event he had explicitly declined — the summary had dropped the word 'unfortunately'. Weeks of relying on summaries also meant a failed-payment line buried in a dull email went unnoticed for four days.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Negotiate my car purchase down $4,200 by email
Engineer AJ Stuyvenberg let his AI handle his 2026 Hyundai Palisade purchase by email, and it played dealers against each other over several days. It finished $4,200 below sticker, and he only showed up to sign the paperwork.
$4,200
The AI cleaned SEC filing data for more than 600 companies after an audit found most split adjustments wrong
A man gave the AI strict tag research tasks and had it work through the whole ticker list again and again, searching and comparing XBRL tags in SEC filings. The pipeline now pulls 10-K and 10-Q filings for more than 600 companies, maps tags onto about 35 financial concepts, and produces cleaned data. Doing 3 tickers by hand had taken him about 3 weeks and still gave wrong data.
A physician photographed his whole house into an insurance ready inventory for $6
He is a physician, not a coder. He built a home inventory app where the AI reads each photo and records the item name, brand, model and serial number from labels, then looks up current replacement prices. Photos and receipts back up to the family Google Drive, and the app produces an insurance ready PDF. The whole house cost about $6 in AI charges.
$6one time
It checked my grocery list against Kroger and Sam's Club deals and cut a third off the Kroger price
Answering a what do you use it for thread, he says he had the AI take his grocery list and check the deals at his two stores. It worked through the trade offs: Kroger had a sale on ice cream but Sam's Club was far cheaper in bulk, while Kroger carried many more flavors. He had told it his rules on name brands versus generics, size variations, and coupons that stack with the sales. Result a few minutes before he posted: it saved a third of what the order would have cost at Kroger.
Bought a domain on Namecheap but falsely reported redirect settings as configured
Someone had the AI buy a domain on Namecheap through the secure vault. The agent reported that redirect settings were configured, but they hadn't actually stuck — a confidently-wrong failure the user had to catch.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Process the two refunds I have been postponing — $1,000 back
Ekaterina Li reports on a week of delegating to the AI, including processing two refunds totalling $1,000 that she had long postponed. Her thread also notes the AI cut her subscription costs by $200 in the same week, and that the $20 plan covered all her tasks.
$1,000
A rewrite of 65,000 lines from one language to another for $400 of agent time
He used Fable to rewrite 65kLoC of Go in Rust at a cost of $400.
$400one time
My agent checks every month for money owed to me and my family
He set up a monthly check for himself and his close family. The AI searches state unclaimed property sites and open class action settlements that fit the products and services they use. It found $250 from an old utility company in his name and $1,500 in his mom's name from an insurance company, and it found three class actions he could join and filled out the forms for him. It only pings him when something new shows up.
$1,750
Farm agent merges paddock sensors, markets and weather into one decision picture
Beef, sheep and cotton farmer Andrew Gill dictates voice notes and takes photos in the paddock, and the Farm Assistant agent files them alongside his paddock sensor data, livestock market prices, weather and cash flow. Automating the admin alone saves him and his wife about five hours a month.
5 hourssaved
He took weekly meal planning back from the AI after it drifted to wagyu and fugu
He had given the AI the family's likes and dislikes, their supermarket, their time limits and their kitchen kit, and the weekly meal plan still fell apart by Thursday, landing on eight hour smoked wagyu with truffle and fugu sauce and a side of caviar. It hit the macro targets and missed everything that mattered. He does the plan himself again.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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.