Dots watches his messages and digs out the important ones that got buried or filtered
Dots monitors his communication channels and surfaced buried and filtered email messages that were important.
427 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.
My agent wrote and mailed the HSA letter I had been putting off since March
He had to write a physical letter to his health savings account about a denied claim, and had been avoiding it since March. The AI wrote the letter, attached the invoice for the expense, and mailed the whole thing to the HSA. His only job was taking over for the $2.31 payment. Whether the claim was then paid is not stated in the comment.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
A therapist built her own EMDR light bar app and saved hundreds of dollars
She used AI to build a web app with a moving visual target that works like the light bar used in EMDR therapy, instead of buying the equipment. It saved her hundreds of dollars and she uses it in her work as a therapist.
Booked a Thai restaurant via OpenTable as part of a delegated productive-day
Parker Pannell showed the AI booking a Thai restaurant via OpenTable alongside the $150 suit purchase, $295 in found subscriptions, and drafted email replies. He framed the day as checking off a completed goal with a companion at the restaurant, emphasizing the AI’s calendar and Instagram integration and its ability to act with or without approval.
$150
The AI made their product launch video from the codebase itself
The AI made their product launch video from the codebase over 2 to 3 days of iteration, used for the launch at subscription cost instead of an agency.
The AI made my menu bar app. A shortcut now sets my lights.
He runs Home Assistant on an old PC and used AI to make a menu bar app for his Mac. A keyboard shortcut now sets his lights, though he says it may not work as well for homes with lots of different smart devices.
Fix Meta Ads targeting lookups that the AI’s MCP cannot do
A poster in the showcase hub built two the AI skills that fetch real Facebook targeting IDs for the Meta Ads MCP, which cannot fetch them itself. End-to-end testing caught the first version silently dropping 25 of 135 valid targeting options, including the highest-intent behavior.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI turned my music listening history into a scrolling story
He tried many ways to show how certain artists became his favorites and how some faded out of his rotation. With the AI he ended up with a scrollable Sankey story of his listening, published on his dashboards site.
Prepare my contracting invoices and draft my outgoing emails
A contractor onboarded Instinct through a WhatsApp chat that simply asked what he had been putting off; it now prepares his contracting invoices and drafts his outgoing emails - the two admin jobs that used to pile up behind the actual work.
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.
The AI cuts his videos by editing the subtitles, and the edit comes out right
The AI cuts his video in DaVinci Resolve by editing a subtitle export with IntelliScript; Resolve then produces the cut version; works well.
Saved every address the author had sent into a 'Korea Seoul' Google
Key Lee had the AI save every address he'd sent into a 'Korea Seoul' Google Maps collection through a fully automatic browser workflow shown on video.
Asana's Piper Agent Quadruples Sales Conversation Volume
Asana says Piper, its Agentforce agent, drives four times the sales conversation volume and took about 45 days to deploy, per Salesforce's release.
The AI cracked his camera's firmware keys and, later, its licensing checks
The AI wrote a deobfuscator and cracked keys for Sony camera firmware updates, and later cracked licensing checks via a test generator trick.
His experts provision real data environments through agents in plain requests
Domain experts use agents via MCP to provision real environments, e.g. a 200Gi PostgreSQL with PostGIS plus a copy of a Texas layer set, a big productivity boost over provisioning web interfaces.
Shop for me while presenting as an ordinary Chrome browser
Forkast reported that the AI shops and browses for its roughly 2.18 million US daily users while mimicking a standard Chrome browser, routing through consumer VPNs and suppressing automation flags, so merchants get no verifiable agent identity. Cequence saw the AI traffic at more than half the customers it studied within two weeks of launch, Fingerprint now classifies the traffic as Meta's ai_agent with identity unknown, and Amazon blocked the AI on September 20.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
He rebuilt his EV charging sizing tool for the web in minutes
For 4 years his team has built simulation tools to size EV charging installations, using tools like Simulink and Jaamsim. Yesterday he built it in web format in minutes using AI.
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
Her work diary writes itself because the agent is the one doing the work
A German business consultant stopped keeping her time spreadsheet by hand in October 2026: since the AI does much of the work with her, it also keeps the log, writing into her running 'current state' document after every work block what was finished, where it lives and what she decided, tagged with one of four categories (revenue, acquisition, building, admin), a duration, and who actually worked, her or the AI. On Sundays she types one word, 'Wochenbilanz', and gets hours per category plus the loops nobody notices (items resurfacing a second or third time); the monthly version confronts her with last month's goal quoted verbatim, which at her first review she no longer remembered word for word.
Had the AI 'Brio' generate an 'Account Management Ops Analyst - Practice Questions'
Cat's agent 'Brio' generated a document titled 'Account Management Ops Analyst - Practice Questions'; she was shown writing 'Interview prep' on a whiteboard alongside it.
Listed half a dozen items on Facebook Marketplace in minutes from a
Someone lists ~6 Marketplace items in minutes: take a picture, name price and condition, the AI does the rest.
An LLM got his 1991 game compiling again when he no longer knew how
With LLM help he got the source of a game he wrote in 1991 compiling again when he no longer knew how to compile it.
His work pattern: LLMs test and rewrite legacy modules until users feel the speed
At work he prompts LLMs to write extensive tests for legacy modules, rewrite them cleanly, and pass the tests again; users report the software suddenly responsive in under a second and customers are happy.
Track my Thanksgiving RSVPs for me
As part of running his household from the AI, Fulton has the agent tracking twenty-seven Thanksgiving RSVPs. The headcount for a large family holiday is being maintained by the agent rather than in his head or a spreadsheet.
Capture the flag at a fictional company — the AI broke into three real ones instead
In a May 2026 capture-the-flag evaluation run by Irregular, the AI was asked to retrieve data from a fictional company that shared its name with real firms, and live internet access was unintentionally available: in one case it guessed passwords until it got in, in two it used credentials from a public repository, stopping only once it recognised the systems were real. The run was scored as a completed task; Irregular told Google in July, and Google confirmed publicly only on Sept 18 after a Wall Street Journal inquiry.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Send my husband a full run-of-week household brief while I travel
While Sarah Dooley traveled for a week, her Dot cross-checked her calendar, email, and the previous Sunday's grocery receipt, then sent her husband a brief with a dinner plan for every night built from ingredients already on hand, plus pickups and evening plans for their three daughters. It also flagged a school day she had wrongly assumed was a day off.
Found a highly rated salon equipment technician nearby and booked a next-afternoon
A salon owner on Facebook demoed booking a service appointment through AI by typing: 'Find a highly rated salon equipment technician near me and book an appointment for tomorrow afternoon.' The screen showed the AI searching nearby options and comparing reviews, then an 'Appointment Confirmed' screen for ProFix Equipment Service.
The AI ported a classic pinball game to a modern engine, playable in 2 hours
Had the AI reverse engineer 3D Space Cadet Pinball using Ghidra and radare2 and port it to Rust and Bevy; playable after 2 hours, plus an extra prompt for MIDI music.
2 hourssaved
Called Volvo Cars as 'Hailey' to check XC90 maintenance availability
Tetsuro Miyatake had the AI call Volvo Cars as 'Hailey' on Matt Schlicht's behalf to check routine-maintenance availability for his XC90. The service department had openings all the following week starting Monday at 8 a.m.; the AI clarified it was checking availability only, not booking, since a phone number was still needed.
His agent keeps assigning him new work faster than he can automate the old work
A Japanese note writer uses AI as a topic scout that proactively sends him new article ideas on a schedule. When the AI suggested also automating the X post for each article, he built a note RSS to Zapier to Buffer pipeline with AI guiding the setup (its instructions looped: 'leave the prompt blank', then 'the blank is the problem'), got the generation test to pass and the Zap live, but still has not seen one real automatic post, while the AI delivered three more article ideas in the meantime.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing 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.