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.

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A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.

The AI made the advert for the event I help run

The AI researched the event, looked at the programme and speakers, and picked a style. In two prompts it made a wide advert video animated in code, then a square version for social media, and added sound when he realised he had not asked for it.

Send me a weekday morning summary across all 16 of my calendars

The developer set a scheduled job in plain words: every weekday at 8:30, send events from all calendars plus emails needing a reply, in five lines or fewer. The first run arrived at 8:44 with an apology for the delay, covered all 16 calendars, removed duplicate events and listed private events by time only.

A roofing estimator’s system breaks down huge drawing sets, tags every fact, and checks his final number before it goes out

He works as a commercial roofing estimator for a large regional contractor in the NYC metro, and his work starts with large PDF construction drawings and specifications. Over eight months he built a system he calls Estimator-OS. Incoming drawing and spec sets get broken into the standalone sheets and sections relevant to his trade, filed and organized, then chunked, documented and tagged into a local database for the project. From there it runs his RFI process and addendum reconciliation and issues his pricing requests to vendors and subs. Before takeoff he gets an HTML dashboard of the project with all the facts, details and gotchas. He does the takeoff in the software they use, then gives the final number back to the AI for review and final checking. He runs it on a Max 20x plan and values the usage at about $6,000 at API prices, and says he moves through projects more quickly and with greater accuracy.

Spot the calendar conflicts hiding across my Slack and calendar

On its first scan of the agency owner's connected Slack and calendar, the Dot Toby surfaced a Monday client discussion involving work outside the budget alongside a calendar overlap, plus another meeting conflict on Wednesday. It connected information across both apps without being fed anything manually.

Four months of spare time with AI, and the hiking game I always wanted is live

He spent about four months of spare time building Switchback, a cozy hiking simulator like old park management games, with AI writing the code and judging the look of the assets. It ingests real map heights to build its trails, and has its own water, wind and day and night systems. He launched it on iPhone and iPad yesterday and people are playing it.

WorkWent wrong

AI booked my hotel 468 miles away, plus one in West Palm Beach

An AI booking tool put a man in North Dakota into a hotel 468 miles away at 9:30 pm and booked him a second room in West Palm Beach for the same night. The same AI had also failed to cancel his Siurex XM.

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

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.

The AI system turns source material into short videos for about 8 dollars each

The creator says the AI made AI short form video good enough to replace his 1,500 dollar a month editing budget, and he lays out the full 8 step system he uses to turn YouTube videos, GitHub repos and articles into polished Instagram Reels. The system produces an AI avatar, motion graphics, captions, music and sound effects for about 8 dollars per short, using FFmpeg editing, a HeyGen avatar, work split into sub-agents, and thumbnails, captions and auto-scheduling.

$1,500a month
WorkPartly worked

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.
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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.