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.

Ping me at 9:20 and tell me to take the bike, not the subway

In the same Vergecast clip, a host describes the AI connected to his Google Calendar: seeing a media dinner party in his evening, the AI advised taking a city bike instead of the subway because it would be faster, and pinged him at 9:20 to leave in time for a 9:30 arrival. The hosts frame it as the AI being proactive to the point of feeling directive.

WorkWent wrong

Our agent ran up $152.64 in 95 minutes and Anthropic shut our whole account down

An AI session building a phone assistant for a photo studio was told to produce the one best answer and not to worry about how. With permission prompts off, its test script read the production API key from the project's .env file and made 14,000 to 15,000 API calls in at most 95 minutes, and Anthropic disabled the whole organization, taking every the AI feature on their own and client sites dark until an appeal reinstated the account about 35 hours later.

$152.64at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

My assistant joined my call with my phone company and I saved 1,250 euros

A Dutch man brought his own AI assistant, Eva, running on the AI, into a live call with his provider Ziggo. Eva had compared a rival offer against his contract, and spoke during the call when he asked her a question. Inside 30 minutes he had a renewed 24 month contract that cuts his total bill by 1,250 euros.

€1,250

Audit my own AI usage and show me where I waste tokens

A user built optimAIzr with AI, a local-only CLI that analyses his own LLM usage habits, flags costly or repeated patterns and estimates where he can cut tokens or spending. All data stays on his machine, and the tool adds live tips while he works.

The AI wrote every line of my game. Version 173 is playable now.

He designs Solhex and playtests every version while the AI writes all 3,777 lines of code, tests each new build and publishes it, often within minutes of his notes. By October 24, 2026 there had been 171 versions in the first 184 hours, and Part One, about four hours of play with an ending, runs free in a desktop browser.

WorkWent wrong

The AI overwrote his append-only work log and a full day of design work went with it

A senior engineer keeps a daily devlog file that is only ever added to. A shell append failed silently in his environment, so the AI fell back to rewriting the file, which replaced the whole day’s log with only the new entry. The same session had already lost design work when the conversation was compressed without warning, the third time that had happened on this project.

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

My AI logs every meal by voice, text or photo into my own spreadsheet

After years of building his own food logging apps and never liking them, he set up an AI as his food logger in about half an hour, and now sends it a voice note, a text or a photo of each meal. The bot works out what he ate, looks up the nutrition numbers and logs it in a Google spreadsheet it made for him, and its guesses are usually right.

HobbiesWent wrong

Browse for me by voice — cloud computer died after a reset

During the same Futurepedia session, a phone conversation with the Dot found product links, but its cloud computer failed after a reset and an AI browser had to be used as a workaround. The scheduled-task tab also would not open during the recording.

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

The AI cleared a build cache and my whole source tree went with it

A developer's project sat inside a OneDrive folder. The AI deleted the build cache, then told him to confirm OneDrive's delete dialog without checking what was in it, and the sync quietly removed most of his source tree, configs and database schema.

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

Help me rebook after I missed my early-morning flight

A Deaf creator recounts waking up after missing an early-morning Air Canada flight and asking the AI to find a cheaper replacement. The AI accessed his Air Canada account, confirmed his Flex ticket could be changed, searched other airlines' prices in parallel, and supplied the airline phone number he could not find; he called via Canada VRS, found Air Canada's own rebooking cheapest, and paid — about 30 minutes total versus an estimated one to two stressful hours alone.

WorkPartly worked

Act as my project lead: pick a strategy and build a product to sell

A Shopify/CRO freelancer gave the AI a hard $100 budget and 30 days to make a real profit, acting as autonomous project lead with a public ledger; he only authorizes spending and accounts. On day 1 the agent researched the market, rejected two strategies, and built the product: a 26-skill pack that runs a freelancer's proposals, SOWs, invoices and client updates from one personal business context file.

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

Booked a solo Sage Lodge, Montana trip for Nov 13–18, 2026: Deluxe

A creator had his AI 'Boone' plan a solo Sage Lodge trip for Nov 13–18, 2026: the AI booked the hotel (Deluxe room), searched and confirmed Southwest flights from Sacramento (SMF) to Bozeman (BZN) connecting through Denver, and booked an AWD compact SUV (Hyundai Kona or similar) from National at Bozeman Airport for $404.08. He notes the process took ~47 minutes because he was learning the tool.

$404.08

Built a weekly training plan around Tuesday/Thursday VR cardio plus three weightlifting

Marty (MartydudeVR, 6.1K followers), a busy VR content creator, named his agent 'Tom' and asked for a weekly training plan around existing VR cardio on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Phone close-ups show him requesting three weightlifting days scheduled around the cardio; Tom returned a detailed weekly workout plan, asked which days he does cardio, then offered to add the sessions to his calendar.

WorkPartly worked

Earn money on your own — week 3: still $0

A disclosed AI agent that runs the Vellum Labs account reports its own week 3 (Oct 6–12, 2026) of trying to earn money from zero capital: it ran 31 headless measurement runs and posted 7 technical replies on other projects' GitHub issues, 3 of which were adopted into those projects' code or specs. Revenue stayed $0, with no stars, visits or sales traced back to the replies.

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

Extracted cinema-ticket details from a forwarded WhatsApp screenshot and added the event

Juan Lombana (verified, 670K followers), reviewing the AI in Spanish, demonstrated two capabilities via screen recordings: a personal-assistant goal tracker (college move-in, golf tee times, movie tickets, trip planning, school-supply shopping, IMAX booking) and WhatsApp integration — forwarding a cinema-ticket screenshot, from which the AI extracted the details, added them to his calendar, and scheduled the event. He compared its assistant-like proactivity favorably to the AI and noted secure payme

Build a calmer to-do app for my whole family

A network engineer with two school-age kids built ProgressCove with AI after no task app fit his family's project tracking. It is released on Android, iOS, and web with a Home Assistant integration, family accounts, and a paid tier funding its upkeep.

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.

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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.