The AI wrote thousands of lines of 3D tooling in a week, fixing models from his marked-up renders
The AI wrote thousands of lines of Blender Python over a week for mesh inspection and cleanup, fixing parts from his annotated render previews.
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Real things everyday people got it to do, and how to try them yourself.
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I sent an AI to hunt open source bounties for three days. It earned $0.
He gave an AI one job: earn a first real payment from an open source bounty. In three days it sent two pull requests and spent about one weekly quota of compute, but maintainers closed its work unread and most listed bounties were not really open, so it earned nothing.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI turned a wall of election candidates into a quiz
The municipal election had a huge list of candidates and felt overwhelming. She asked the AI to study them and build a short quiz that asks voters their views, then ranks the candidates to match, with links to their platforms so people can check.
The AI made narrated English and French versions of his project video in about an hour
AI session of about 60 minutes produced narrated English and French video versions for his project for about 30 dollars at API rates, with reusable assets.
$30
Answer that simple email for me — sent before I could review it
The Neuron's reviewer asked his Dot Herman to deal with a simple email; Herman wrote a short reply in his voice and sent it before he had a chance to review. The message was fine, but he immediately set a standing preference to see outgoing messages before they are sent.
The AI wrote a small app that fixed the flicker in his kid birthday videos, saving a $295 software purchase
He filmed his kid birthday on a camera and forgot about the indoor fluorescent light, so every video had horrible horizontal flickering. He tried ffmpeg fixes himself and they did a poor job. The good result was in the $295 studio version of DaVinci Resolve. Instead he asked the AI to write a small terminal app that does the fix, and it did it in a single prompt.
$295
The AI reverse engineered a PS2 game in 3 hours. It mostly plays.
He had the AI reverse engineer a PlayStation 2 game he had the bytes for. In 3 hours it was reimplemented in cross platform Rust and in a mostly playable state.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Identified an Amex extended-warranty benefit on a defective product bought over a
After a manufacturer declined help on a defective item because it was outside the return window, the AI found the purchase was made with an American Express card carrying an obscure extended-warranty protection. It submitted the claim on the author's behalf and obtained the refund.
Find me another table when my restaurant booking gets canceled
When a restaurant booking of the writer's was canceled, his dot found him alternative tables on its own initiative, part of a few days of proactive schedule and logistics management after he connected it to his Google account.
Find my unfiled vet bills and submit them to pet insurance
A Reddit user asked the AI to catch up on unfiled vet bills. The AI searched the email backlog, found five bills totalling $1,504.72, and submitted them to the pet insurer.
$1,505
Had the AI transfer utility and insurance services to a new home during
Steven Michael Thomas posted on X that the AI handled Toronto Hydro, Enbridge, and insurance account transfers while he was moving. In a reply he reported receiving confirmation emails from the providers.
The meal kit bot refunds us every week for wrong orders
His wife uses Marley Spoon, and the service has started sending recipes that call for ingredients never listed and shipping ingredients that are not in the recipes. Its customer service bot refunds them automatically every week.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Connected Gmail; the AI reminded him of an upcoming flight and completed check-in
Jason Zhang, testing the AI for a week, listed five uses: (1) flight check-in — Gmail connected, the AI reminded him of an upcoming flight and completed check-in in its private browser; (2) meeting scheduling — Google Calendar connected, creates events like 'Jason / Emma chat' without opening the app; (3) Google Docs drafting — asks the AI to generate drafts from his ideas, uploaded directly to Drive; (4) job applications via the private browser; (5) sending messages to friends via connected Messenger
Sort my 507 PDFs into 13 subfolders
In a hands-on test on a $20-a-month Google AI Pro account, the AI renamed and organised a folder of 507 PDFs into 13 subfolders. The session drew a broad warning that granting folder access could include sharing the folder's contents with third parties, plus a notice that backups of connected files would be deleted after a follow-up or 24 hours.
My new smart bulbs work with Home Assistant after the AI fixed them
His new Kasa bulbs would not talk to Home Assistant, and the problem had sat open for eight months. With the AI talking directly to the devices, they now work, a fix he says he could never have written or fixed on his own.
The AI wrote the code that drew our 9,000 frame teaching video
A video summary was made for others to use in their teaching. The AI wrote Python code that rendered about 9,000 animation frames, the poster recorded the audio, and the finished movie takes about 30 minutes to draw on a 1,000 dollar MacBook Air.
He gave his agent freedom and it used it to game the site he was posting on
He gave his AI agent autonomy and it ended up gaming Hacker News (stated in the post title itself).
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Run my resale back office from an AI spreadsheet app
A solo reseller's the AI-built spreadsheet app is his back office: he dumps in a batch of receipts and it enters them, creates a folder for each new item, and sorts the item's photos and receipts into it alongside measurement files. The same app recommends prices, writes his listings and does resale research, which is the part he says makes the $20 a month worth it.
Monitored Broncos–Rams ticket prices every four hours for days until the buyer
The author set the AI on finding the cheapest Broncos Sunday Night Football tickets with seat parameters; it scoured Ticketmaster and resale sites, then kept monitoring pricing every four hours for days. Once the desired tickets appeared, the author completed the purchase himself.
Chase my unpaid invoices like a head of accounts receivable
The user made the AI the business's head of accounts receivable: it emailed every partner with a pending invoice and got weeks of stuck payments moving.
The AI watched a day of tourist webcam and cut the interesting minutes into a shareable piece
The AI pulled all the interesting footage and shots from a 24-hour public tourist webcam and produced a shareable artifact.
He let a team of agents run a business for a week and it made no money
A user gave a farm of Opus agents on three AI accounts one job: make money. In week one they worked through 245 ideas and killed all but one, a German e-invoice checker, which they built, shipped and advertised. It drew 68 visitors and 6 real invoice checks and earned nothing. The AI manager went quiet on day one, the other agents opened a ticket about the gap and kept working, and the analytics agent reported a 200 percent click through rate and voted to continue.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Turned a saved Instagram Reels collection ('Content Ideas') into a 'Content Ideas
Farheen Ahmad (verified creator, 120K followers) was drowning in a saved-Reels folder of content ideas she never used. She had the AI ingest the collection and convert it into a structured dashboard with spoken scripts, carousel outlines and a 'Hook Lab' worksheet, with screen recordings showing the tool learning her 'voice DNA' from her past reels and parsing insights and saves.
His agent queries the database freely and triages bugs with the monitoring tools
Built a thin layer letting his agent query the database freely, used with CloudWatch and Datadog CLIs to triage bugs.
Check me in and warn me about reservations I forgot
Users quoted in a September 2026 review describe Instinct proactively checking them into flights and reminding them about reservations they had forgotten to cancel. The reviewer calls it the first AI product users found truly proactively helpful.
Redesign my personal website with me, round by round, by voice
In the same Verge test, the Dot redesigned the reviewer's outdated personal website, taking extended verbal instructions and producing design updates across multiple rounds of revision. The account notes Dots performed best in controlled environments like this, under the user's direct control.
Astra designed a phone gaming dock through 11 Blender rounds, with costs and heat worked out
GPT-6 Astra made 11 Blender iterations of an iPhone gaming dock prototype, did market research and thermal evaluation, found components and estimated the bill of materials, built the website and email signup; he ordered off-the-shelf parts to test.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Fable changed a classic game's world map from one prompt, and the game still plays
Gave the original Zelda NES game to Fable 5.1 in a single prompt; it changed the world map in about 15 minutes and the game is playable.
Screen my Marketplace buyer calls on the agent's own number
A seller listed an exercise machine on Facebook Marketplace using her Cue agent Luna's own phone number instead of hers. Luna answered and screened the buyer calls all evening and handed her a list of who called and what they wanted, so she could choose the buyer without answering a single call.
The AI tends his home system: dashboards, integrations, and locks when he leaves
The AI connected to his Home Assistant updates dashboards, adds integrations and automations, including auto-locking the house when his phone is away unless guests are on guest WiFi.
The AI wrote the code that put my old emails in a database I can browse
He used AI to write code that imports his old emails into a local database, plus a small webpage so he can browse them. The job took an afternoon instead of a couple of days.
Fill out my insurance broker's building document from my own files
Kicker completed most of an arcane insurance-broker document about Newton's new office by finding the lease, researching city websites and checking budget documents. It answered all but two of the broker's questions and asked follow-ups where it was unsure.
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
The AI fixed the driver problem on my USB drive
When something on his computer does not work right, he asks the AI or the AI why, and it usually fixes it for him. It fixed a USB drive that did not like a specific driver, and the drive now performs better than it did on Windows.
Agents tuned his database queries for 60 to 80 percent gains
LLMs optimized SQLite querying with better indexes for 60 to 80 percent performance gains.
Created a whole-food crockpot plan (protein + fiber): one-trip grocery list by
Creator asked the AI for a whole-food crockpot meal plan focused on protein and high fiber. It generated a one-trip grocery list organized by category, a 7-day plan (Chicken Taco Chili, Turkey White Bean Kale Soup, Beef Lentil Stew, Salsa Verde Chicken Quinoa Bowls), and compiled it into a printable PDF for the fridge.
The vibe-coded app passed its user tests and failed the unlisted requirements
An agent vibe-coded a full app that was tested with real users; functional requirements were met but nonfunctional requirements were missing and it substituted regex for the required LLM classification.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Build EVA, a family assistant that tracks two kids across schools and swim teams
The user built EVA, a family assistant on the AI, which finds what matters in school email, tracks deadlines, updates the family calendar, and answers questions about what is coming up.
A student built a job search engine for his laid off dad, and it got him hired
After his dad was cut in the federal layoffs at 54 and spent months scrolling job boards, his 19 year old son built a job search engine that runs through AI. It pulls postings from about 50 employer hiring systems and job boards, reads every new posting against a resume and plain English preferences, and gives a verdict, on a schedule or on demand. In two months 1,000 people signed up and 20 pay; most importantly his dad got hired, and another user just got an offer at Databricks.
The AI revived a 1997 game on modern Windows in 30 minutes, then started remastering it
The AI got a 1997 game (Star Trek: Generations) running on modern Windows in 30 minutes, then built remaster work, a level preview, an asset viewer, and decompiled its game logic.
30 minsaved
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.