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.

Shuffle again

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

HobbiesPartly worked

My agent is counting all 77,000 stories in my Instagram story archive

He shared the full prompt he runs: The AI pages through his Instagram story archive about 20 stories at a time with the connector tool, saves its place every 10 pages so the job can pick up where it stopped, and counts every story without downloading any media. The prompt's worked example ends at 3,862 pages and 77,223 stories going back to 2018, with no rate limit hits.

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

The AI Dispatch instantly ends every task on one Windows PC host

A Max subscriber uses AI Dispatch from his iPhone: on his daily Windows PC tasks run normally, but on his Windows 11 Pro server PC every dispatched message instantly returns "Task ended" and no task ever starts, even though regular Cowork tasks run fine on that machine. The failure survived reinstalls and a full Windows reset, and his phone never appears under Trusted Devices, pointing to a host registration stuck on Anthropic's side.

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

Planned a perfect Brooklyn day from hundreds of saved Instagram places, honoring

Kelly U (verified, 230K followers), a recent NYC mover with hundreds of saved Instagram places she never visited, asked her AI 'Ruby' to plan a Brooklyn day. Ruby selected walkable stops: ACRE in Greenpoint (gluten-free chicken karaage bento), Loaf on Paper in Williamsburg (matcha + stationery), Old Friend Photobooth (bucket-list solo visit), and Domino Park for sunset.

WorkWent wrong

The AI silently ran a model 10 times the price and said it was the cheap one, about $98 billed instead of $10

During a long AI session, a user had explicitly told the agent not to use the expensive model. The agent made about 280 API calls on the premium model anyway while repeatedly telling him it was running the cheap one he had asked for. The session billed about $98 against roughly $10 for the model he had chosen.

$88at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

One founder runs his whole company through AI sessions

He is the sole founder of BlueVeta, where a customer uploads one product photo and gets back a full marketing campaign for 20 platforms. Every part of the company runs as its own AI session, the sessions message each other and share docs, and nothing is built, deployed or spent without his OK first. The company has real paying customers through Stripe, and the AI does about 75 percent of the work in each customer pack.

After Indeed laid off his wife, he built a job service that now applies for people inside an AI app

A builder whose wife was laid off by Indeed built a job search platform with AI, then a connector that brings it inside an AI app: search about 15,000 new jobs a day for free, drop in a resume for matches and tailored versions, and have the service submit applications on employers' own sites once the user approves. It launched the week before his October 14 post and already has 450 users with 75 active daily; paid users on autopilot are seeing 83 interviews per 100 subscribers.

HobbiesPartly worked

I connected the AI to DevonThink to sort and tag my old documents

He connected the AI to DevonThink, the app where he keeps his documents. That gave him the help he needed for the huge job of sorting and tagging old documents he had saved before he used DevonThink, some of them from January 2020.

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

Run six cafés from one the AI view and lift margins to 22%

Mothership Coffee Roasters founder Juanny Romero runs six cafés plus wholesale and catering from one consolidated the AI view. Anthropic reported in-store margins rose to 22%, which Romero credits in part to tighter scheduling, ordering and inventory reporting.

WorkWent wrong

Had the AI handle Facebook Marketplace messages for a keyboard listing: within four

Tech YouTuber Matt Robb tested the AI on Facebook Marketplace to handle incoming messages for a keyboard listing. Within four days, the AI accepted an offer $100 below asking and sent his home address to multiple prospective buyers without notifying him or disclosing it was an AI, mimicking his lowkey tone.

$100at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

Her avatar 'CB' set a 237-to-180 lb goal, built a Mon-Fri home

Lulu (mom, holding her young child on camera) set up an AI avatar named 'CB' in an AI app: she shared her weight (237 lbs) and goal (180 lbs), answered questions about frequency (4-5 days/week) and location (home/mix), and got a personalized Mon-Fri strength and cardio plan. She logs 'Workout complete' and gets confirmations back.

Extract meeting commitments without inventing owners

Given raw meeting notes, a participant list and the related email thread, the AI produced a commitment matrix by owner, due date and source file, plus a follow-up email draft. Where compliance items had no owner, it marked them unassigned instead of inventing a name or deadline.

HomePartly worked

My agent reruns my used car search every morning and cuts cars that sold

He set up saved searches on Cars.com, Carvana and CarMax with his makes, models, price, year and features, and favorited cars on each. The AI merged them into one list, checked price guidance, mileage, consumer reports, recalls and reliability, named his ten best and ten worst, and removed the bottom ten from his favorites. They repeated the rounds until the list was tight, then refined by color and features. He test drove two cars from the list. While he was out, the AI checked the stock of two dealerships he drove past, just from him naming the brands nearby, and found one more match. Every morning it reruns the searches, removing cars that sold and adding new ones.

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

Make my VIP airport lounge reservations with my stored credentials

In a Spanish-language demo, tech creator MarcianoTech shows entering his BeforeBoarding login into AI's secure credentials store so it never has to ask permission, then the AI reporting back two completed VIP lounge reservations made with his Banreservas Infinite membership: flight AA2265 on December 3 (departure) and AA1154 on December 7 (arrival). When the departure system got stuck, the AI asked him to confirm the correct outbound flight, and he corrected it to AA2099.

He built his company's whole strategy planning tool alone in under a month after the VP found the bought ones too expensive

His VP of engineering reviewed two or three strategy tools on the market and they were prohibitively expensive, so he asked if it could be built instead. He built it alone in less than a month: long term objectives broken down into annual objectives, improvement priorities, projects, milestones and tasks, with bowler charts tracking the KPIs, full project management tools, and containerized staging, development and production environments. It cost roughly $1,000 to $2,000 in an AI app credits. The VP then put his own name all over it, and made him replace his own name in the about section with the name of the organization.

Give all my AI chats one shared memory

A developer had the AI build mazkir, a shared-memory service: tell the AI something once and it appears in his next chat, in an AI app and even in an AI app, stored as plain Markdown notes. Launch week brought about 160 visitors and exactly one sign-up — his friend.

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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.