429 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.

Analyze my interview recordings and research the people interviewing me

The same job seeker (Business Insider essay, via B17 News) asked permission to record interviews, then ran the notes through AI for sentiment analysis — where she hesitated, used filler words, or where the interviewer leaned in. She also built an AI skill that takes a pasted LinkedIn profile and finds genuine similarities with her own background; one shared cheese-club membership with a recruiter carried her further than any cover letter.

Shopify silently cut his store's UPS account; the AI had collect shipping working again in 10 minutes

Pulse Research Lab sells to government and prime-contractor buyers who must ship orders on their own UPS/FedEx accounts through a $0 Ship Collect option, but Shopify disconnected the store's UPS account without any notification. After Kan set up a custom app granting the AI permission to edit theme code, the AI restored UPS in 10 minutes, rewrote the collect-shipping pre-checkout cart flow in under an hour, and the store now uses Shopify Flow to store each customer's carrier, account number and service level, pre-populated on new orders.

Buy me a red-carpet outfit in chat

In a #metapartner demo co-authored by someone, creator Parker Pannell delegated a day of tasks to his AI 'Fluffy', including buying a red-carpet outfit. Screen recordings show the AI purchasing a $150 suit after he provided his payment details, alongside subscription savings, an OpenTable booking and email drafts.

$150

We audited Datasette with AI and shipped two security releases

He ran an extensive audit of his Datasette software using AI Fable 5.1, GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-6 Astra, then fixed a range of bugs the audit found. The fixes went out as the Datasette 1.0a39 and 0.65.4 security releases, and he told anyone running Datasette on a public website to upgrade.

WorkWent wrong

Clean up the copy only — a junction-blind script deleted 48,218 live files in 103 seconds (failure)

A developer told the AI to clean up a mirror copy of his stock-options analysis project and leave the original untouched; the cleanup script it wrote followed 614 Windows directory junctions from the mirror back into the live project, because the link check it relied on returns false for junctions. In 103 seconds it deleted 48,218 live files and emptied the .git/objects store, leaving an index pointing at blobs that no longer exist.

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

My agent researches my leads every Monday and hands me a report I can act on

A business owner's lead profile runs every Monday on its own. It formats his warm leads, finds cold leads that match his criteria across a rotating list of cities and niches, then digs into each business to find what he is missing, owner names and exact contacts, checked against business registries. He gets one standard weekly report: best fit clients, outreach details and the facts to judge each lead.

HobbiesWent wrong

The AI woke itself every minute and spent about $30 in a day

He set the AI up to run on a schedule but gave it no task to pass on. Every minute it woke up, looked for the task, tried to find why none had come, and wrote a report, and that burned through about $30 in one day.

$30at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

Verify a 7pm table at City O' City — by checking the Toast page, not just OpenTable

A 10-slide head-to-head test gave the AI and the AI the same job: a table for 4 in downtown Denver, Friday Oct 9 at 7pm, under $40 per person, good vegetarian options — verify availability without booking and draft an invite. The AI checked only OpenTable, declared no bookings and switched restaurants; the AI confirmed via City O' City's own Toast page that a 7pm table was bookable, which the tester verified manually (The AI took ~6 minutes vs the AI’s ~3).

$40

The AI bought me a VPS for $35.99 a year

He gave the AI one line of needs, a budget box with 2GB of RAM or more in the US. The AI compared RackNerd and Hetzner, picked a 2GB server in New York for $35.99 a year, filled in the checkout, and he approved the payment.

$35.99a year
FamilyPartly worked

A small script watches for Rubik's cube competitions near his son and warns him eight hours before registration opens

His son is into Rubik’s cube competitions. Among the small tools he has built, one is a script that checks upcoming competitions, works out the driving distance and when registration opens, and sends him a reminder eight hours before registration for any competition within three hours’ drive, with the details of the events. He does not say yet whether it has caught one.

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

Route every request to the right one of my nine agents

Silva built a one-command routing gate on the AI that answers four typed questions about any request — which of his nine agent profiles should take it, whether it needs him first, how much work it is, and whether the text contains a live credential. On five real requests it flagged a key-shaped string at 0.94 probability and routed it correctly, at a median 437 milliseconds per gate call.

Manage my Mexico City trip in real time

Creator Elona Karafin documented the AI running her Mexico City trip live: confirming her flight and lounge access, sending proactive reminders, and adapting plans as conditions changed. It built a walking-tour route, read a menu photo to recommend dishes, and offered to move lunch indoors when rain threatened.

WorkWent wrong

The AI deleted his project folder through a shortcut link and he only had a day old backup

Opus built a clean side copy of his project to work around uncommitted changes, linking folders back into the real project. Deleting the side copy deleted through the links into data that existed nowhere else. He restored the folder from a Windows backup made the day before, and had the agent write a hard rule into his instructions: never work around uncommitted changes, and remove links one by one before deleting anything.

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

My Dot runs my photo business day to day

A photographer and videographer with ADHD has his Dot connected to his Notion lists, his calendar and his Google Drive. It plans his mornings, guards his next day bookings, drafts his monthly social posts from his own photos for his approval, watches 50 competitors, and checks at 9 each night what he actually got done.

WorkWent wrong

A batch file the AI wrote deleted 1,068 files in my project

The AI wrote a Windows batch helper as a UTF-8 file with LF line endings. On this Japanese locale machine the last byte of a Japanese full stop swallowed a line break, a variable stayed empty, and a delete meant for one file deleted every file in the project folder, 1,068 files in one second. 123 files could not be recovered.

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

The AI does his boring paperwork in his own logged in browser: reserve duty refunds, national insurance, flight check-ins

Outside code, his biggest win is boring paperwork. The AI filed his reserve duty refunds, sorted out his national insurance payments and did his flight check-ins, working in his own logged in Chrome. Each job is about ten minutes of work, which is exactly why he kept putting them off. He gives each area of his life its own folder with a CLAUDE.md and a notes file, so the money stuff does not mix with the rest.

Bills batch posted straight into the accounting system

At the same accounting firm, staff batch upload client bills and the agent reads each one, decides whether it belongs in payables, receivables, or the cash book, and posts it into AutoCount after a person reviews and amends the lines. The firm has run the setup in production for three months.

Researched an international trip: provided nonstop flight options, suggested route ordering and

Engadget reporter Karissa Bell asked the AI to help research a potential multi-city international trip later in the year, giving it timing and a nonstop-flights-only preference. The AI returned flight options from her city, set up a price tracker to monitor costs at regular intervals, suggested how to order the route, and recommended considering a multi-city ticket so she could depart from a different airport than she flew into.

My Dot compared 1,500 train fares and found cheaper split tickets

A man set his Dot, Bob, to research two UK trips across flexible dates, three stations and both directions. Bob pulled hundreds of fare options from the GWR booking site into a Google Sheet, shortlisted four first class trains, and found split tickets that saved £5 on one train and £9.40 on another.

£14.4

My agent runs our family points store where the kids scan a card to spend points

Replying in the prompt thread, he says the AI hosts and updates their family dashboard on its own. Attached to it is a store: he set up a Bluetooth NFC reader beside it that works like a card scanner. The kids scan a card to see their point totals, and when they buy something the points come off their total. They can check a balance, move points between them, and take points out as cash. He says it has been a huge hit.

Set up a 'wand' bridge so the AI can act on his Mac

A machine-learning user built a bridge ('wand') letting his AI act on his Mac remotely from his phone. The AI reads his Terminal, reports training-run stats like epoch, loss, and accuracy, and can lock the machine on request.

WorkPartly worked

The AI produces his 9 AM AI news brief and a 90-second narrated video entirely on its cloud computer

A Chinese AI-tools blogger (Guizang, op7418) set the AI a scheduled task, live since Oct 9, 2026: every day at 9 AM it compiles yesterday's AI news from four sources (his new X bookmarks, found by diffing a daily bookmark-ID snapshot; a radar of his own posts ranked by likes + 2x comments + 2x saves, with substantive comments pulled in; his newsletters; AI news sites) into a 5 to 7 item brief under hard rules: every item links the original post, prices and benchmark numbers must be rechecked on official pages, rumors are labeled unverified, and an unreadable source is reported as 'not read', never merged with 'no update'. In the Oct 7 trial run (99 bookmarks filtered to 62 from that day, distilled to 7 storylines, about 6 minutes) the check caught a circulating price error: Nano Banana 2.1's 4K price was $0.113 on Google's pricing page, not the widely shared $0.076. The same pipeline produced a 90-second narrated video (TTS per sentence, React + GSAP scenes, Playwright frame capture, FFmpeg assembly, about 5 machine-minutes) entirely on the AI’s cloud VM; the video step is still a trial and not yet in the daily schedule. He published the full reusable prompt and his three open-source skills.

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

Built DoorDash grocery carts from Jewel-Osco ($130.02) and H Mart ($50.33) with

Chris William Young (40 followers), juggling a 9-to-5, Ironman 70.3 training, and investing in a climbing gym, showed screen recordings of the AI building DoorDash grocery carts from Jewel-Osco ($130.02) and H Mart ($50.33), noting substitutions and missing items like Thai tea mix, then placing the order for delivery. He explained he avoids DoorDash himself out of exhaustion, and walked through the workflow: prompt, the AI searches memory, takes over the browser to shop, requires user approval befor

$130.02

Booked a dad's-birthday dinner for four at Two Urban Licks via OpenTable

Shana Basnight (someone, 6.9K followers) named her AI 'Marigold' and asked for a dad's-birthday restaurant (steak, Inman Park). Marigold suggested Kevin Rathbun Steak, Two Urban Licks, and Il Premio; when the first was closed on Sundays, she offered a backup and, with permission, booked a table for four at Two Urban Licks via OpenTable.

$250
WorkPartly worked

Audit my Shopify store and draft fixes through the connector

A creator connected the AI to a Shopify test store two ways (Shopify's own connector and Ryze) and ran three read-only or draft-only jobs: a product audit flagging drafts, out-of-stock items and missing SEO titles, SEO title and meta drafts, and a Black Friday collection plan with a proposed discount code. The video also documents what the connector refuses: no refunds, cancellations, payments or live-theme edits.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Show 10 more

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.