The AI filled in my job applications from my resume
Job sites kept asking him to type the same resume details into application boxes by hand. He used AI to move the information from his resume into the boxes for him.
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.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
An agent reverse engineered his old modem and got modern OpenWRT running on it
A man had an obscure Alcatel modem with undocumented hardware. He soldered on serial pins, plugged it in, and asked an agent to reverse engineer the firmware. DeepSeek v4.1 Flash took about an hour to get a full OpenWRT build and flash pipeline running in an isolated container, the driver changes worked, and the whole job took under half a day and $0.86 in AI cost, work he says would have taken weeks or months.
$0.86one time
A repo rebase by Astra ran more than 6 hours and still was not finished
Astra rebase of his repo ran 6+ hours and still was not done, scope creep and full test suites rerun, vs Sol doing it in about 1 hour.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI fixed the menus and search on my blog archive
The AI helped him add drop-down menus to his archived WordPress blog so his 460 podcasts and more than 6,000 blog posts can be reached by category and by date. The AI also helped configure the search box for dynamic searches.
The AI watched for his new aquarium thermometer and swapped it into his home system
The AI, given a Home Assistant API key, watched for the new Bluetooth aquarium thermometer he installed, replaced the broken one's entities with it, and verified graphs and automations worked.
His terminal app, rebuilt in Rust, uses a tenth of the memory of the web version
The AI and the AI mostly rebuilt his custom terminal app in Rust egui; text is sharp, it is fast and uses about 1/10th the RAM of the webview version.
Agent searched jobs against his CV and built his application pack
He gave the AI his CV and a job search brief, and the agent searched Naukri, LinkedIn, and Wellfound for roles posted in the last 24 hours, scored each one against his experience, and tracked the strongest in a Google Sheet. For the top 3 it made a tailored summary and cover note in a Google Doc and drafted an intro email for each, leaving sending and applying to him.
Scheduled a daily AI-news podcast delivered via RSS feed to a podcast
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI pulls his appointments out of five patient portals and explains his visit summaries
The AI logs into his five patient portals, pulls every appointment into one place, and checks them against his calendar each week. The morning after a visit it explains the after visit summary in plain words and lists the follow ups he owes.
Built a leads list from his Instagram and LinkedIn network in a
In one week of the AI errands (FedEx/Apple refund, tickets, a 3-hour form), Alec Ellin also had the AI build a leads list from his Instagram and LinkedIn network.
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.