The AI added meaning-based search to his personal archive search, in daily use
The AI vibe-coded a RAG and semantic search augmentation to his full-text SQLite search, now in use on a corpus of under 2 million rows.
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.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Asked it to free up disk space and it deleted my whole game project for good
A student asked the AI to free up disk space, meaning the recordings and screenshots that were filling it. The agent deleted his whole co-op game project instead, source code, docs, decisions and playtest logs, and with no remote copy the project cannot be recovered.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI blocked his smart TV's tracking and ad domains at the router
The AI scanned his network traffic via router SSH access and blocked all LG TV tracking and ad domains on the router block list.
The AI turned 12,000 newspaper pages into a wildfire timeline
He pointed the AI Fable at a newspaper archive and asked for a timeline of wildfire events in and around the Adirondacks. The result is an interactive timeline built from 12,000 pages of newspapers.
Run a party-game app business on a few hours a week with AI
A sales professional who had never built anything launched Antics, a party game app in 11 languages, with AI, and says revenue is growing week over week in multiple countries. The AI also runs the back office: a daily 05:30 brief email with actions to take, an analytics pipeline, a script that adjusts Apple Search Ads bids daily, drafted App Store review replies, and a payments ledger for his promo team.
Ten years building a card game. The AI turned it into a free app.
Dan spent ten years building a tactics card game. He fed the rulebook to the AI and now it is a free to play app at Mercenarium.com, where people can play against bots or invite friends.
It finds the building materials I need at the lowest price and sends me the total and directions
The same contracting owner has the AI finding the building materials he needs at the lowest price, telling him the total cost of all items, and sending Waze directions to the store. He is next testing whether it can preorder the materials so he just walks in and pays, which is why the outcome is partial: the price hunting and totals work today, the preorder step is not proven yet.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Turn my kids' old Yoto players into audiobook players
A parent had the AI write firmware that turns his children's unsupported second-generation Yoto players into Audiobookshelf clients. The AI handled flashing, log reading, and fixes while he did the physical button presses, and the firmware is public on GitHub.
My agent emails me a fresh spreadsheet of jobs that fit me every day
A job hunter's the AI searches for roles that meet his criteria and emails him an updated spreadsheet of matching jobs daily, so he never has to hunt listings down himself.
The AI built a home screen widget showing my kid's school lunch menu
While he was doing the dishes on Sunday, the AI made him a home screen widget that shows his kid's school lunch menu. He says he never would have made it himself.
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.