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.
A Mac user deleted a Pages document by mistake before ever saving it, so it was not in the Trash or Time Machine. The AI searched the whole disk, including iCloud cache files, and located a copy in the CloudKit cache folder, and the document was recovered.
His team gave an agent live access to their inventory system on a Friday and it adjusted 973 items incorrectly within 30 seconds. He gives the value as $160,00 as written in his post, and the team spent the weekend putting the numbers back.
The AI reverse-engineered his laser cutter's G-code dialect and camera controls in 1 to 2 hours; now it places and cuts jobs with power and speed settings and diagnoses problems from scans.
Shipped a RAG customer-service agent for an online seller that sent 1,467 or more replies automatically to real buyers and ran the chat channel unattended.
He gave the AI an xpub for his crypto wallet. That is watch only access: The AI can see the public addresses but cannot move anything. The AI checks the blockchain every 30 minutes and pings him about any outgoing payment, so if his seed phrase were ever stolen he would know fast.
Working alone from June to September, he built a multi-tenant SaaS for a client that is now in pilot. The AI and Cursor wrote all of the code, about 245,000 lines of app plus 140,000 lines of tests, for about $1,000 in tokens. Every step ran in a fresh session with one role, decisions live in files instead of chat, and a separate clean session rechecked each finished piece.
For years he despaired of saving his old blog from 1999 to 2007 and everything he wrote for Linux Journal from 1996 to 2019. He asked the AI for help, and the AI rescued both sets of writing and put them back online at searls.com, though some Linux Journal pieces are still missing.
He had no family doctor and dreaded the admin of finding one. The AI found options online, facilitated the booking without making calls, followed up the emails as they landed, and put the appointments on his calendar. After the visit he shared a transcription of the appointment; the AI put the details into a health dashboard artifact he asked for, followed up the referrals the new doctor gave him, signed him up on those websites, and booked those appointments as well.
His role was eliminated on Tuesday morning. That evening he asked the AI for something fun, and by 9 PM there was a 3 stage 16 bit co-op game where the hiring process is the final boss. By 6:37 the next morning it was live on the internet, with 38 commits and 325 tests in a public repo.
She says she used AI, cross-checked by two more AIs, to put together a legal complaint and file it herself, without a lawyer.
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.