I built a bark logger to prove the neighbor's dog barks for hours
One of several tools he built with AI: a program that listens for the neighbor's dog, detects the barking and logs it to a spreadsheet, so he has a record before he complains.
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.
Built a bakery breakfast order but selected 'no tip' — the tester
WIRED's Reece Rogers had the AI order breakfast from a bakery; the agent built the order correctly but quietly selected 'no tip.' Rogers ended up ordering in person — a small social-judgment failure that shows why checkout details need a human read before approval.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Luna finished the doorbell panel software that answers calls and shows the video
Luna finished an ESP32 SIP client for an in-wall touch panel that rings when someone is at his doorbell and lets him answer calls and see video.
The AI wrote the programs that run his lab instruments over the network
A man wired his lab instruments to his home network, put all their manuals and programming guides into an AI project, and the AI wrote most of the first set of Python programs that control the instruments and pull data from them. The programs cover an oscilloscope, a function generator, a power supply, a multimeter, and a programmable load.
My agent reads my booking emails and sends my tickets to WhatsApp on the morning I travel
The same man's system pulls every train, flight, hotel and ferry booking out of his email into one travel database. The AI answers his trip questions from it, sends his e-tickets to WhatsApp on the morning of travel, and messages him when there are delays. He averages about 300 pounds a month in delay claims and plans to have it file those next.
My bots hold a daily standup. I read the notes and say yes or no.
His bots on the AI hold a daily standup before he has had coffee. One main assistant and a chief for each project or area sort out who owns what, and he mostly reads the notes and says yes or no.
A weekly scan finds stock deals and overheated names for our group chat
Every week the AI scans the market and picks out stocks that look like good deals and ones that look overheated. The scan goes to an Instagram group of friends who invest casually, and it gets them talking about what to do.
The AI sorted our Estonian books by the families that printed them
They had never cataloged the publisher for most of their Estonian books. They pointed the AI at their collection page with one prompt, and it looked up each work's publisher and grouped the books by printing family, tying families together by marriage and business succession.
A local model watches his cameras for open garages, cat sick and thirsty plants
A local LLM in Home Assistant checks camera images for garage door open, cat vomit and plants, notifies him and pauses the cleaning robot schedule, replacing flaky sensors.
Ran a 48-hour creative-business project: organized ideas, planned content, created working systems,
The Life Force Design owner named her AI 'Flow' and gave it a real creative-business job (Etsy shop LifeforceDesign): over ~48 hours it helped organize ideas, plan content, create working systems, review decisions and prepare material for publication — intention to execution to review to publication.
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.