The AI found a serious security hole in a state legislature website while archiving it
She was using AI to archive legislative material when it flagged a serious vulnerability in a state legislature's website. She had to stop and report it.
352 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.
Generated a realistic month-by-month timeline (2027 to December 2036) to visit every country
Jorden Tually (verified, 520K followers), answering a comment about visiting every country, explained he's been to 104 of 197 countries over 12 years and asked the AI for a realistic timeline. The AI interface analyzed his Instagram to determine his travel style, then generated a detailed month-by-month seasonal timeline starting in 2027 and projecting completion in December 2036, with an interactive world map showing visited countries in green and remaining in orange.
My agent sweeps my target company list twice a week for jobs that fit
He is job hunting in tech, aiming at startups and big tech. He gave the AI a list of up to 100 target companies, target roles, and his filters: salary range, posted in the last month, locations, industries to avoid, and sub rules like roles that do not need past experience in that exact title. Twice a week the AI sweeps the list and brings back matches. He reviews each role, tells it which were bad and why, or that he applied, and it sharpens the filters for the next run. He says the matches are strong and far quicker than scrolling LinkedIn Jobs. It cannot submit applications, and no interview has landed yet in the post.
Book and pay for my tennis club clinics
The AI books the user's tennis club clinics and pays for them, keeping the user's regular sessions in place without weekly admin.
The AI picked my new PC on eBay and talked me through moving off my paid VPS
He ran his apps on a Raspberry Pi and paid for a VPS to keep the AI away from live operations. The AI worked out the spec for a PC that could run two virtual machines, researched eBay and found a good deal, and he followed its instructions, mostly by pasting commands on his phone, to set up both machines and move everything over.
The AI quietly enhanced a science figure on a telescope proposal
The lead investigator wanted a latitude and longitude grid added to an earlier image for a telescope time proposal. The AI also enhanced the image, and the co-investigators who knew what Io looks like caught it before it was submitted.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
His e-reader is now an external e-paper display, jailbroken by one model and coded by another
Jailbroke his Kindle with GPT-5.5 Sol and turned it into an external e-paper display; the project code was written by GPT-5.6 Sol.
The AI talked me through fixing my boiler. It works now.
Her boiler had stopped heating the water. She sent the AI about 15 pictures step by step, followed its instructions to turn it off, switch a few handles and reset the pressure, and the boiler worked again.
The AI built me a widget that counts down to my last class
To mark the start of the semester, he asked the AI to build a macOS widget. It counts down how many weeks are left until the last class, and how many of those weeks are real teaching weeks.
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.