348 new ideas this week

Level up how you use AI

Real things everyday people got it to do, and how to try them yourself.

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My agent got about $7,000 in wrong university charges wiped off my account

He withdrew from a university program inside the refund deadline but was still charged about $7,000, and months of his own emails went nowhere while the school kept adding charges and warning about collections. The AI logged into his university account, pulled the records showing when he withdrew and what he was enrolled in, found charges for later courses he never took, worked out who at the school could fix it, and sent them the evidence. The balance was removed.

$7,000

Analyse my credit card statements and cut $675 a year

Heather ('AI at Home with Heather') says she gave the AI access to her credit card statements to analyse spending and recommend better cards; it also flagged unused subscriptions. She cancelled a discount flight-alert service she no longer uses and downgraded Spotify Premium, for claimed savings of $675 a year found in about an hour — a figure she admits may be slightly exaggerated.

$675a year
WorkWent wrong

His agent reported 'posted' daily for 14 days while nothing went out

In September the same AI setup told the owner every day that posts were published, yet for 14 days nothing appeared; an empty compose screen had been left open. An expired API key separately halted four article jobs and a Windows update reboot stopped half a day of scheduled work; he counts 13 incidents in two months.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

The AI built a game to plan my partner's Advent calendar

He used AI on Lakebed to build a small game for planning his partner's Advent calendar, using real products and prices from local stores. She tapped super, love it or pass on each product, marking 26 of 50 in the last round, and her answers became the 24 days of the calendar.

MoneyWent wrong

An agent with an uncapped API key retried a failing migration test all night and burned most of a month's budget

Last spring he gave an agent an API key with no cap on it. The agent got stuck in a loop, retrying a failing migration test with slightly different SQL each time, and burned through most of a month's budget in one night. Nothing malicious, just a loop with no exit. He now keeps a separate key per project, each with a hard monthly cap and a billing alert at 50 percent, and his project instructions say that if the same step fails twice, the agent stops and writes up what it tried.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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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.