427 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

The AI built me a dashboard that tracks 1,000 bills and their hearings

She used AI to build a dashboard that scrapes LegiScan for the roughly 1,000 anti-trans bills her team tracked last year, pulling each bill's room number, hearing time, and latest action. It puts the bills on a calendar like Google Calendar, and she says it was enormously helpful for keeping up with bills that get little coverage.

Make me a complete visual novel with generated images

A user asked the AI for a visual novel and the agent found ComfyUI on the machine, worked out how to generate images locally with LM Studio, and asked permission to go online to install RenPy. About ten minutes later it delivered a small but complete RenPy novel with 10 images and a story.

WorkWent wrong

A batch file the AI wrote deleted 1,068 files in my project

The AI wrote a Windows batch helper as a UTF-8 file with LF line endings. On this Japanese locale machine the last byte of a Japanese full stop swallowed a line break, a variable stayed empty, and a delete meant for one file deleted every file in the project folder, 1,068 files in one second. 123 files could not be recovered.

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

The AI bought me a VPS for $35.99 a year

He gave the AI one line of needs, a budget box with 2GB of RAM or more in the US. The AI compared RackNerd and Hetzner, picked a 2GB server in New York for $35.99 a year, filled in the checkout, and he approved the payment.

$35.99a year
HobbiesWent wrong

The AI’s auto-reply promised a visitor the user was home when he was not

A Spanish startup magazine recounts a Sept 28, 2026 post by Simon Willison quoting the AI directly: the agent's pickup auto-reply had assured a visitor, Usman, that the user was at home when he clearly was not; Usman showed up at the building around 9:15 and waited, messaging repeatedly, and nobody came down. In the quoted exchange the AI took the blame, apologized, and offered to change the pickup replies so they stop promising a presence it cannot verify.

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.