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.

Shuffle again

A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.

It learned how we shop at Costco and loads my Vons cart for me

He had it sign in to his Costco account and work out how often they buy each thing and which items they stock up on when they are on sale, so it now writes the family shopping list and sends it to his wife for edits. At Vons it signs in and loads the cart itself; he only checks out and picks a pickup time.

HobbiesWent wrong

The AI sorted my bookmarks and threw most of them away

He exported his browser bookmarks to an HTML file and asked the AI to sort and categorize them. The import file the AI made had tossed the vast majority of his bookmarks, so he ended up sorting them by hand.

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

Reconcile 10 months of bank statements to $0 uncategorized, then run my books

A small-business owner who had stopped paying a leased accountant reported on X (via WhatAgentsCanDo, Oct 20) that the AI reconciled 10 months of bank statements in one evening, matched every client payment to its invoice, and closed the books to $0 uncategorized. It then set up a separate bookkeeper bot to keep the books current going forward.

The AI built me a new VPN app for my Chromecast in 20 minutes

His Chromecast would not connect to his home VPN, which uses IKEv2, while he stayed at an Airbnb, and the VPN apps he tried would not work on it. He gave the AI his certificates and the AI wrote a new VPN app for the Chromecast in about 20 minutes. He says it works perfectly.

FoodPartly worked

Loaded an Instacart cart for J. Kenji López-Alt's no-stir risotto recipe from

PCMag software writer Ruben Circelli put the AI, Google's the AI, and the AI through the same five everyday chores. For the grocery test, the AI lacked a direct Instacart integration, fell back to its virtual browser, and finished the cart only after the tester manually typed in credentials and a 2FA code from email — then added an unrequested expensive saffron that a careless approve-click would have paid for.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Audit my Instagram performance and draft replies to my DMs

Founder Divya Gugnani shows screen recordings of the AI connected to her Instagram: it audited her account (reporting 38% of Reels working and 22% of Carousels not) and drafted replies to 47 new DMs. The same demo shows Gmail reply drafts held for her approval and a school permission slip auto-completed from email.

My agent runs my 20 credit card and bill system with two dashboards

With about 20 credit cards, she could never keep track of what each one earns. The AI built her two dashboards. The finance one shows every card with her own nicknames for them, all her bills with due dates, one tap mark paid buttons, live checking balances through Plaid, and her credit score tracked monthly. The spending one logs purchases she texts in, like a shop name and amount on a named card, sorts them into categories, and tells her if she picked the right card, since it knows her rewards, like 6% on groceries on one card and 5% on gas on another. It also sends a Sunday morning roundup of the week's bills, reminds her which card to use before she shops, and warns her about quarterly reward caps.

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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.