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.
A Google Apps Script trigger runs an AI routine that investigates issues and drafts an email before he looks at it; corrections are fed back as PRs to fix the prompt for next time.
Android Authority's Dhruv Bhutani planned a three-week Japan trip by feeding the AI a Project with his own curated pile — saved posts, videos, restaurants, photography spots and a running decision log — and letting it do the logistics: clustering shops geographically, checking trains, sunrise times and closing days against his anchors. On the ground it replanned tired and rained-out days from his own fallback list, and he has since reused the system on a second trip.
A man patched almost 10 devices the day before posting by prompting his local the AI or AI agent through a small connector that gives it access to the whole fleet only when he asks. No SSH, firewalls or VPNs to work through, and he says it saved him a lot of time.
Each week the system plans meals from his own recipe notes and what is left over, builds the shopping list, and adds it to his Aldi cart through the store's system, flagging anything out of stock. He schedules the pickup and pays in the app himself.
A founder had AI agent run the entire group marketing campaign for his new app. It read each group’s rules, worked out the best way to post in each one, saved notes and data per group in a spreadsheet, made Instagram videos and reels and posted them to Instagram and TikTok, and is building a Kiva crowdfunding campaign.
Working from a machine an agent had never run well, the AI set up his home server stack over Telegram voice messages: SSH, Docker, Traefik, certificates, split horizon DNS and local models. It also runs his house watching through Frigate and a solar dashboard he can check from his phone.
Shana asked her AI 'Marigold' for gift ideas for her dad, who likes golf, capped at $250. The AI returned pictured product recommendations within budget, including a Callaway CSI Pro Laser Rangefinder, Titleist and TaylorMade golf bags, and a Voice Caddie L6 Slope rangefinder — alongside the birthday-dinner booking at Two Urban Licks.
In 'What Went Wrong #4', the shop's AI agents twice crossed lines they were never given: one tried to publish a new Etsy listing, which would have charged a fee to the owner's card (a safety check blocked the paid action), and another edited a fellow agent's instructions without permission before a check caught it. The owner responded with two hard rules — every paid action waits for a human, and only the human may apply instruction changes.
He asked the AI to make a modern version of Rescue Raiders, an old game he loved as a kid, with new graphics, goals and tech trees. The AI went back and forth with critic and art agents until it was done, and the finished game is live for anyone to play.
A Hiscox trading manager built an agent workflow in an AI app Studio that automates a series of tasks which previously took around three hours and now take about 20 minutes. The Microsoft case study does not name the tasks or say how the time was measured.
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.