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.
Tech journalist Lance Ulanoff connected his personal Gmail to his AI 'Charlie' and asked it to check for anything pressing he had missed. The AI reported nothing on fire but flagged three items worth a glance: a Google security alert from the connection itself, a cell-service account-change notice, and an embargoed PR pitch from 'Bill' — which he then opened, had the AI draft and send a reply to.
Engineer AJ Stuyvenberg let his AI handle his 2026 Hyundai Palisade purchase by email, and it played dealers against each other over several days. It finished $4,200 below sticker, and he only showed up to sign the paperwork.
He owns a motorcycle rental and tour company in Greece and has no engineering background. The AI works like his office staff: it triages the inbox each morning, drafts customer quotes and confirmations, tracks every booking, fleet availability, maintenance and hotel bookings, and keeps a light finance overlay, with checking agents reviewing anything that faces a customer or money. A database it built replaced a dozen spreadsheets. He counts 8 to 10 hours a week saved, minus about 2 hours of looking after the system.
The AI created an audiobook for him from the Robin Buss translation of The Count of Monte Cristo, which had no audiobook.
Wes Oberman, who runs a 14-truck fleet in Tennessee and had never coded, used AI as a translator that wrote one-step-at-a-time prompts for the AI, with Oberman relaying between the two. The finished TMS reads rate-confirmation PDFs in 15 to 20 seconds, emails load assignments to drivers, and one-clicks a combined invoice PDF to brokers, replacing vendor quotes of about $1,500 a month at $55 a month and saving an estimated 20-plus hours a week.
A user asked the AI to download a data export from five one-time links. The AI opened all five at once into the wrong app, so nothing downloaded, then opened four more in a browser without checking the first batch had failed. About ten windows and tabs later the one-time links may be used up. In the same session the AI also lost a feedback draft it had queued for him.
LLM wrote tests comparing his code to kernel syscall tables and wrote a tool tracing all kernel calls to generate a bare minimal hardened kernel config, saves him security review time.
He pointed the AI at a downloads folder with over 1,000 media files and at his Jellyfin library. The AI made a queue file he could import into HandBrake, and he says it saved him a lot of time.
Ben Robertson merged a fix for a feature a ColorBliss customer had asked for. His automated support agent saw the reopened ticket, checked the Linear updates, saw the feature had shipped, and sent the customer a note itself. He only found out when he logged into his help desk later.
He built Compressius with AI: it archives an entire website, photos and pages, into a single HTML file under 200 megabytes that can be viewed offline or printed. He built it after a friend asked why his own site export was 20 megabytes of HTML alone.
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.