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.
He runs a print shop full time and is not a designer. The AI designed about 35 formal disinvitation cards with him, drove the browser to set the products up on Fourthwall with prices and descriptions, built the website, and synced the catalog to Etsy with new main photos.
Pavuluri Gopikrishna had the AI build a photo-based calorie tracker, then cancelled his paid calorie-tracking subscription because the agent-built one replaced it. The build-to-cancel pattern shows the AI replacing a recurring SaaS cost.
In the same week, Alec Ellin had the AI mine his own Instagram and LinkedIn connections and turn them into a leads list — prospecting built from the network he already had rather than a purchased list.
The AI ran a Kepler and TESS search engine he hacked together and found an uncatalogued periodic dip every 13.77 days around KIC 5689121, a possible 2.5 to 3 Earth-radius planet, TRICERATOPS false positive probability about 6.9 percent (result report, not a product pitch).
A backend developer built a voice agent after work that dials out for his friend's collections call center, which makes 8,000 outbound calls a month, most of them dead air. The agent greets the person, works out if they are interested, not interested or want a callback, and hands live prospects to a human with context. After a free trial the owner signed at $5,000 a month.
Plant-based nutritionist Natalie Golba typed a request to her AI 'WALL-E' in iMessage; it pulled 12 ingredients (cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, bell pepper, tomato, cilantro, dill, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, salt) from her detox-soup recipe into an Amazon Whole Foods cart totaling $30.79, and footage shows the groceries delivered the next day.
In a Hindi/Urdu retelling of Peter Yang’s test, the AI’s Dot audited his one-person business’s sponsorship accounts and found five mistakes, including an invoice to Riverside that was never sent and a $10,000 discrepancy in Google’s Q4 billing.
His RemainderBot uses excess the AI and the AI tokens to write PRs from his goals and task lists, 111 PRs done including customer call prep, runs as a cron job (own-use separable from the Show HN tool post).
He had the AI add all the special days from the Pittsburgh Public Schools calendar into the family calendar. It was a win, but the school calendar itself had errors, and he spent 30 minutes working out which day was wrong.
Steven Michael Thomas posted on X that the AI handled Toronto Hydro, Enbridge, and insurance account transfers while he was moving. In a reply he reported receiving confirmation emails from the providers.
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.