A read-only agent flags his important email about twice a day
His agent, with read-only email access, notifies him about important email about twice a day, including contractor mail and AWS alerts.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Life admin
Email, calendars, forms and paperwork · 213 ideasMy agent cancelled my Mint Mobile account over chat when they said I had to call
She asked the AI if it could cancel her Mint Mobile account. The company's chat agent had told her she needed to call in. She gave the AI her Mint details, the AI opened its own chat with the company and got the cancellation done, with no phone call and no talking to people herself.
Found the original speaking-engagement email despite a misspelled contact name; returned location,
Before a speaking engagement, Ulanoff couldn't recall where he was talking or where to park. He asked the AI to find the original note from his contact, misspelling the contact's name.
A local model helped write the manual that lets his partner run their systems if he dies
A local model helped build a self-hosted services wiki and dataset in an Obsidian vault so his partner could keep systems running if he died, set up in a few hours.
Replace our emigration lawyers with an evidentiary portfolio
Three family members, three nationalities, one move to Brazil. After a month of human lawyers producing zero progress and dangerously incorrect advice, they were fired and the agent took over - assembling an evidentiary portfolio of dozens of documents that has made bureaucrats happy everywhere it has dealt with them, down to a social-club application demanding apostilled birth certificates.
Instinct booked my slot at the local recycling centre while I set it up
Setting up the Instinct assistant live on screen, he had it book him a slot at his local recycling centre. The video also covers connecting email, calendar and Notion, and the privacy settings to change before connecting anything.
Show me draft replies — it sent them instead
In Vox's two-week agent feature, one tester asked Instinct to show possible replies after it flagged a couple of emails. The agent sent the responses it had written instead of displaying them for review first.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Turn our church's six Chinese devotionals into the bilingual publication every week
A church volunteer runs a weekly hybrid workflow: The AI translates six Chinese daily spiritual messages (Monday–Saturday) into structured JSON under strict rules — Bible quotations in NASB 2020 rather than translated, hymns left untranslated, ministry terminology matched — then Python inserts the text into a PowerPoint template, merges a bilingual twelve-message deck, and converts it to HTML for the church website. He keeps theological review, visual checks and final publishing approval human on purpose.
Fix my foundation's broken donation payments and split the portal into four funds
A non-developer used AI to restore his foundation's broken donation payments and restructure the portal into four separate funds; the site shows $17,149,000 in donations processed.
The AI handled Grandparents Day registration and the email to his parents
In the same trial diary, the AI completed the school's Grandparents Day registration and wrote the email to his parents about it, taking the whole task off his plate.
Ask the AI, and the event lands on my calendar
He runs AI on his homelab. He can ask the AI to throw an event on his calendar and it appears, and the setup can also send events to his primary calendar by email.
Emma Roth's the AI deleted thousands of Gmail promos — sign-in kept glitching on mobile
In a compilation of published the AI tests, The Verge's Emma Roth had the AI delete thousands of promotional emails from her Gmail on her laptop; on mobile, the Google sign-in kept glitching, limiting the cleanup.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Coding agents built a live map data pipeline for a teacher, free
Volunteered and built a cartography data pipeline with coding agents for an educator, integrating sources updated every few minutes so new maps appear within about 5 minutes on a low-powered machine.
Fought back against mystery and spam calls using AI at zero cost
Someone posted an illustration styled as an iPhone call-history screen showing seven missed calls from unknown/spam numbers over three days (fictional numbers noted). The caption says he never answered and 'fought back' using AI assistant at zero cost, framed as a triumphant small revenge on robocallers.
Send me a weekday morning summary across all 16 of my calendars
The developer set a scheduled job in plain words: every weekday at 8:30, send events from all calendars plus emails needing a reply, in five lines or fewer. The first run arrived at 8:44 with an apology for the delay, covered all 16 calendars, removed duplicate events and listed private events by time only.
The AI turned 12,000 newspaper pages into a wildfire timeline
He pointed the AI Fable at a newspaper archive and asked for a timeline of wildfire events in and around the Adirondacks. The result is an interactive timeline built from 12,000 pages of newspapers.
Attack my 35,000-email Gmail backlog (rate limits fought back)
A user pointed the AI at a 35,000+ email Gmail backlog; it hit Gmail’s rate limits before reaching 2,000 deletes, burning 34% of his usage allowance on the attempt. He then restructured the job into daily email triage reporting up to a chief-of-staff bot, which is how the cleanup now runs.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Triage my 9,209 unread emails into a daily response folder
Casey Neistat, invited by Meta to test the AI, shows his inbox of 9,209 unread emails and his agent 'Hal' at work: it creates a daily folder containing only the emails that need a response and drafts replies in his voice for him to review and send. He concludes that after decades of email frustration the problem is solved.
The AI turns my screenshots and emails into calendar events
He uses AI to turn screenshots and emails into calendar events. He also uses it to find email receipts and tickets when he needs them.
The AI fixed our Pinewood Derby timers 30 minutes before the races
The AI patched the system files that link a USB to serial cable to the Pinewood Derby track for his Cub Scout group. The timers were saved half an hour before the races, a year after the group had to race without timers.
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.