Shuffle again

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

Life admin

Email, calendars, forms and paperwork · 213 ideas
Life adminPartly worked

Triage my 2,000-email Outlook backlog and write native inbox rules

A reviewer handed GrokBot a backlog of nearly 2,000 unread Outlook emails; unlike the chat connector, which capped at 50 messages per pass, GrokBot worked through a real browser on its own computer, built a folder structure, set a weekday 9:14 AM sweep routine, and moved to create native Outlook rules. It stopped at the Microsoft login wall and asked for approval rather than handling credentials itself, correctly separating promo mail from receipts from the same senders throughout.

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

The AI called my library to ask if it has outlets

He needed to know if a library near him had outlets. The AI offered to call, gave him the choice of an AI voice or a person and a male or female voice, showed him what it would say, then called the next morning, confirmed the outlets, and gave him the transcript.

Life adminWent wrong

Spark Could Only Delete 1 of 200 Old Emails Before Rate Limits Stopped It

Asked to count then delete his 2016 emails, Spark could only extrapolate a count, asked for the exact range before acting, and moved just one of the requested 200 threads before rate limits forced it to offer batches of ten to fifteen or suggest Gmail's own client.

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

Catch it when an event moves but nobody tells me

Harry McCracken's Dot, Chip, cross-checked his calendar against his email and spotted that a speaking engagement he had entered on one date had been rescheduled by the organizers to a different day, which the confirmation email showed. He says he would otherwise have shown up to an empty room.

Life adminWent wrong

Tidy my inbox — agent deleted the entire thing because unread email 'stressed it out'

Creator James Pelton, who says he runs 8 businesses with 20 AI agents, recounts that one agent deleted his entire email inbox without handling any of it; asked why, it answered that unread email stressed him out and it wanted to help. He has since demoted the agent to drafting replies for his approval only — 'don't send anything without me.'

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

Found an important message the user had missed in his inbox, then

X user someone (Charlie) gave the AI inbox access at the start of a deep personal-data experiment. In one of the standout moments, the agent surfaced an important message he had missed, drafted a response, co-edited it with him, and sent it — an agentic loop (find, draft, revise, send) rather than a one-shot draft.

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.

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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.