The creator set up the AI on its own computer, connected Gmail, and used AI to write the bot's voice and brief before testing it on a throwaway inbox of 745 threads with zero labels. He built the label system by talking to the bot, taught it filters through the browser, and set a daily routine that drafts and never sends, ending with filters done, 289 unread and dropping, plus a 7 AM brief using Calendar and Slack.
Juan Lombana (verified, 670K followers), reviewing the AI in Spanish, demonstrated two capabilities via screen recordings: a personal-assistant goal tracker (college move-in, golf tee times, movie tickets, trip planning, school-supply shopping, IMAX booking) and WhatsApp integration — forwarding a cinema-ticket screenshot, from which the AI extracted the details, added them to his calendar, and scheduled the event. He compared its assistant-like proactivity favorably to the AI and noted secure payme
The road to a takeoff spot they fly from was not on OpenStreetMap, though satellite images showed the track. They built a tool called osmctl, and the AI drove it and mapped the road.
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.
The WSJ reviewer gave the AI four dates and times plus her preferred sitters for a notoriously convoluted childcare-booking platform. After she logged in manually, the AI completed the reservations on its own and offered to add the events to her Google Calendar, which she then connected.
An operator had the AI set up a set of websites that pull publicly available but painful-to-access government data, present it in easy-to-read form, and send weekly emails - turning civic data nobody uses into a small publishing operation.
The same setup reads his incoming email and texts, builds his weekly to do list, sends him a digest every morning with the list and any scheduling clashes he might miss, and adds events to the family calendar on its own. A spreadsheet of every house appliance and its service schedule feeds the list, and it drafts the messages to repair firms for him to send.
He asked the AI to screen his unread Instagram threads one morning. It came back with 50 unread, looked at the threads he named across his Primary, General and request folders, and told him what people had sent. The unread count was still 50 afterward, so nothing showed as read for him or for the senders.
Ben Parr had the AI build a tracker for his 2025 tax documents and hunt down missing K-1s. The agent organized the paperwork and chased the missing forms.
Ekaterina Li (someone) ran AI as a full personal assistant for one week, delegating eight tasks from idea to execution. In the thread's comments she adds that she pays $20/month for the AI and considers it sufficient for everything she asked.
In a Vox feature on personal agents, entrepreneur Matt Van Horn said his wife sent Instinct a photo of a parking ticket with no instructions at all. The agent, which already had her credit card on file, simply paid it.
A user was filing a housing co-op’s HPD property registration with AI’s help. Asked whether the $13 registration fee had been paid, the AI said it had been or was not required, based only on a generic billing disclaimer, with no payment record behind it. Asked why a mailed form arrived after the deadline, the AI stated as fact that the deadline runs from the postmark, a rule it had not checked. Both claims were corrected only after he challenged them. A late filing for a building can draw a civil penalty in the $500 to $5,000 range.
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Tetsuro Miyatake had the AI call Volvo Cars as 'Hailey' on Matt Schlicht's behalf to check routine-maintenance availability for his XC90. The service department had openings all the following week starting Monday at 8 a.m.; the AI clarified it was checking availability only, not booking, since a phone number was still needed.
He pasted one prompt into AI, and the AI read the Carly email setup docs itself, finished the signup, and took the verification code. The inbox, named Loopy, now takes tasks by email and asks before replying to anyone outside.
His inheritance case ran across two territories with different legal stances, in two languages that are not English. Working through it with AI, he found a six figure mistake made by the notary, and because the AI taught him the process, he no longer needed his lawyer for every technical question, which cut his legal fees hard.
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.
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.