The AI cleaned up my Gmail inbox of 12,000 emails
Mufti Hassan had the AI clean up his full Gmail inbox. The chapter title gives the size of the job: 12,000 emails.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Life admin
Email, calendars, forms and paperwork · 219 ideasFlag the emails that actually need my judgment
While the writer's dot diligently flagged payment alerts and delivery notices he already knew about from subject lines, it missed the one message that mattered: his editor at Zapier emailing to ask him to hold off starting an article she had briefed him on. Had he started the work, the missed flag would have wasted real effort.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI files his proof of domicile every month for the family benefits office
Every month the family benefits system asks him for a fresh proof of domicile, and a forgotten upload stops the payments. His AI in the Merlin app gets a signed attestation from his landlord, dates and uploads it to the right section before the deadline, and confirms when it is done; three filings in a row have landed, down from about an hour a month plus a fine for a late one.
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.
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.
His wife asked her renamed, recolored the AI to review her email inbox
Liberty RPF's author tested the AI heavily himself after it launched in Canada, but his wife's onboarding was the telling detail: delighted by the mascot, she renamed it, changed its color, and asked it to review her email inbox daily — her first real agent job.
File the parking ticket dispute I kept meaning to file
Eric handed his Dot the drawer of loose ends every household accumulates, starting with the parking ticket he meant to dispute. Jarvis filed the dispute; it is now waiting on a decision, and Jarvis keeps a watch on the outcome alongside his other open chases.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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.
Scan my inbox unprompted and rescue a message trapped in spam
Without being asked, the journalist's Dot (Sam) scanned her email and flagged two things she had missed: a message that had accidentally landed in spam, and a form she had forgotten to fill out.
Auto-completed a school field-trip permission slip found in her email
Divya Gugnani demonstrated the AI finding a school field-trip permission slip in her email and auto-completing it — presented alongside the Instagram audit, 47 drafted DM replies, Gmail drafts, and travel booking. The reel emphasizes the AI Secure VM and approval-before-send controls.
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.
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.
An agent reads his email and call transcripts to catch work he missed
His agent sweeps his email and call transcripts looking for work he missed, then drafts the follow up messages and tickets for him. It catches commitments that slipped past him in busy weeks.
A 20 page report the AI wrote got his stolen motorcycle claim paid in full
After his motorcycle was stolen, his insurer offered nearly half the market value. He had Cowork build a 20 page report on the claim, and the insurer paid the full amount.
Dots reads my email, puts my appointments in my calendar, and chases replies for me
A Business Insider Japan writer gave OpenAI Dots access to his email and calendar. When event and interview mail arrives, Dots pulls out the date and the job and puts it in his calendar. When a time change comes in, it tells him, sends the reply he dictates, updates the calendar once the other side confirms, and reminds him when no reply has come.
We vibecoded a site that shows what a politician has said in Parliament on any topic
He and the AI built a live website where anyone can look up what a politician has ever said in Parliament on a topic they pick. He calls it a moral manoeuvrability monitor.
Watch my calendar for conflicts — agent cancelled my client appointment without asking
German creator Chris Marvin Atsu gave an AI agent access to his calendar and email; spotting a booked flight on the same day as a client mentorship call, the agent assumed a conflict and cancelled the appointment by email on its own — the first time it had sent anything he didn't authorise. He found the cancellation after the fact and now warns viewers about handing agents that much autonomy.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI runs my appointments, reminders and paperwork from plain English
He set up an AI executive assistant that keeps his appointments and reminds him two days before, one day before and on the day, with push notifications to his phone. It also tracks his house todo list and his government social benefits paperwork, and turns things he just says in plain English into structured records.
Had the AI auto-fill a Sarvam DevOps Engineer job application: read the form
Hemant Kadam, demonstrating his 'craziest use case' after a couple of days on the AI, opened the app to a Sarvam DevOps Engineer application page. He typed a prompt asking the AI to fill the form; the AI opened a browser session, read the form fields, auto-populated his details (name, email, phone), and uploaded his resume PDF ('Hemant_Kadam_Product_Manager.pdf').
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.
A tiny trained classifier sorts his email at 95 percent accuracy
The AI or the AI built an embeddings plus logistic classifier for his emails reaching 95 percent accuracy from 50 to 100 examples, trained in under 5 minutes locally.
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.
Scheduled the AI reads his mail and moves his calendar before conflicts happen
Scheduled the AI connected to his calendar and inbox notices email that should change the schedule, tells him, and automatically schedules and reschedules items emailed to himself.
The AI built a structured dataset of all 4,925 job vacancies
He got the AI to build out a structured dataset of all 4,925 vacancies, with job titles, organisation, salary and location. He shared it in a spreadsheet for other people to play with.
I asked the AI to update my chart. It set up a recurring tracker too.
He asked the AI to update FelonyBench, his chart of Anthropic incidents, pasting in a screenshot of a tweet about another incident. The AI fetched the data to build the chart and also set up a recurring job to track more incidents.
Set up a daily website check via the Goals feature by chat
Jack created a recurring daily website-check goal by chat in about a minute, then deleted it by chat. The Goals tab itself was slow to load (once 25 seconds, once stuck on placeholders).
The AI built my insurance appeal package and my doctor used its letter
When her employer's plan stopped covering her medication, the AI worked out that the plan had a continuation of therapy route and built a full appeal package for her to hand in, arguing the drug was a continuation rather than a new request. She filed it, and her doctor used the letter template it wrote.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Cancel a hidden recurring charge and book our anniversary B&B
One user’s the AI unsubscribed him from newsletters, found a recurring credit-card charge he had missed and cancelled it, and booked a B&B for his wedding anniversary. Three different errands, one agent, all completed.
Cleared his calendar for shoot week (canceled four calls, kept shoots and routine blocks)
NYC creator John Carl Lebrilla Quilario demos his personal AI agent, named Quinn, through text messages and screen recordings. He texts Quinn to clear his messy calendar for an upcoming shoot week — Quinn cancels four calls while keeping shoots and routine blocks.
$406
The AI built his filing site add-on for about $10 in tokens
He is treasurer for Thida Cornes and had been dreading California's NetFile site on the second to last day of the first pre-election filing period. For about $10 worth of the AI tokens he got a Tampermonkey add-on for the site, and the add-on is on GitHub.
An AI reads his email every 15 minutes and files it away
An AI monitors his email every 15 minutes and files things away for him (a second bot monitoring blood test results left as a passing mention).
Multi-step workflow: extracted a client-proposed meeting time from email, created a calendar
The AI Crux gave the AI a client email and asked it to extract the proposed meeting time, create a calendar event, and send a confirmation reply. The AI did all three — but silently created the event in the wrong timezone.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing 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.
He is juggling several legal cases of his own, and the AI transcribes the audio, organizes the evidence and writes the summaries his lawyers get
He is juggling several legal cases of his own, and his lawyers do not have time to answer him every day. The AI transcribes audio, organizes his evidence and writes the case summaries he hands to them. He calls it the best tool he has ever had, and says stopping would mean going back to doing all of that alone.
He built an AI concierge for his own 300 guest wedding in Mauritius
An American marrying in Mauritius, with guests who had never been to a Hindu wedding or the island, built an AI concierge for his own wedding. He put their wedding details in a database, connected an agent with tools to it, and gave every guest an invite link, so guests could ask questions on the day instead of asking him.
He runs his dad's work orders and meeting scheduling out of his dad's inbox
The same Cowork setup checks his father's email for work orders and schedules his father's meetings automatically. He turned off data sharing with AI for this, so the mail is not saved anywhere else.
Claimed she hadn't sent an email she had in fact sent; trusting
In Diana's inbox-prioritization test, the AI produced a useful organized view but concluded she hadn't sent an email she had in fact sent — the thread structure and CCs confused it. If she'd trusted the first answer, she'd have sent a duplicate email.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Pay my parking ticket from a photo, no instructions needed
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.
I had the AI map where agents can stop you and search your devices
A man had the AI build a zoomable Google Map with the parts of the USA highlighted in red where DHS, ICE and CBP can stop people with no suspicion of wrongdoing or warrant and search their electronic devices. He put the map on his own website so anyone can check it.
The AI cut an unread Gmail backlog from 65,000+ to 700
The author reports the AI reduced his unread Gmail from more than 65,000 messages to about 700.
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.