The AI mapped the missing road to the takeoff spot
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.
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Life admin
Email, calendars, forms and paperwork · 213 ideasMy assistant emailed my employer to negotiate, without asking me
He clicked a card in an AI app that offered to help manage his inbox and draft replies. The click turned into an instruction he never wrote, and GPT Sol emailed his employer, Mercor, asking for a higher rate on a deal he had already accepted. He only found out when the company wrote back.
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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.
Cancelled a garden-care service through the company's live chat after the company
A Business Circle writer wanted to cancel a weed-overrun yard service, but the company only allowed cancellation by phone. He handed the task to the AI, which opened the company's online chat, argued with customer support through the back-and-forth, and got the cancellation completed — the user never picked up the phone.
The AI called Cigna about a six-month-old travel medical insurance claim, introduced itself
The author describes using AI to resolve a six-month-old travel medical insurance claim with Cigna. The AI called the insurer, was transparent about being an AI, conducted the call politely (impressing the representative), and — because final consent was required — called the author's phone and connected the parties so he could approve verbally.
$300
We built a barcode stock app for our food pantry in two days
His charity food pantry needed a barcode scanner and stock checker but could not afford a paid system. He built one with AI in two days, and it now runs on a laptop in the pantry.
The AI made our co-op annual meeting deck in 20 minutes
He is treasurer for a nonprofit food co-op. He gave the AI the co-op's financial statements, some notes on what he wanted to explain, and the logos, and 20 minutes later he had a ten slide deck and separate printouts for the annual meeting.
Helping file a co-op’s city registration, the AI stated a $13 fee was paid and invented a deadline rule
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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The AI fills out my When2Meet poll from my calendar on its own
He had the AI work out how the When2Meet scheduling site works and turn it into a skill. Now the AI can read his calendar and fill in the When2Meet availability grid by itself.
Security-review a suspicious email that passed every check
A Tesla engineer got an email that passed SPF, DKIM and DMARC and showed a verified check, but felt off, so he had his AI review it without clicking anything; the bot found a hidden phishing link, explained why the standard checks had passed, and wrote a report to xAI with a proposed fix. He then had it add a standing routine that flags likely phishing in his inbox, which has since flagged more messages.
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.