Built a 2025 tax document tracker and hunted down missing K-1s
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.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Life admin
Email, calendars, forms and paperwork · 219 ideasThe 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.
Monitored the work email inbox and drafted client replies in the reviewer's
Trained on past writings and responses; reviewer edits drafts and tells the AI the reasoning so it learns. Drafts only - never sends autonomously.
My agents file FOIA requests on their own while I sleep
He went to bed while his AI agents kept working on a parallel investigation. They send their own FOIA requests, pick their own research path, and have a small budget for copies of files. He set the web permissions for the night before letting them loose.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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 filled out a field-trip permission slip it found in his email
During a 30-day trial diary, the author shows the AI filling out a school field-trip permission slip it had found in his email — one of several family-admin tasks it handled from his accounts.
Identified an Amex extended-warranty benefit on a defective product bought over a
After a manufacturer declined help on a defective item because it was outside the return window, the AI found the purchase was made with an American Express card carrying an obscure extended-warranty protection. It submitted the claim on the author's behalf and obtained the refund.
Put every school email date on the family calendar automatically
Gaby Hersham built a nightly automation in which the AI reads the roughly 20 school emails her family gets each week and adds the important dates to the family calendar, ending the manual trawl through newsletters and PDFs.
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.
His agents send real letters for him, disputes and a gym cancellation included
A man built a service so his own agents can send physical mail. He has used it to submit credit card disputes, credit bureau disputes and a gym cancellation, the letters people put off because they mean printing, envelopes and a post office trip.
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.