When Jack asked the AI to send an email, it stopped with an approval prompt showing exactly what it would send: Allow, Always allow for this recipient, or Deny. She denied; nothing was sent.
The AI produced a thirteen-page strategic assessment of Fulton's father's retirement community. Its pickleball court count was verified from satellite photos — eight dedicated courts, checked, in his words, from orbit.
Someone in the house heard a beep a little before 12:13 AM. He handed the question to an agent with access to the camera recorder. It came back with the sound, the source and a short list of reasons: a smoke alarm that sounded once, at 3417 Hz for 0.87 seconds, about two metres from one camera. It was not a fire, not carbon monoxide and not a dying battery.
As part of running his household from the AI, Fulton has the agent tracking twenty-seven Thanksgiving RSVPs. The headcount for a large family holiday is being maintained by the agent rather than in his head or a spreadsheet.
Vibe-coded a parental control; the AI watched, ranked, categorized and flagged his kid's YouTube history with good analysis, but taking action like banning channels or automated runs is a major pain.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
A father posted on Threads on Oct 20 that the AI pulls his children's Canvas data every Sunday, flags only what matters — missing work, a slipping class, a big test coming — and emails the summary to the children's mother. He no longer has to remember to check the school portal himself.
A fellow parent pointed him to the Tilt Parenting podcast, which has more than 500 episodes. He told his second brain in an AI app to search the archive for episodes relevant to his situation, and it picked 29 episodes, saved their transcripts, and wrote him a brief on what each one could teach him.
Jessica Lessin reported that about 70% of the AI use cases she was excited about had stopped working. Good Eggs pushed checkout back into its app, her child's school portal refused the agent's login, and JPMorgan and Amazon blocked agents outright. Segment starts at 15:16.
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He built a tool that reads the emails from his kid school and activities, swimming, music classes and scouts. It adds everything to their shared calendar, sends a WhatsApp message the day before reminding them what to pack in his school bag, and tells them what is on the lunch menu so they do not cook the same thing for dinner. He says the morning scramble is gone and the head space is back.
School news for his two kids comes through six Facebook groups as well as email. The AI watches all of them, asks him which events he wants to track, spots clashes like a field trip on the same day as a dentist appointment, and keeps his calendar updated, and it also pulls the Scouts dates together and, before a camping weekend at two different spots, told him the weather at each one and what the boys should pack to stay warm.
Scanned a storybook with his phone and had the AI OCR it and compare it against the list of words and sound patterns his kid knows, flagging the irregular words and new sounds to cover before reading.
A parent says the AI goes through his kids' Google Classroom and tracks their homework in every class: due dates, missing work and scores. It then sends the kids a daily email on how they are doing, with a daily plan to stay on top of their work.
Peter Yang had the AI Duet build an AI Explorer Club for his kid, with an animated robot buddy, an adventure path and lessons, starting with what a chatbot is and a prompt she can copy and paste. He liked the build but said the first lesson was too heavy on text and needed to be more fun to look at.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
While Sarah Dooley traveled for a week, her Dot cross-checked her calendar, email, and the previous Sunday's grocery receipt, then sent her husband a brief with a dinner plan for every night built from ingredients already on hand, plus pickups and evening plans for their three daughters. It also flagged a school day she had wrongly assumed was a day off.
He let his daughter chat out loud with AI to make a game, and the AI gave her small kid sized coding lessons along the way. They put the game on his Raspberry Pi box with an Arduino joystick, so she can play it whenever she wants.
A mother posted on Facebook on Oct 19 (explicitly 'not an ad') that the AI pulled her sons' school event dates from emails and bulletins she could never find by searching, put them in her calendar, and set a dinner-planning reminder. The AI also emailed the school to update her phone number, confirming everything with her before anything was sent.
Simmons asked László to check in with his father once a week about the business sale and report back, judging his father more likely to talk it through with an AI checking in than to raise it with his son. The article records the arrangement being set up, not its later results.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
He had the AI put together a big brief on summer day camps that take 5 year olds within a 15 minute drive in rush hour of his zip code, with one Spanish immersion camp. He read the options, checked drive times and the camp sites himself, and says the three camps they went with were great and close.
Her wedding site on Joy worked until the platform disabled SSO and she could no longer edit it - mid-planning. She rebuilt the whole thing herself with AI from her own requirements list: password-protected bridal-party and admin sections and direct RSVPs, replacing the platform entirely.
A new dad on paternity leave built a full baby tracker with AI in a week, then opened it to other parents as a cheaper SaaS after finding existing trackers obscenely priced. He also connected an agent for on-demand stats and automated a bedside pixel display.
A father set up the AI with access to his credential vault so it can log into his child’s school information system and the other school sites, pull together the homework and due dates, add them to the child’s calendar, and add a reminder the day before with a link. He modelled the workflow out formally and set it running daily.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Amar Ghose, the non-technical CEO of ZenMaid, had the AI interview him with about 20 questions, draft product, technical and design documents, then build 'Fran's Peak' — a live app where his wife logs her 100-day painting challenge, watches her streak climb a visual mountain and shares progress with followers. It took roughly 7–8 hours on a Saturday, went live Sunday morning, and she uses it every day.
Host Alex reported that his AI designed and ordered the wristbands for the show's AI Engineer sauna meetup. The design-to-purchase loop was completed by the agent alongside his other travel tasks.
He built an app that lets their nanny track her worked hours in it, so the family does not have to keep track so closely. The app holds their contract details with her, including the exceptions for vacation and sick days, and gives a total at the end of the week for payment reconciliation. It is one of several small apps he has built for family life.
A user let the AI drive his iPhone to answer his Reddit comments: it opened Reddit, typed replies and checked text before sending, completing 8 replies. When it tried to open the inbox while a post was open, the hidden tab bar meant every tap landed in the comment box as a keystroke, filling a reply with "gggggggggg" until he intervened; its pre-send text check kept the gibberish from ever being posted.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.