The AI changed a word game's rules for his wife in about 10 minutes
The AI modified a NYT-style web game in about 10 minutes to change the rules for his wife; she was delighted.
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Family
Kids, parents, partners and friends · 72 ideasTurn my kids' old Yoto players into audiobook players
A parent had the AI write firmware that turns his children's unsupported second-generation Yoto players into Audiobookshelf clients. The AI handled flashing, log reading, and fixes while he did the physical button presses, and the firmware is public on GitHub.
Read my three kids' school digests and only tell me what matters
With three kids at three different schools, Kranda gets a ParentSquare digest for each. Every weekday at 8:53am the AI opens every digest, reads the full text, and sends him only what matters for his kids; on days when nothing is important, he hears nothing at all.
My agent sits in our family iMessage chat and told my wife dinner moved
He connected the AI to iMessage on his Mac with a BlueBubbles server, polling about every 5 seconds and waking only for allowlisted senders and chats. When he moved dinner with his wife by 30 minutes in his calendar, the AI messaged the family chat on its own and told his wife about the change.
He asked an agent what beeped in his house, and it found the smoke alarm
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.
His tool reads the school emails and tells them what to pack the night before
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.
The AI’s animated demo explained the night sky to his 5-year-old better than anything he found
The AI whipped up an animated demo to teach his 5 year old why the sky is not black, a better explanation than existing ones he found.
Compare festival rentals, and flag which walk home is unlit
Eric's daughter and her friend needed lodging for a music festival in Europe during her study abroad. His Dot, Jarvis, priced four places and annotated each with whether the walk back from the shuttle has streetlights after 10 p.m. When a provider replied in French, Jarvis read it, updated the comparison and said what changed: one rental ruled out, another cheaper but with a longer, uphill, unlit walk home. Eric finished the checkout himself.
The AI built his daughter's tap-card music system in about 2 hours
The AI built his daughter's NFC card music system in about 2 hours of iteration, working seamlessly on card place and remove using depth camera detection.
The AI went through 500 podcast episodes and picked the 29 that fit my life
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.
Track my Thanksgiving RSVPs for me
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.
Find and request chess books for my 6-year-old at the library
Eleanor Konik writes that she hates requesting books through the county library website, so she told the AI to find books about chess aimed at a bright 6-year-old; the AI picked titles and requested them using her library account. A few days later the county emailed that the books were available, and she picked them up (her post also shares an AI invite code).
My agent checks my kids' school account every day and tells me what changed
A father's the AI logs into his kids' school account daily. It tells him if any classes were missed, any discipline notes, assignments not handed in, and whether grades moved up or down since the last check.
Lock in two orchestra seats for $117 and negotiate my brother's game tickets
Given access to the user's XP Tickets account, the AI locked in two orchestra seats for a concert that night at $117, and is negotiating with a season ticket holder over Warriors vs Mavericks tickets for his brother's birthday.
$117
Warn me when the weather turns against my family's plans
On a Tuesday, Fulton's the AI warned him that Sunday would open near freezing, connecting a forecast swing to his calendar without being asked. The practical point was jackets for the children before their Sunday activity.
Compose and send my family's daily morning email
Jonathan Fulton set the AI a careful specification for a morning inspirational email to his parents, sister, brother-in-law and wife, sent under his name at 7:00 AM. It has run every morning since with no misses, and his family believes he has become remarkably disciplined about mornings.
The AI and Siri both failed to put his son's basketball calendar on the family calendar
The AI and Siri both failed to add his son's printed basketball calendar to the shared iCloud family calendar; his wife added all the events manually in 20 minutes.
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The AI wrote a small app that fixed the flicker in his kid birthday videos, saving a $295 software purchase
He filmed his kid birthday on a camera and forgot about the indoor fluorescent light, so every video had horrible horizontal flickering. He tried ffmpeg fixes himself and they did a poor job. The good result was in the $295 studio version of DaVinci Resolve. Instead he asked the AI to write a small terminal app that does the fix, and it did it in a single prompt.
$295
Track replies to nine class inquiry emails and watch them daily
The AI sent and tracked nine inquiry emails about classes for the user's children, built a reply tracking table, and monitors the threads daily for responses.
He built a baby weaning and medicine log for his two kids and put it on the App Store with no subscription
The app came out of his own frustrations managing two kids with his wife. Tiny Tummies is a UK baby weaning log that also tracks food, medication and sickness, and it has no subscription. It took about a month to build and three weeks to get approved, and a series of updates and an in app purchase are going through approval now. He built it on the AI Pro plan.
Rosey keeps the family calendar and reads card balances for the budget
Rosey adds calendar events and reads credit card balances for budgeting.
Build EVA, a family assistant that tracks two kids across schools and swim teams
The user built EVA, a family assistant on the AI, which finds what matters in school email, tracks deadlines, updates the family calendar, and answers questions about what is coming up.
Send my husband a full run-of-week household brief while I travel
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.
Evenings with LLMs produced months' worth of family apps, a drawing canvas included
Used LLMs to build several apps and sites for his family and kids in evenings instead of months, including a shared drawing canvas his kids love.
Assess my dad's retirement community, verified from satellite photos
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.
Drafted a reply to a PR rep about an embargoed product, co-edited
After reading the AI’s summary of an embargoed PR pitch, Ulanoff had it draft a reply. The first draft overpromised a meeting, so he had it strip the meeting references to just agreeing to the embargo and getting images and details.
Plan my Christmas party end-to-end from one prompt
A creator had the AI plan his real Christmas party for 16 guests from a single prompt: it filled a Shop cart with Retro Candy Christmas decorations under a $75 budget, designed the invitation in Canva, planned the menu and filled an Instacart cart at Aldi within $250, built a Spotify playlist, and produced an 11-page printable host guide. He reviewed and paid for the carts himself; the AI never checked out.
The AI read a scanned storybook and flagged the words his child is not ready for
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.
My agent watches my kids' classes in Canvas and built a dashboard of missing work
He has the AI logged into the Canvas parent app. It tracks each class and lists any missing assignments. He told it to ignore work missing for less than 3 days, so he does not get noise about things that are not due yet. The first version was all text, so he asked the AI to build a nicer dashboard, and it did. He says it is far better than using the Canvas app himself.
Messaged a Facebook Marketplace seller with questions on the reporter's behalf
BBC technology reporter Thomas Germain spent a week testing the AI (which he named 'Bob'), giving it access to his Gmail, calendar and other accounts. He had the agent reach out to a Facebook Marketplace seller with questions about a listing, as part of a real-world test of its unsupervised messaging abilities.
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.