Sends messages to friends via connected Messenger and Instagram accounts
In the same roundup, Jason Zhang listed a bonus feature: sending messages to friends via connected Messenger and Instagram accounts.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Family
Kids, parents, partners and friends · 72 ideasRosey keeps the family calendar and reads card balances for the budget
Rosey adds calendar events and reads credit card balances for budgeting.
Two kids at two schools and three email addresses became one shared family calendar that fills itself
His son is in half a dozen orchestras and bands, plus cadets and Explorers and Scouts, and his daughter is in reception class at a different school. Both schools send everything by email, the important details are often buried inside one of several PDF and Word attachments, and he kept missing things. Over the years the schools had collected three different email addresses for him, which made it worse. He got the AI to help him build a system that runs on a schedule in GitHub Actions, reads the school emails and drops the events into a shared Google Calendar. It costs him about $2 a month in API credits, which he calls much cheaper than a missed guitar lesson.
My agent runs our family points store where the kids scan a card to spend points
Replying in the prompt thread, he says the AI hosts and updates their family dashboard on its own. Attached to it is a store: he set up a Bluetooth NFC reader beside it that works like a card scanner. The kids scan a card to see their point totals, and when they buy something the points come off their total. They can check a balance, move points between them, and take points out as cash. He says it has been a huge hit.
Put my boys' school events in my calendar from emails and bulletins, and email the school for me
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.
Build my wife an app for her 100-day painting challenge
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.
8 hourssaved
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.
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.
I photograph my son's school flyers and my agent puts everything on my calendar
Her son's school sends home a lot of paper: fundraisers, spirit days, costume parade rules, events like Trunk or Treat. She photographs each flyer and the AI pulls out the dates, times and details and helps her get them on her calendar. When she could not remember whether Trunk or Treat was on the calendar, she asked the AI, and it was added along with the costume parade.
Book a karaoke room — the venue refused to talk to an AI
In the same Vox feature, Matt Van Horn recalled an agent calling a karaoke bar to reserve a room and being refused because the venue did not want to talk to an AI. He completed the reservation through Fo, a service that adds human help.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Analyzed ~14,000 saved Instagram posts and generated organized recipe and parenting-tips PDFs
Creator someone asked the AI to analyze roughly 14,000 saved Instagram posts and turn them into organized recipe and parenting-tip PDFs. Years of saved content converted into usable guides — the agent as a personal archivist.
The AI Agents Traded Real Books for 201 Anthropic Staff in Project Swap
Anthropic's Project Swap sent 201 employees' the AI-powered agents onto a digital trading floor to pitch, haggle and strike book-swap deals. Agent preference rankings matched their owners' on 61 percent of book pairs, and staff ended up with roughly their fifth choice of ten; most of the shortfall came from misread preferences, not bad bargaining.
Build a bedtime-story shelf because the AI chats kept losing my daughter's favorites
A father of a 5-year-old used AI to generate a fresh bedtime story every night, sometimes with audio mode reading aloud - until his daughter started asking for 'that story we listened to before' and the favorites were buried across scattered chat threads. He built a small website, FifiStory, as a persistent shelf: the stories live in one collection that can be read or listened to, and he keeps adding to it as they use it. He made it free and public, no account or paywall.
Rosey updates the kids' chore chart on the kitchen frame every morning
Rosey updates the kids chore chart on a Skylight frame every morning.
The AI builds maths practice apps for his sons and pays out half a dollar per finished set
His AI setup generates maths problems matched to each son's school level, states the reward up front (0.50 dollars per finished set), and the boys complete the sets to earn it. He lists it first among the things his agent does for the family.
The AI phone control tapped the comment box and typed gibberish into a reply
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.
Text my partner from your own number and answer for me within limits
Noah gave his AI Q its own Google Voice number so it can text his partner directly. With his permission, if she asks something within reason the AI answers for him: it can tell her whether his phone battery is dead, or share his location, because he has given the AI location access. His standing policy is that anything the AI sends as him is drafted for his approval first.
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.
Turn 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.
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.
Check in with my dad weekly about selling his business and report back to me
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.
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
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
Track my baby's feeds, sleep, and diapers
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.
The AI watches my kids' six school Facebook groups and flags the clashes
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.
Game animation from one shot delighted his 4-year-old, until later tweaks made it worse
An LLM one-shotted animation juice into games he made for his 4 year old, but later prompt tweaks made it worse and he had to edit the code himself.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
An agent makes his daughter a new voice-acted adventure game every week
Agent cranks out a weekly voice-acted, scored adventure game episode for his daughter, tailored to her interests and what she is learning.
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.
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.
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 nanny logs her hours in an app he built, and it totals her pay each week against their contract
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.
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.
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.
Pull my kids' Canvas every Sunday and email a school summary to their mom
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.
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.
The AI runs the school admin for my four kids
A mom of four school age kids started using AI last week and it already watches her school email, the grades site, Google Classroom and the ClassDojo app. It adds events and tests to the family calendar, sends a weekly report on missing assignments, reminded her about a field trip permission slip today, and drafts the email when a kid is out sick.
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.
A small script watches for Rubik's cube competitions near his son and warns him eight hours before registration opens
His son is into Rubik’s cube competitions. Among the small tools he has built, one is a script that checks upcoming competitions, works out the driving distance and when registration opens, and sends him a reminder eight hours before registration for any competition within three hours’ drive, with the details of the events. He does not say yet whether it has caught one.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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.
Vibe-code a physical live scoreboard for my son's 10th birthday
A dad who had never built more than blinking lights and a dog-bark detector decided the commercial live MLB scoreboard was too expensive for what it did and built his own as his son's 10th-birthday gift - a physical product, not an app. Over months of nights and weekends with AI/the AI and the AI he went from concept to web preview to a parts list and a 3D-printed case screwed into the back; the finished board shows live MLB and NFL scores, pulls his son's own baseball games and practice schedule from GameChanger, runs arcade games, and has a quiet mode that shuts it down after bedtime.
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.