A one-shot plugin for his wife, in a language he does not know
One-shot a SketchUp plugin in Ruby, a language he does not know, for his wife, enabling easy 2D export from SketchUp.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Family
Kids, parents, partners and friends · 72 ideasTrack 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.
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.
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.
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.
My agent checks my kids' Google Classroom and emails them a daily homework plan
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.
The AI watched swimming lessons and booked one for his son the moment a spot opened
The AI monitored swimming lesson availability and automatically booked a suitable lesson for his son when one opened up.
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.
Rebuild my wedding website with AI after the platform locked me out
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.
My agent built an AI club site for my kid to learn from
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.
My daughter talked to the AI to make her own game. It now lives on our Raspberry Pi.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The AI grades his kid's video history well, and the banning hand stays his
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.
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.
Design and order wristbands for our meetup
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The AI’s lottery research for a robotics event took 4 hours of machine and 5 minutes of him
The AI did the robotics event lottery research, scraping, distance and prior-year data work, and filled the spreadsheet; 4 hours wall clock at about 5 minutes of human toil versus several hours before.
He made a personalised book for his daughter’s fourth birthday and printed 25 copies
A father used AI and the AI Images to write and illustrate a personalised book for his daughter’s fourth birthday. The pictures took several attempts to get right, but he ended up with 25 printed copies at £3.32 each and a book that would not otherwise exist.
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.
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.
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
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 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 logs into his child’s school system daily and puts homework on the calendar
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.
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.
Showed an email approval prompt (Allow / Always allow for this recipient
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.