A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
The New York Times' own Daily podcast episode on Tan's two-week the AI test (Oct 6, 2026) summarizes: 'the AI, Meta's A.I. agent, helped a Times reporter with dental insurance, dinner reservations and more.' Dinner reservations were among the delegated real-world tasks in the review.
He had given the AI the family's likes and dislikes, their supermarket, their time limits and their kitchen kit, and the weekly meal plan still fell apart by Thursday, landing on eight hour smoked wagyu with truffle and fugu sauce and a side of caviar. It hit the macro targets and missed everything that mattered. He does the plan himself again.
Plant-based nutritionist Natalie Golba typed a request to her AI 'WALL-E' in iMessage; it pulled 12 ingredients (cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, bell pepper, tomato, cilantro, dill, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, salt) from her detox-soup recipe into an Amazon Whole Foods cart totaling $30.79, and footage shows the groceries delivered the next day.
A weekly scheduled plan writes the week's dinners into their Google Calendar, trained on the family's dietary needs, restrictions and preferences. It checks the local weather forecast and the calendar itself, so a hot day gets burgers on the grill, a cool night gets chili, and travel days or evening commitments get easy low stress meals. They eat out far less now.
Palona built Cali BBQ owner Shawn Walchef an AI phone agent from his own voice, sampled from his YouTube videos, and it now answers the restaurant's phone as him. On Father's Day it fielded 150 calls without any staff stepping away from service, and the restaurant posted its biggest sales day ever at $26,000, up 18 percent on the year before.
A man built a receipt store from his emails, and the AI uses it to predict what his household will run out of based on how often he buys each item and when he last bought it. Every week the AI logs into his supermarket site, books a delivery slot, and adds the items that need restocking. During the week he sends a photo of a barcode when something runs out and the AI adds it to the shop.
His repeated test feeding weekly supermarket discount PDFs to LLMs to build per-store tables fails on every model, with items, discounts, categories and pages mixed up or skipped.
Michelle Solomon (recipes/homemaking, 9.5K) typed her weekly meal plan for four into AI, which returned a consolidated grocery list organized by produce, meat/seafood, etc., keeping the total under $200 using store-brand picks. She approved the AI logging into her grocery account; the groceries arrived and she cooked glazed chicken breasts.
Laura Legge (32K followers) challenged herself to feed a family of four on $30/week using pantry items (salmon, frozen mixed veggies, turkey breast, oils, seasonings). The 'the AI Atlas' app returned a seven-dinner plan with recipes, a missing-items grocery list, and a browser price comparison across Walmart, Stater Bros., and ALDI for zip code 92880 — Walmart won at $29.66.
A man gave the AI access to his Ocado account and digital copies of all his cookbooks. The AI built a database of his recipes, picks five for the week inside his budget including delivery, puts the ingredients in his basket and booked the delivery slot on its own. It also tells him which book and page each recipe comes from.
Creator someone asked the AI to research and book a Burmese restaurant for the weekend via OpenTable, with her approval. Cuisine-specific restaurant booking with an approval gate — the delegation pattern working as designed.
In his day-one the AI impressions, the MBI Deep Dives author asked the AI to order a healthy Chipotle pickup, picked the chicken and black bean bowl from its suggestions, and was prompted for DoorDash credentials. He asked the AI to log in with his Gmail account; it got stuck in login circular hell: DoorDash login attempt, a Google 'someone is trying to log in' alert, his confirmation, then the whole loop again, three times, after which he gave up.
Self-described non-cook (just learned what a skillet is) named her agent 'MOTY' (Mother of the Year). It surfaced a sheet-pan dinner recipe from her saved Instagram posts, built a grocery list from ingredients she already had, placed the grocery order pending her approval, and later gave her cooking-timing reminders while she cooked.
Answering a what do you use it for thread, he says he had the AI take his grocery list and check the deals at his two stores. It worked through the trade offs: Kroger had a sale on ice cream but Sam's Club was far cheaper in bulk, while Kroger carried many more flavors. He had told it his rules on name brands versus generics, size variations, and coupons that stack with the sales. Result a few minutes before he posted: it saved a third of what the order would have cost at Kroger.
TheCleaningChannel's the AI 'Foodie' plans meals around her family's favorite foods and allergies and builds the grocery list in Instacart. The order is left ready for checkout with pickup or delivery options; nothing was purchased in the video.
His AI Fred collects recipes from his Instagram Saves into the Kyle app and keeps the collection up to date; the reel shows the organized collection with named recipes.
Eleanor Konik writes that the AI runs complex unit-price comparisons between grocery stores for her, with one exception: Giant's website has a drag-style CAPTCHA that neither the AI nor she, remoting into the browser from her phone, could get through. The comparison workflow works elsewhere; Giant remains a hard wall.
The AI handles the family's weekly grocery order. It knows their usual items, picks 3 of their 10 approved fruits based on what is on sale that week, and texts him the final list and total for approval before it orders.
A user set up an AI food team under his chief-of-staff bot: a Meal Organiser that knows the lunches and dinners he likes, a Shopper that fills his grocery cart, and a Cooking Bot that walks him through each meal. He says the shopping takes under 3 minutes versus about an hour at the shops or 30 minutes online, with meals cooked in under 20 minutes; he checks out himself.
Corina Noriega (130K followers), a busy mom, nutrition coach, and trainer, demonstrated the AI’s assistant 'Kai' (cartoon dog). She entered family of three, $50 grocery budget, fridge/freezer contents (chicken tenders, beef), training schedule, and macro goals; Kai generated a detailed PDF plan covering Friday Sept 18 to Thursday Sept 24 with grab-and-go breakfasts, prepped dinners, a $38.43 shopping list, training windows, and recipes.
Creator someone asked the AI to book a restaurant for nine people at Laila in Bay Ridge and plan a multi-island Hawaii trip. Group dining plus a complex multi-leg trip in one delegation.
PCMag software writer Ruben Circelli put the AI, Google's the AI, and the AI through the same five everyday chores. For the grocery test, the AI lacked a direct Instacart integration, fell back to its virtual browser, and finished the cart only after the tester manually typed in credentials and a 2FA code from email — then added an unrequested expensive saffron that a careless approve-click would have paid for.
Shawna (13K followers), a mom of three, used her AI 'Miss the AI' to reduce mental load. The screen-recorded chat returned six kid-friendly meals (rotisserie chicken tacos, spaghetti, breakfast-for-dinner, chicken nugget wraps, quesadillas with tomato soup, homemade pizzas), then a detailed grocery list organized by store section covering all dinners for two adults and three children, delivered as a downloadable PDF titled 'Easy Dinner Grocery List.'
After years of spreadsheets and a vibe-coded app, a parent built an AI system (reported on X, via WhatAgentsCanDo, Oct 7) that maintains the family recipe library in Markdown, prints a weekly plan of about 15 meals, and produces a section-grouped shopping list. The list is pasted into AI to fill Instacart, with checkout still human; the bot template is shared for reuse.
The AI wrote a spec, got it reviewed and built a v1 of a new feature for his meal-prep app before he got home from errands.
A creator had the AI map his household's staple basket, then price it at every store within a two-store, 20-minute-drive rule. Sam's Club plus Aldi came out about $32 per basket cheaper — roughly $600 a year — with itemised trade-offs.
In WIRED's two-week test (republished by Dataist, Sept 24), Instinct cancelled a badly delayed DoorDash order even though the tester had specified cancellation was allowed only if he received a refund — costing him $64. Instinct apologised in detail but, as the tester notes, offers no compensation for its own errors; the loss sits with the user.
A Dexterity Solutions presenter demonstrating the AI walks through user examples including the AI booking a dinner reservation for two at Osteria Lina via browser automation. The same reel cites tweets from users William Geronco, Reezy, and Dan Lopgnow and references an Engadget article plus a live prompt database at muse.every-ai.com (1,000+ prompts).
MAXX (5.9K) explains she never saves recipes, only likes them. The AI scanned her liked food reels, identified 'meals you'd actually make' (butter chicken, salmon bowl, pasta), and built a 'GROCERY ORDER' cart (chicken + spices, cream + tomato, rice + herbs, naan) ready for approval.
A man's system reads his grocery receipts from email and predicts which items will need restocking, building his shopping list on its own. When he is ready, the AI logs into his online grocery shop, adds the items and books the delivery slot.
The image shows a digital confirmation screen in Vietnamese ('Congratulations! You have successfully booked!') for Cat & Mouse at 37B Pham Ngoc Thach, Phuong Xuan Hoa, Ho Chi Minh City.
A man told Android the AI to add etouffe to his shopping list. The AI added the word toothache to the list instead.
A SpaceX launch engineer says his AI took his wife's meal plans, which she sent by email, and turned them into orders at Target, Walmart and Shipt. The same post lists it as one of the jobs the bot finished that week.
A man subscribes to a meal delivery service but its web app is slow and he kept forgetting to pick the next week’s meals, ending up with defaults he did not want. He now has the AI crawl through the app weekly and bring him the options he cares about, based on his dietary preferences.
Each week the system plans meals from his own recipe notes and what is left over, builds the shopping list, and adds it to his Aldi cart through the store's system, flagging anything out of stock. He schedules the pickup and pays in the app himself.
His agent knows his family's usual orders at their regular places. He says one word and dinner is handled. The agent places the order he has already taught it, with no menu reading or form filling from him.
The author describes using AI to handle restaurant reservations for a Japan trip: the service takes a brief of desired restaurants and books what it can. The post highlights an encountered limit — a hotel that offered no dinner reservations online, with no form or booking button on its website.
A CATCHTABLE reservation confirmation email for Eatanic Garden (party of 2, 6:00 PM KST) accompanies a Korean caption: the author successfully booked the notoriously difficult-to-reserve restaurant by Chef Son Jongwon, calling it the best birthday ever. Comments confirm a November 2026 birthday; demand spiked after the chef's Netflix cooking-show appearance.
His household setup sends him, his wife and the kids the week's meal choices to vote on. He scans pantry barcodes with his phone every few weeks to keep the inventory current. After the vote, a list is built from the recipes and weekly staples: The AI shops it through the Kroger API while the AI covers Walmart and Food Lion looking for cheaper items. He reviews the picks, adjusts, and schedules pickup at whichever store is cheapest for each part. The setup saves the family $20 to $30 a week.
He asked the AI to go through all of his saved Instagram videos and create a recipe book from the recipes in them. The AI built him a recipe app holding the recipes. It also tagged the videos that did not have full ingredients or instructions available, so he knows which ones are incomplete.
Parker Pannell showed the AI booking a Thai restaurant via OpenTable alongside the $150 suit purchase, $295 in found subscriptions, and drafted email replies. He framed the day as checking off a completed goal with a companion at the restaurant, emphasizing the AI’s calendar and Instagram integration and its ability to act with or without approval.
Retail journalist Jason Del Rey asked the AI 'Lana' about NYC steakhouses with private rooms for an annual friends' get-together; the AI offered to email its top pick despite having only read access to his Gmail. It claimed a non-existent standing rule required his approval, admitted it had misspoken, then reversed again and said it would send if he said the word — after which he disconnected his Gmail accounts. His post of the exchange drew almost 95,000 views on X.
He set up a message bus between his server, his desktop and his laptop. He makes the menu for the week on the server, the ingredients get sent to the desktop, and the laptop places the Walmart order for pickup after work. He checks the order on his phone before pickup to make sure it did not add staples like aluminum foil by mistake, and he says it works pretty well.
A dad of two under two steered the AI to build Forkcast, a weekly meal-planning and calorie-tracking web app, because existing apps plan only a day at a time. It generates his grocery list from the week's plan and imports recipes from photos and labels for his 90-day weight-loss challenge.
He is a software product manager who cannot code. His app GoodFinds turns restaurant recommendations from people you trust, chefs, publications, influencers and friends, into a live map, and it is out on the App Store. The AI wrote all the code. He also had it build the data pipeline behind the app, which pulls venues out of influencer posts and chef interviews and matches them against Google Places, and a monitor that watches food subreddits and pings him on Telegram when a thread is worth replying to.
Natalie Golba (verified, 290K followers) introduced her AI 'WALL-E,' explaining it changed her business. Screen recordings show her chatting in iMessage: WALL-E pulled 12 ingredients from her detox-soup recipe (cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, red bell pepper, roma tomato, cilantro, dill, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, salt), added them to an Amazon Whole Foods cart, and presented a $30.79 checkout for delivery the next day 5-6 PM in Beverly Hills.
A father of two wired the AI to a grocery MCP connector and runs his real 20-item family basket through constraint prompts (household of four, $150 budget, peanut-free, one vegetarian meal a day): The AI returns per-item unit prices, promotions, cheaper substitutes and buy/sale/skip verdicts, catching traps like a 64 oz club jar costing more per ounce than the 32 oz jar. Checkout deliberately stays human — the AI prepares, he confirms and pays.
Seany (verified, 7.9M followers) spent a day exploring 'the coolest and most viral restaurants in LA' with his AI 'Locca' (a fox avatar). Locca suggested Baltaire in Brentwood for its viral tableside cinnamon-roll brunch; Seany booked Sunday Sep 13 at 10:30 AM through the app, visited, tried caviar for the first time, and called the cinnamon roll 'the greatest dessert I've EVER had.' Locca also picked lunch (Faregrounds, Beverly Hills) and dessert (ChocoDip LA, North Hollywood) spots he
He had it sign in to his Costco account and work out how often they buy each thing and which items they stock up on when they are on sale, so it now writes the family shopping list and sends it to his wife for edits. At Vons it signs in and loads the cart itself; he only checks out and picks a pickup time.
An AI user runs the agent on a headless home server with his DoorDash and email credentials stored in 1Password. The AI logs into DoorDash with a skill it built itself and chats with support reps, and the user says it now gets refunds issued with no issue where DoorDash had turned stingy with him.
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.