He asked the AI to run his whole grocery shop. It signed into Zepto, built the cart, then price checked the same basket on Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket. The Zepto cart came to 189 rupees, 10 short of free delivery, so following his standing rule of never paying delivery fees it scanned his 24 past Zepto orders, ranked his most reordered staples, and added a 50 rupee Mother Dairy curd cup as filler. Final totals: Zepto 239 rupees with fees waived, Swiggy Instamart 251, BigBasket 289.50. Zepto won and the order was placed, paid with Amazon Pay.
A homeschooling mom posted on Facebook on Oct 20 that she handed the AI (her agent 'Mira') two years of grocery data — all 140 Kroger orders plus her Amazon history, line by line. Mira found her worst leak (cat treats bought 16 times in nine months, at full price 14 times; the subscription price would have saved about $96 a year) and built a categorized lineup assigning every staple to Kroger or Amazon with prices shown.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Amanda Robinson ('The Digital Gal', 3.5K followers) got a notification that the AI wanted to book 'Beeside Del Mar' for 5:30 PM for 3 via OpenTable. The chat showed detailed criteria — seafood-focused, mocktail/cocktail variety, ~$50 per person, cool vibe, Instagrammable but not trendy.
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.
A Chase Sapphire Reserve 'Exclusive Tables' screenshot accompanies a Korean caption: the user remembered the $300 annual dining credit, checked availability, and booked Bestia — a 'primetime reservation' for the following day.
After years of building his own food logging apps and never liking them, he set up an AI as his food logger in about half an hour, and now sends it a voice note, a text or a photo of each meal. The bot works out what he ate, looks up the nutrition numbers and logs it in a Google spreadsheet it made for him, and its guesses are usually right.
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.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Myra Chiasson (98 followers) described the stress of 'what's for dinner' with a picky-eater child plus her own protein goals, and presented her 'mom hack': The AI automatically generates a personalized weekly dinner plan every Sunday at 8 AM, with a new menu and grocery list accounting for dietary restrictions, preferences, and kid-safe foods. On-screen text reinforces 'personalized dinner plan for the week' and 'Stress free dinner FTW.'
With his wife and two kids sick, he used AI connected to his recipe database and Instacart to order the ingredients for a recipe from Safeway by voice. The groceries were at his door in about 30 minutes.
PCMag asked all three agents to find a named risotto recipe, match its ingredients to what a local Wegmans stocks, and load them into Instacart. Once the reviewer linked his Instacart account, the Dot found the recipe, matched the ingredients and filled the cart without a hitch, while the AI needed his password and a login code and added saffron nobody asked for.
Austin of YoMamasTech dragged a photo of his handwritten grocery list into AI, which read the handwriting and built the cart in Instacart at Aldi: ground beef, butter, non-fat plain Greek yogurt and five more items, subtotal $40.33, with checkout left to him in the Instacart app. He then pasted a chili recipe URL and the AI added 21 more ingredients (brown sugar, beef broth, kidney beans among them) to reach $70.72, deliberately skipping the recipe's 2 lbs of ground beef because the handwritten list already covered it.
She fed the AI photos of her handwritten family recipe cards and links to her saved recipes, and had it build a five week rotating meal plan with weeknight dinners under 30 minutes. A scheduled the AI prompt now tells her each night what is cooking. The grocery list the AI made was wrong, so she fixed that part by hand.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Chris William Young (40 followers), juggling a 9-to-5, Ironman 70.3 training, and investing in a climbing gym, showed screen recordings of the AI building DoorDash grocery carts from Jewel-Osco ($130.02) and H Mart ($50.33), noting substitutions and missing items like Thai tea mix, then placing the order for delivery. He explained he avoids DoorDash himself out of exhaustion, and walked through the workflow: prompt, the AI searches memory, takes over the browser to shop, requires user approval befor
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.
He built a meal planning setup for his family around their tastes, his dietary needs and two picky kids. Once a month he counts the freezer, including the random leftovers from bulk meat buys, and the plan works like a factory parts list so shopping quantities come out right. The family wastes much less food, dinner is always ready to be made, and eating out because there is nothing at home has mostly stopped; he still shops by hand because his supermarket has no public way for a tool to fill a cart.
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.
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.
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.
$64at stake
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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.
He gives the AI his shopping list and it compares prices at his two local supermarkets, which sit next to each other, then places a click and collect order with each one holding only the items that are cheapest there.
A reel from the verified 'the AI' brand account (100K followers) has the presenter delegating his personal to-do list: planning three dinners based on fridge contents, budget, and taste preferences, then generating a grocery list for approval before ordering; drafting a refund request email for a damaged desk lamp with the agent set to ask permission before contacting support; auditing subscriptions to identify unused services (Paramount+, Apple storage, LinkedIn Premium) for review and cancellati
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.
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.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
He photographed his pantry and listed everything in his fridge and freezer, and it built three weeks of meal plans to use up as much perishable food as possible. In week four it worked from his grocery store's ad with a budget of $50 to buy as little new food as possible and keep the plan going. He is on month two of this.
Shana Basnight (someone, 6.9K followers) named her AI 'Marigold' and asked for a dad's-birthday restaurant (steak, Inman Park). Marigold suggested Kevin Rathbun Steak, Two Urban Licks, and Il Premio; when the first was closed on Sundays, she offered a backup and, with permission, booked a table for four at Two Urban Licks via OpenTable.
A 10-slide head-to-head test gave the AI and the AI the same job: a table for 4 in downtown Denver, Friday Oct 9 at 7pm, under $40 per person, good vegetarian options — verify availability without booking and draft an invite. The AI checked only OpenTable, declared no bookings and switched restaurants; the AI confirmed via City O' City's own Toast page that a 7pm table was bookable, which the tester verified manually (The AI took ~6 minutes vs the AI’s ~3).
Nutri is a Boston-area meal delivery service whose website and app are cumbersome with screen readers. The reviewer told the AI to delete all prefilled meals and give a numbered list of about 10 at a time; he replies with numbers like 'I want 5 and 8' and the AI updates and finalizes the order on the Nutri website.
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.
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Jenn Farmer (3.3K followers) asked her AI 'Dolly' to plan a College of Charleston Family Weekend (Nov 6-8) near King Street with Friday dinner on Shem Creek. Screen recordings showed Dolly researching, then offering to book NICO Oysters + Seafood via OpenTable — confirmed for 4 on 11/06 at 7:00 PM after a time change — then booking Indaco for 4 on 11/07 at 6:00 PM.
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).
In 'Ways to Use the AI Episode 2', a creator demonstrates his grocery system: he keeps a list in Google Keep, then asks the AI to access his Walmart account, find his most recent milk purchase from his purchase history, and add it to the cart. He reports the AI completed the task, identifying three items in the cart including one he did not recognise.
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.
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.
Whenever he visits a restaurant, the reviewer asks the AI to rebuild its menu as an accessible web page, with each category as an H2 heading and each item as an H3, delivered as a shareable HTTP link he can navigate by headings with a screen reader.
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.
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.
Dylan Heagy photographed a fridge whiteboard and asked the AI to order the grocery list from Sam's Club. Photo-to-cart grocery ordering: the list never gets retyped, it just gets bought.
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.
Someone sent the AI two photos of the office fridge and had it figure out what needed restocking, comparing brands and items across the photos to build the shopping list.
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 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.
The AI predicts grocery restocking from his receipt history, logs into his supermarket weekly, books a delivery slot and adds the items that need restocking; barcode photos add items during the week (fuller sibling telling 50177493 to be rejected as duplicate when reached).
Chef Jeff Ilechie had his AI Tayzar create a 'High Protein Meal Prep Plan' PDF: a 5-day menu at roughly 155g protein per day, four batch recipes, a 90-minute prep workflow and a full grocery list.
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.
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.
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Nutritionist's agent 'WALL-E' pulled 12 ingredients (cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, bell pepper, tomatoes, herbs, garlic, lemon, salt) from her detox-soup recipe, added them to an Amazon Whole Foods cart, and presented checkout review at $30.79 with next-day 5-6pm delivery in Beverly Hills. Delivery was filmed the next morning.
Miguel Sosa (32K followers), a busy student-athlete, created an AI named 'CR7' (cartoon avatar). After telling it he had soccer training the next day, he asked for dinner help; the AI suggested grilled honey chicken with pasta and marinara, produced the ingredients list, and gave step-by-step cooking instructions.
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.
He downloaded a cook's videos and bought her book, then had the AI read the book and format it at 8.5 by 11 inches. He uploaded the formatted book to Amazon for printing, in a listing only he can see.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
Creator someone gave the AI her Florida bucket list. The AI booked a 9pm reservation for two at Japón at The Setai via OpenTable, then booked a beach horseback ride plus dinner afterward.
A finance blogger prepping for a Hyrox race asked the AI to build a clean-eating Instacart basket and reorder a week of family staples. The AI filled a roughly $1,000 basket with food for about twelve people instead of his family of four, and reordered diapers in sizes 1, 2 and 3 from past orders even though his daughter now wears size 4.
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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.
In the same 'Lux' demo, Ashley Graham showed the AI proactively notifying her that she and husband Justin were free Thursday for jazz, suggesting a booking at 'Crazy Pizza,' checking OpenTable availability, and mapping traffic from Maplewood, NJ with advised departure times. The demo covered date-night picks, calendar management, a rescheduled fitting email, and a Marketplace kids'-bike search — positioned as full life management.
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.
Her AI Jazz produced a 7-day, mostly-fish, under-30-minutes meal plan document ('Easy family meals') with named dishes, plus a categorized Walmart Delivery grocery list.
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.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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
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.
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.
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.
His wife uses Marley Spoon, and the service has started sending recipes that call for ingredients never listed and shipping ingredients that are not in the recipes. Its customer service bot refunds them automatically every week.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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 set the AI to check OpenTable every 10 minutes for a restaurant table for 3, using the OpenTable connector to keep token use down. When a slot opened in the morning for the next day, it booked it immediately. He got no confirmation in the chat, but found the booking confirmed in his OpenTable account. The watch used 1.48 million tokens in total.
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 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.
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.
Steve Caldwell built a weekly meal-planning system in Notion on the AI for his household. The roundup reports it saves his family about an hour each week.
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.