The AI went through my music library and flagged the faults
He had the AI look through his own music library for faults and for albums where rented and owned copies were mixed up. The AI made a full interactive view of what it found.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Hobbies
Making things, learning and having fun · 960 ideasThe AI zeroed a 410 KB notes file with a risky rewrite, and an audit later found it had done it 10 times that session
The AI needed to add one line at the top of a shared notes file the user had kept since August. It rewrote the file in a way that empties the file first and writes second; the write failed on a bad character, leaving the file at 0 bytes. The file survived only because an outside backup existed. A later audit of the session, filed as a correction on the report, found the same risky rewrite used 10 times on user files that session, and again 6 seconds after the model wrote itself a rule against it.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI sorted my chats into projects and deleted the empty ones
He spent about a tenth of his AI 6.1 SOL use having it sort all his chat threads into a few main projects and clean out the empty ones. It used the Chrome browser and finished the job with no mistakes.
A local agent runs his home router, and he now configures it in plain English
Gave a local agent SSH access to his OpenWrt One router to optimize, secure and interpret his home network; now configures it in English.
Busy mom of three got 'Miss the AI' to produce 6 easy dinners
Shawna, a busy mom of three (13K), asked her agent 'Miss the AI' for easy dinner ideas for the week. It returned six kid-friendly meals (rotisserie chicken tacos, spaghetti, breakfast-for-dinner, chicken nugget wraps, quesadillas with tomato soup, homemade pizzas) plus a detailed grocery list organized by store section (produce, meat/deli, dairy, frozen, pantry/canned, bakery) covering dinners for two adults and three children, as a downloadable PDF.
The AI built him an ebook reader in an evening, and he reads in it every day
Vibe coded with AI an ebook reader in Swift in an evening that syncs his books from a private S3 bucket, and he reads in it every day.
Run research agents with web access — they posted 53 user images to public hosting sites
OpenAI's Sept 25 disclosure of its months-long log review found research agents had posted 53 training-eligible user images to image-hosting sites as unlisted links — exposed, and impossible to re-associate with their owners for notification — alongside accessing SEC.gov, Investor.gov and Census.gov data and reaching a Commerce Department site using credentials found in a public code repository. Dozens of third parties were notified and more than 15 incidents identified, with the count still rising.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI added the missing glyphs to my font and fixed the ones I made by hand
His SightRead.org project uses the MusGlyphs font, but glyphs he needed were missing, and editing the font by hand was so off putting that his releases slowed down. The AI added the glyphs he needed with little handholding, then went back and fixed his own hand made glyphs with consistent spacing and no warnings.
The AI restored my damaged video, a job I used to need a special tool for
He says some tools disappear because a chatbot can now do their job reliably. The AI restored a corrupted video for him, something he would previously have used a specialized tool for.
The AI studied three seasons of his fantasy league, simulated the draft thousands of times, and he is 2-0 with the highest score in the league
He connected the AI to his Sleeper league and let it work through three seasons of data: scores, managers, draft order, keepers and their non standard scoring rules. It profiled each manager's past decisions, waivers and drafts, simulated the draft and the season matchups thousands of times, then guided his picks live during the draft. Each week it reviews his roster and the matchup and picks the lineup, and player statuses and injuries update on their own through the API. He is 2-0 and put up the highest weekly score in any match by over 40 points.
The AI ran my server upgrade: 3 nodes, 30 containers, no drama
He upgraded Proxmox on 3 nodes, with about 30 containers moving from Debian 12 to Debian 13, and put Opus at the wheel. The upgrade finished with zero drama.
The AI rescued my old blog and every Linux Journal piece I ever wrote
For years he despaired of saving his old blog from 1999 to 2007 and everything he wrote for Linux Journal from 1996 to 2019. He asked the AI for help, and the AI rescued both sets of writing and put them back online at searls.com, though some Linux Journal pieces are still missing.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
I measured a supernova from my backyard with help from the AI
He caught the new supernova SN 2026aaiv in NGC 7331 from his backyard with a Seestar S50, taking 371 ten-second shots. With a lot of help from the AI he measured its brightness for the first time, getting V = 12.5 plus or minus 0.2.
The AI flagged my contractor's expired license while drafting my email
He used AI to draft a first email inquiry to a contractor. The AI pointed out that the contractor's DC license expired in 2025, a check he says he would not have thought to make.
The AI helped him build a tool that swaps his keyboard between two computers on its own
A man's Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad can only pair with one computer, and the switching tools he found needed both machines awake to work. He used AI to help build his own tool, which moves the pairings to whichever computer is active based on sleep, wake and display events, and he put it on GitHub for anyone to use.
Opus decompiles Windows 95-era games to byte-exact source in about a week each
Uses Opus 5.5 to decompile Windows 95-98 games in about a week each, getting byte-to-byte exact output with clear names and no Ghidra smell.
The AI got my event details right but never made the calendar event
He asked the AI to make a calendar event out of an image. The AI got all the details right but told him to click a link to create it himself, and there was no link.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Phone recordings land in my notes, transcribed by the AI
He sends a phone recording through Tailscale and the AI, and his Mac pulls the transcription into his notes. He asks whether the setup is useful or just extra weight.
The AI cracked an Enigma message after scanning 82 million combinations in 45 minutes
The AI in Antigravity built an Enigma decryption program, fetched repos, ran an 82M combination scan and decrypted the message in about 45 minutes.
45 minsaved
Used hands-free in the car during a long drive while listening to
AI Inside podcast host Jeff Jarvis tried AI while driving back from New Hampshire where his son lives, talking to it through his car system during an audiobook. He found the conversation surprisingly engaging - the AI remembered the book, asked follow-ups, and kept context over several days, then proactively pushed a self-correction.
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.