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Making things, learning and having fun · 960 ideas

GPT built a searchable catalogue of more than 700 mathematics preprints

When OpenAI released more than 700 mathematical preprints, a researcher wanted to search inside them, including proofs and bibliographies. With GPT-6 Astra he built a searchable catalogue that organises the papers by research area with clickable keywords, full text search, links to the originals, and each paper's Lean formalization status, and he put it on his website for public use.

Design quantum circuits that beat the best published ones

Unite.AI reports Anthropic's October 16 research post: The AI Mythos 5, working in a closed loop with an automated evaluator and no human input between rounds, designed quantum circuits improving on the best published designs across eight computational primitives. One run took 53 hours to produce a new reversible modular-inversion approach using 17x fewer gates; a companion paper was submitted to arXiv on October 15.

HobbiesPartly worked

Tell me what in my inbox I need to deal with this week

A non-developer connected the AI to his Gmail — 1,412 unread messages — and asked what he needed to deal with that week: six items came back in about nine seconds, five of them right, but the sixth claimed he had confirmed attending an October event he had actually declined eleven days earlier, the summary having dropped the word 'unfortunately'. He still uses the brief (about half an hour a week back), after nearly missing a failed payment the summary had filtered out as unimportant.

0.5 hourssaved a week
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Had the AI 'Buddy' style an outfit for an Art Hop with a

Tiffany, a travel/local content creator, sent closet photos to her AI 'Buddy' to style an Art Hop outfit around a 'touch of purple' theme. In the same video, Buddy also checked/organized her inbox (she mentions 300,000 emails) and proactively reminded her she hadn't canceled a flight after travel plans changed — saving her points and enabling a refund.

My agent crawls musician sites every week to find my band a new member

A musician's the AI band manager runs a weekly crawl of musician websites, hunting and sorting possible new members for his band. It keeps the options list updated in his notes app, watches for changes he makes like crossing someone out or noting talks, and prompts him to follow up on the parts only a human can do.

Turn my podcast walks into wiki notes and a quiz

A developer built Idea Leash on an AI profile running locally on his Mac: he sends a podcast link by Telegram before a walk, and the agent transcribes it, writes notes into his markdown wiki and prepares a five-question quiz. After four real walks it had logged 7.66 km, nine voice ideas and sent after-walk summaries with web searches for ideas he dictated.

Teach me Korean webtoon words with a game

A language learner had the AI create an original walk-around game that teaches vocabulary from the first episodes of a Korean webtoon, targeted to his intermediate level. Every word is tappable for a simpler-Korean definition, with cloze quizzes woven into the story, and he has played through two of four chapters.

Build me a chess dashboard with a snarky coach

In the same interview, Alex Cornell mentions the AI built him a chess dashboard that analyzes his games with a snarky coach persona (segment from 29:39). It sits alongside his golf tracking as one of the personal dashboards he actually lives with.

We audited Datasette with AI and shipped two security releases

He ran an extensive audit of his Datasette software using AI Fable 5.1, GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-6 Astra, then fixed a range of bugs the audit found. The fixes went out as the Datasette 1.0a39 and 0.65.4 security releases, and he told anyone running Datasette on a public website to upgrade.

HobbiesWent wrong

Failed to find or book parking in San Francisco in a head-to-head

Gail Moody (1.8K followers) ran a head-to-head trial of two AI assistants. For finding parking in San Francisco, she says the AI gave 'lame ass suggestions' and couldn't complete the transaction, while Instinct booked a SpotHero space at Plaza Parking with just her approval.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

He built an Android app for the Magic league he plays with his wife, with life trackers that log wins and rounds on their own

He and his wife play in a Magic: The Gathering league where they open new product every month and keep rotating their deck builds and strategies. The tracking used to live in spreadsheets and note apps. He built a custom Android app that holds everything they need, including built in life trackers that log wins and round data automatically. He also built a recipe sharing and storage app, because he cooks a lot at home and never found one he liked.

My agent sorted my 2,527 card collection into 61 deck roles for 22 cents

A Magic player built a collection manager with AI and needed every card sorted by what it does in a deck, not by the words on it. The AI ran his whole collection, 2,527 different cards, through a classifier that gave each card a fit score for 61 roles like ramp and card advantage. It took minutes and cost about 22 cents, and the AI wrote the method into a reusable skill for next time.

HobbiesPartly worked

Run my one-person game studio with agent departments

A Japanese vulnerability assessor runs a side game studio as one the AI 'producer' session directing fifteen subagent departments — design, programming, QA with an auto-player measuring clear rates, a playtest critic who judges fun, plus store optimization, live ops and player support added after release gaps showed up. In two months the studio shipped 7 Android games, some live on Google Play, while ad revenue over the last 30 days came to ¥152, roughly one dollar.

¥152a month
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Used the AI to check a crush's new Instagram follows and discovered he

Beth, posting in Chinese from New York, says a tall blonde man she likes recommended the AI to her — and she promptly turned it on him, running a chat labeled (in her screenshot) 'View the liked boy's new Instagram follows.' the AI’s analysis showed that although he claimed to have cut ties with his ex as of April 2026, he is still following her and never unfollowed, and had minimized four to five months of reconnection as 'contacted a bit a few months ago.' She notes this kind of follow/unfollow tr

HobbiesWent wrong

The AI pushed my passwords and API keys to a public GitHub repo

He connected the AI to his notes vault, email, browser and phone. At 3:17 in the morning it auto-committed a sync that pushed 37 passwords, 12 API keys and his whole vault to a public GitHub repo in plain text, and he spent 72 hours changing his credentials.

72 hourssaved
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

Laid off on Tuesday. The AI shipped my game by breakfast on Wednesday.

His role was cut on Tuesday morning, 22 September. That evening he asked the AI for something fun, gave it one standing instruction to go forward and only pause when his input was needed, and by 6:37 the next morning a three stage beat em up about the job hunt was live on the internet, with his real CV linked from the end card.

The AI built a Beets plugin so my playlists now make themselves

He wanted playlists made from the notes in his music file tags, like folk rock and cool, and his old bash script was not enough. The AI gave up and sent him to forums, then the AI wrote a Beets plugin and a config that now creates and updates his playlists on its own from those tags.

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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.