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.
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Hobbies
Making things, learning and having fun · 960 ideasFound gluten-free beer nearby: two good picks but one spot closed for
A reviewer asked the AI to find gluten-free beer nearby and provide the restaurant's phone number. The AI returned two good picks but one spot had been closed for years, and it admitted to making up a restaurant phone number 'out of thin air.' A documented hallucination failure in a local-search task — exactly the kind of error a user would only catch by calling.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI built him a voice chat replacement in Rust in 2 hours, and it runs flawlessly
The AI built a Mumble replacement in Rust from a rough spec in 2 hours; it worked flawlessly on Mac and Windows, he uses it on his LAN, and the AI built a network simulator to fix a latency issue it spotted in logs.
The AI made me a jig for laser etching, ready to slice and print
Six months ago he asked various AI agents to generate 3D print models and they failed badly. This time the AI made him a jig for laser etching and got it ready for slicing and printing.
The AI talked him through fixing a server that crashed every few weeks, in about an hour
The AI, proxying commands through him, diagnosed and fixed in about an hour a box that OOMed and needed rebooting every few weeks.
The AI wrote a runbook of a whole Linux desktop and used it to move to a new laptop in an afternoon
A man used AI to build a full runbook of how his Linux desktop is set up, covering installed software, configs, hacks and workarounds. He then used the runbook to move to a new laptop in one afternoon, and the runbook now keeps itself up to date.
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.
Monitored a crypto wallet via its Xpub every 30 minutes and flagged
The AI derives public addresses from the Xpub (no transfer access) to catch hacks or seed-phrase compromise fast.
The AI got WiFi working on his laptop's new system, at a cost of 6 million tokens
The AI got Omarchy WiFi working on his MacBook, at a cost of 6M tokens.
Had the AI 'Brio' generate an 'Account Management Ops Analyst - Practice Questions'
Cat's agent 'Brio' generated a document titled 'Account Management Ops Analyst - Practice Questions'; she was shown writing 'Interview prep' on a whiteboard alongside 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.