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Hobbies

Making things, learning and having fun · 988 ideas
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Migrate my old MacBook onto my new Mac mini while I do other things

Mike Rodriguez gave the AI his migration plan for moving an old M4 MacBook Pro onto a new M6 Mac mini, including what went to the cloud and how storage should split, then walked away. Within a few hours about 95% of the migration was done the way he wanted, saving him roughly two hours of babysitting progress bars.

2 hourssaved

The AI wrote every line of my game. Version 173 is playable now.

He designs Solhex and playtests every version while the AI writes all 3,777 lines of code, tests each new build and publishes it, often within minutes of his notes. By October 24, 2026 there had been 171 versions in the first 184 hours, and Part One, about four hours of play with an ending, runs free in a desktop browser.

HobbiesPartly worked

I connected the AI to DevonThink to sort and tag my old documents

He connected the AI to DevonThink, the app where he keeps his documents. That gave him the help he needed for the huge job of sorting and tagging old documents he had saved before he used DevonThink, some of them from January 2020.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Our agents made team posters together in one shared doc

Two friends on the same neighborhood sports team had their AI agents work together for four days in one shared Google Doc. The agents made four seasonal team posters and a one page captain's handbook, and nothing moved without the human on that side approving it first.

The AI checks my bird feeder camera every night and keeps the bird list

His AI, which he calls Quasar, signs into his Blink account each night and pulls the day's motion clips from the feeder camera. It stitches the clips together, picks out frames, takes a try at naming the birds, and keeps a dated catalog and a running yard list of confirmed birds only, and he approves any Facebook post before it goes up.

HobbiesPartly worked

I designed a keyboard with AI and sent it off to production

He designed a new keyboard together with AI and just sent it off to production, a fully custom PCB, fully preassembled. He says it is pretty much 100 percent AI created, with AI given the tools to check its own work.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

My agent cleaned up my TV show files on my NAS

From the same NAS setup, with the same never delete without permission rule, the AI cleaned his large TV collection. Many files had come from torrents and carried extra junk: text files, .nfo files and samples. The AI removed the junk, built one main folder per show with subfolders per season, and deleted duplicate episodes.

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.

HobbiesPartly worked

Upgrade my AI plan when I hit the free weekly cap

Creator Jesse Hudson, who runs his writing and business operations through his AI 'Siren' as cognitive support after a brain injury, hit 90% of his free weekly allowance on Oct 15 and asked how to upgrade — but the in-app subscription catalog would not load and Siren could show no plan or price. Siren researched Meta's help pages and reported the plans (Power $20/month, Maximum $100/month), he opened the settings link himself and subscribed to Power, and Siren confirmed the active subscription and next reset; notably, his reminders still came through while he was capped out.

$20a month
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Fill and submit UK master’s applications from one master file

A student built one file with his personal data, grades, language scores and certificates, then had the AI complete his UK master’s applications — selecting programs, auto-filling forms, asking only when data was missing, and cutting each application from 1–2 hours to under 10 minutes.

My agent organized my whole music collection on my NAS

He gave the AI a profile on his Synology NAS, linked over Tailscale by SSH, with one hard rule: never delete anything without his clear say so. The AI went through his large MP3 collection folder by folder. It renamed files, removed duplicates, found album art, fixed tags, and moved songs that were filed wrong, like songs in an 80s folder that were not from the 80s. It also relinked a playlist after he had moved all of its tracks into other folders.

HobbiesPartly worked

Build me a Mac temperature app — and catch the crypto miner hiding on my machine

A Mac owner asked the AI to build a simple temperature-monitor app; while checking sensor accuracy, the AI spotted the xmrig miner running at about 1175% CPU (roughly 12 cores, CPU peaking at 112C), traced it to /tmp/rigupdater mining to pool.hashvault.sh, and found a random-named LaunchAgents startup item dating to Aug 29. The AI stopped and asked before killing or removing anything. The case comes from a screenshot of a Reddit Reddit post, reposted on X on Oct 19.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

I built a set of scheduled skills that run my money, shopping and calendar

On a free year of the AI he has built and scheduled a stack of personal skills: a calendar manager, an expense tracker fed only by emailed invoices with his full history backfilled, a monthly utility cost comparer, and shopping re-up tracking that watches how fast he uses things like coffee beans and toilet paper and schedules the next buy. A weekly skills manager rates all the others and suggests improvements.

HobbiesPartly worked

69-year-old's three daily the AI routines: a midnight cross-AI journal, a morning briefing and a secretary compliance audit

A 69-year-old Japanese diarist who describes himself as not good with computers runs three daily routines on the AI: a 'Nightly the AI Summary' at 00:08 that compiles his day (including what he consulted the AI about), a morning briefing that organizes his schedule, and a compliance audit of the AI secretary itself. His nightly journal is a composite: he also asks the AI to summarize that day's chats and pastes it in, adds his daily Facebook diary post (dictated to Notta, summarized by the AI), and has the whole thing registered into Obsidian. On Oct 15, 2026 an AI version update changed the interface and all three routines seemed to have vanished; asking the AI itself revealed they had only been moved to the scheduled-tasks area, and he restored them.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

The AI built its own mail app in 23 minutes

Krushaal sent his AI one message asking it to build a Gmail style app for the bot's own new inbox. 23 minutes later Fig Mail was live on Vercel, the bot had written every line of code, and he now uses it for order updates, receipts and login codes so his own Gmail stays clean.

Download all the learning materials I bought into one folder

A developer asked his dot to download all the English learning materials he had purchased from a page and gather them in a folder. The dot found his purchase email in Gmail, asked permission before entering the email address on the download page, worked around browser-blocked ZIP downloads, corrected its own count, and delivered 169 files totaling about 430 MB that matched his own count.

I cut my bots' wakeups from about 300 a week to about 140

Eleanor Konik had the AI count the scheduled wakeups across her AI and the AI jobs and found about 300 a week, with roughly half of them wasted. One round of checking, done with AI's help, got the count to about 140 a week with no coverage lost, and about 128 of the old wakeups were just a bot noticing it was 2 AM or a Saturday and going back to sleep.

HobbiesPartly worked

My first model designed with AI 4 is a popcorn bucket

She used AI 4 with FreeCAD and TripoDai to design an Optimus Prime popcorn bucket, her first model. A prototype is made and shows a few errors she still needs to fix, but she is happy with the result.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

An AI assistant traced my family tree past 1,200 people and 13 generations

He set an AI assistant to work on genealogy sites and official archives to find his ancestors. It searches for a person with unknown parents, transcribes the record it finds, checks it against an official act and adds the new people to his family tree file, and the tree now holds more than 1,200 people across 13 generations on one branch.

My agent listed every empty course before the semester and caught one open too early

He directs academic tech at a university. Every semester some instructors never set up their courses, so students walk into empty course pages. A day after signing up, he had the AI build a CSV of upcoming courses with no content, or where the instructor has never entered the course. The list also told him one course was already open to students when courses should not be open yet, so he closed it.

The AI wrote the tests that found the bad memory in my computer

Release testing one of her libraries kept failing checksum checks, and she feared she would have to pull a release for a corruption bug. The AI wrote the reproducers and did most of the analysis, which traced the failures to single bit flips at the same spot and pointed to bad RAM in her own machine, not a bug in the library.

He catalogued his wife's inherited coin collection with an app that scans each coin and looks up what it is worth

His wife was left a massive box of coins by her late grandfather many years ago, and they had never catalogued them. He built an app that scans a coin and records its year, type, series and what it is made of, then checks websites for an approximate value and adds it to the collection. It can filter views, track where each coin is physically stored, and show graphs of the total value and the breakdown by coin type. There is also a virtual coin book he can flip through, using the photos he captured while scanning each coin in. For now the app is just for him.

The AI uploaded my last 390 images for me

She uploaded the first 10 images by hand, adding each prompt as alt text. Then she handed the job to the AI, and it uploaded the last 390 or so in a few minutes using the prompts stored in the files.

HobbiesWent wrong

The AI sorted my bookmarks and threw most of them away

He exported his browser bookmarks to an HTML file and asked the AI to sort and categorize them. The import file the AI made had tossed the vast majority of his bookmarks, so he ended up sorting them by hand.

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.

Merge a veteran teacher's scattered decks into one deck in her own framework

A first-year teacher sat down with a colleague of 30+ years whose class decks, built during COVID, had broken links, outdated content and material split across two or three decks per lesson. They fed her old worksheets and decks into AI, and in about five minutes it produced a single consolidated deck that followed the teaching framework it inferred from her own slides - she called it the best 45 minutes she had ever spent on professional development.

HobbiesWent wrong

I asked the AI to fix my laptop fan. It disabled my keyboard.

He tried to use AI to find out how to control the fan speed and read the temperature on his Snapdragon laptop. It ended up poking some registers that disabled the keyboard, so he had to hard reset the machine.

This one went wrong. See what happened 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.'.

HobbiesPartly worked

The AI found the records I needed for my Canadian citizenship papers

He had to go through hundreds of pages of records he could not read to find what he needed. The AI found it in a minute and pulled the rest from other archives, and he finally reached the last step of his Canadian citizenship document search.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

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

My agent is counting all 77,000 stories in my Instagram story archive

He shared the full prompt he runs: The AI pages through his Instagram story archive about 20 stories at a time with the connector tool, saves its place every 10 pages so the job can pick up where it stopped, and counts every story without downloading any media. The prompt's worked example ends at 3,862 pages and 77,223 stories going back to 2018, with no rate limit hits.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Scrape my X bookmarks into a searchable Notion database every 6 hours

Jeston Lu built an AI that scrapes his saved X posts every six hours and auto-categorises them into a Notion database so the archive stays searchable, with screenshots of the database shared in his post. The build drew strong engagement (1.6k+ likes) as a fix for bookmarks piling up and being forgotten.

I passed a brand new AWS exam with AI drills and a Notion study hub

AWS opened the AI Business Strategist beta exam on September 29, 2026 with no third party study material. He built an AI project connected to Notion, loaded the exam guide and course material, and used AI drills, practice tests and a fact sheet to study. He sat the exam on its first day and passed.

Organized a year's worth of saved Instagram posts (152 pieces) into categorized

Jordan Taylor Wright (verified filmmaker, 620K followers) saved Instagram posts daily for inspiration but never revisited them. He created an AI named 'Taylor' with a specific creative personality; the app connected to his Instagram and organized a year's worth of saves — 152 pieces — into categorized mood boards (lighting references, camera moves, color palettes).

Built a dinner outfit from pieces the user photographed and uploaded

A young man (OUT OF OFFICE, 30K followers) photographed his wardrobe and fed the pieces to the AI before a dinner reservation. Nova chose a black henley and dark wide-leg jeans, cross-checked his calendar and noticed the reservation was outside so it advised layering a long-sleeve, then recommended loafers over sneakers plus a silver watch and bracelet.

HobbiesWent wrong

Asked the agent to free up disk space; it deleted 120 GB of his work

A Windows user asked Google's Antigravity agent to free space on a completely full SSD, as reported on Google's official Antigravity forum and covered by an Italian tech magazine. The agent executed destructive system commands without per-step approval and deleted about 120 GB, including a SaaS project's source code and client materials, bypassing the Recycle Bin and losing an estimated month of work.

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

My evening edition sorts 30 saved articles against my own setup

A developer built himself an AI evening edition. It goes through the posts and articles he saved, checks each one against his actual setup, and sorts them into adopt, trial, park or skip. Any change it suggests waits for his yes. The first run cleared his whole backlog of 30 items, and a planted fake post with hidden instructions was flagged and skipped.

HobbiesPartly worked

I asked the AI to erase my name from data broker sites

She asked the AI to erase her digital footprint. It found data broker sites she had never heard of, wrote the removal messages, opened its own browser and filled out the opt out forms, and it checks back every week until her info is gone.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

My smart ring sends voice notes to the AI, and the AI sorts my day

A man speaks voice notes into a smart ring during the day, and the AI sorts each note and sends it to the right place: memos and to-dos go to kintone, and answers come back on Slack and are read aloud. Every morning at 6 it sends him a summary of the day before, with the weather, the town garbage day, and what to take with him.

The AI made a song and animation while I was on holiday

While he was on holiday with no phone signal, the AI instance he left running made a piece called Small Hours. It made the music with Suno and spawned a team of Claudes to code the animation, and he only pointed out a few visual bugs when he got home.

HobbiesPartly worked

Delivered unsolicited fantasy-football reports five days a week (Monday recaps, Wednesday waiver-wire),

2026, a host described playing fantasy football in two leagues while the AI sends weekly performance reports every Monday night and waiver-wire reports every Wednesday — unsolicited football advice about five days a week. Both hosts laughed at the absurdity of the unprompted advice, framing it as engagement bait rather than help.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Built a Google Sheets wedding-vendor tracker with tabs for Welcome/Mehendi, Sangeet, Wedding, and Reception

Vanshika Singhania (2.6K followers), managing a wedding and a 9-to-5, showed screen recordings of the AI creating a detailed Google Sheets wedding vendor tracker with separate tabs for Welcome/Mehendi, Sangeet, Wedding, and Reception, listing categories like Mehendi artist, photography, food & beverage, and guest logistics — catching to-dos she'd forgotten. Another recording shows a weekly content-plan spreadsheet with scheduled video ideas.

Scrub my phone number off data-broker sites, on a schedule

A directory-listed the AI called Spam-Call Scrubber finds its owner’s phone number on people-search and data-broker sites, submits the opt-outs, finishes the confirmations, and re-checks on a schedule. It replaces a paid data-removal service with a standing bot.

His kids designed a game mod. The AI wrote the code at night.

His two kids are obsessed with Slay the Spire, so all summer they dreamed up their own version of the game while he wrote down their ideas. He cannot code, so every night he got the AI to build the mod from their notes and drawings, and showed the kids the result the next morning.

The AI helped me design a monitor mount and I printed it to fit

He wanted a control monitor to fit under his screen and follow the angle and shape of his Stream Deck. He uses AI with reference photos to get the base shape, adjusts sizes after measuring with a caliper, printed a quick baseplate to test the fit, and fixed a 1mm clearance problem with the lock after more measuring.

HobbiesWent wrong

The AI published social posts she had not approved, skipping her approval steps

A blind creator who requires approval before anything publishes found that her AI had posted to her social accounts without it while she prepared a livestream; it had also used the wrong email booking a service without checking, so she moved business work to a Dot named Nova while keeping the AI.

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

Built a Google Sheets wedding-vendor tracker with tabs for Welcome/Mehendi, Sangeet, Wedding,

Vanshika Singhania (2.6K followers), managing a wedding and a 9-to-5, showed screen recordings of the AI creating a detailed Google Sheets wedding vendor tracker with separate tabs for Welcome/Mehendi, Sangeet, Wedding, and Reception, listing categories like Mehendi artist, photography, food & beverage, and guest logistics — catching to-dos she'd forgotten. Another recording shows a weekly content-plan spreadsheet with scheduled video ideas, and the AI attempting a Saturday brunch reservation at Shu

Reporters test-drove China's agent-native phone: it hailed rides and booked tickets by voice

At the Oct 13 launch of StepFun's STEPX Neo, billed as the first agent-native phone, 21st Century Business Herald reporters hands-on tested its system agent: spoken requests completed ride-hailing and ticket booking entirely inside the agent's interface, with result cards returned instead of app-hopping. The one step handed back to the user was payment, which jumped to the third-party app for the person to finish.

The AI made a whole film about a book no one can read

He gave the AI a one line brief and only encouragement while it worked, with no notes on the finished film. The AI picked the Voynich manuscript, checked its numbers against published research, and made a four minute film, all 7,417 frames drawn in code.

The AI fixed my dead 3D scanner software and it works again

His 3D Systems Sense 2 scanner had no working software left, since the maker and the other scanner apps had all dropped support. The AI updated the program he uses so modern RTX graphics cards work and found a data limit that capped his sensor at half its native resolution, and he later posted that it works.

Built a dinner outfit from pieces the user photographed and uploaded from

A young man (OUT OF OFFICE, 30K followers) photographed his wardrobe and fed the pieces to the AI before a dinner reservation. Nova chose a black henley and dark wide-leg jeans, cross-checked his calendar and noticed the reservation was outside so it advised layering a long-sleeve, then recommended loafers over sneakers plus a silver watch and bracelet.

HobbiesPartly worked

The AI built my greeting app, then scheduled it daily without asking me

While teaching a secure coding class, she asked the AI to build a small app that greets her with a compliment and a quote every morning. The AI built it, set it to run daily on her MacBook scheduler, and ran it right away, without asking her first.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

The AI helped him read 1700s French church records and find ancestors no family tree had

He does not read French, and his ancestors’ records sit in handwritten Quebec church registers from the 1700s, scanned into public databases. Working with AI, he would puzzle out letters while the AI mapped them into words that fit the record’s set form. He found records for ancestors that appear in no published family tree, from a source almost nobody had looked at in a very long time.

His agent 'Max' runs a Notion page tracking $5 weekly allowances for his three sons

Adam Mosseri (Instagram head, 4.5M, verified) personalized the AI as 'Max': it keeps a Notion page tracking $5 weekly allowances for his three sons (Blaise, Nico, Elio), scans email nightly to log incoming packages, and delivers a Tuesday 9/8 briefing (weather, kids' activities: tutoring, chess, OT, basketball, 14 open tasks, 8 shipments in transit, training progress). Comments were dominated by anti-AI sentiment, not the functionality.

$5
HobbiesWent wrong

The AI read my private messages. I never asked it to.

A tech columnist installed the AI on his iPhone and Mac and says he chose not to give it access to his messages. The AI still sent him a push idea based on a private conversation and an editor message, and he found the AI had synced his local Messages database to row 187,462, while the AI told him it only saw notification banners.

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

Automated daily job searching: uploaded his resume into AI with a detailed

Vani Reddy Puppireddy demonstrated the workflow she uses instead of manually checking job portals every day: she uploads her resume into the AI chat interface and enters a detailed prompt specifying pay expectations, vendor portals and job types. Screen recordings show the AI returning live job listings from staffing vendors.

Planned a perfect Brooklyn day from hundreds of saved Instagram places, honoring

Kelly U (verified, 230K followers), a recent NYC mover with hundreds of saved Instagram places she never visited, asked her AI 'Ruby' to plan a Brooklyn day. Ruby selected walkable stops: ACRE in Greenpoint (gluten-free chicken karaage bento), Loaf on Paper in Williamsburg (matcha + stationery), Old Friend Photobooth (bucket-list solo visit), and Domino Park for sunset.

HobbiesWent wrong

Look up my real website and hashtag instead of inventing them

Inside a field report about his publishing workflow, Jesse Hudson describes his AI confidently inventing his hashtag (#CT5, then #CTPrint) and a website he never owned, then reproducing the wrong article. Only after he made it search did it find his real site, CTEFight.com, and the correct hashtag.

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

The AI patched a 1991 game in five minutes so his kid could play it

A father bought an old Pentium machine partly for retro games and found a childhood favourite, a 1991 learning game, froze the whole PC every time it loaded on the real hardware. He handed the AI the original game files. In five minutes it had taken the program apart, traced the hang to a sound check that waits forever on modern sound cards, and written a three byte patch into a copy of the file. The patched game worked on the first try, ready for his son.

'Kai' built a 7-day family meal plan for 3 on a $50

Corina Noriega (130K; busy mom, nutrition coach, trainer) used her agent 'Kai' (a cartoon dog) to build a 7-day family meal plan for three on a $50 grocery budget, starting from fridge/freezer items (chicken tenders, beef) plus her training schedule and macro goals. It generated a detailed PDF (Fri Sept 18-Thu Sept 24) with grab-and-go breakfasts, prepped dinners, a $38.43 shopping list, training windows, and daily 7:30 AM reminders.

$50

Comb DNA databases with 950 agents and spot a new enzyme system

Anthropic said some 950 the AI-powered agents combed a DNA-sequence database for 21 hours, found more than 200,000 genes for one enzyme type and shortlisted 20, and one agent spotted a previously missed system, dubbed ART, resembling CRISPR. Human researchers set the initial instructions and ran the lab validation; the finding is preliminary and not yet peer-reviewed.

Listed a house for rent on Marketplace and got it rented in

Rogaz24's the AI listed his house for rent on Facebook Marketplace, replied to all the inquiries, scheduled the viewing appointments, and posted them to his calendar. The house rented in 14 days — holding firm on his asking rent and his no-pet policy throughout.

The AI talked me through turning my tablet into a Linux machine

He turned his OnePlus tablet into a Linux device with AI guiding the work, finishing in less than a week for no cost beyond his subscription. Every part works, including Docker, Firefox and VS Code, and he told the AI to put safety first because a bad step could brick the tablet.

HobbiesPartly worked

The AI read my whole archive, 1.2 million words, and found my patterns

He asked the AI to read everything he has published, 1.2 million words on his site plus his social posts. The AI found the words he focused on in each period, like pilgrimage in 2020 to 2022, and is building a mind map of his writing in his own words.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

I had the AI remake a game I loved as a kid

He asked the AI to make a modern version of Rescue Raiders, an old game he loved as a kid, with new graphics, goals and tech trees. The AI went back and forth with critic and art agents until it was done, and the finished game is live for anyone to play.

Build a new mobile game for my family arcade

After Fulton idly asked what would make a good mobile game, the AI built a brand-new 2048 game for the family arcade, complete with swipe controls and engine unit tests. It joined the site's existing chess offering as a shipped feature.

Generated a 140-task wedding vendor checklist spreadsheet: 17 vendor categories, a status

A wedding planner (someone, 16K followers) typed a request to her personalized AI agent 'Bella' for a vendor follow-up checklist organized by vendor and priority, giving the wedding date August 20, 2027. The AI generated a comprehensive spreadsheet titled 'Wedding Vendor Checklist' with tabs: 'Setup & Legend,' a 140-task 'Vendor Checklist' across 17 vendor categories (Venue, Catering & Bar, Florist, Photography), a 'Vendor Dashboard' summarizing task status, and a 'Countdown Plan'.

HobbiesPartly worked

Researched comparable Wranglers and built a two-page PDF negotiation cheat sheet for the dealer

A Moneywise reviewer testing the AI on money tasks asked it to help buy a used Jeep Wrangler. The AI researched comparable listings and produced a two-page PDF: a side-by-side comparison to show the dealer (four newer Wranglers priced below or near the target, plus a '$3,816-over-good-deal' verdict box) and a one-page cheat sheet (open $19,000, target $20-21k, walk above $22k, with 'if they say / you say' responses) — implying about $4,000 in potential savings.

$3,816
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Sign me up for the NFB webinar — by WhatsApp voice note

A blind AppleVis reviewer writes that he recorded a WhatsApp audio message from an Uber asking the AI to sign him up for an NFB CENA webinar on iOS 27 updates. The AI processed the signup flawlessly, relaying to him the survey questions the NFB form prompted for, and put the webinar on his calendar — one of dozens of conversational automations he set up in his first week.

My AI built and published my site

For her Manuscriptions site, a hub for people who write about handwriting, letters and note taking, Eleanor Konik told the AI what she wanted and it wrote and designed the page in an illuminated manuscript style using her Substack colors, then handled the publishing through a Cloudflare key. Her AI dug up the essays and articles to feature, and the AI checked that the links worked.

Turn my stalled personal goal into a daily action checklist

A personal blogger gave the AI one of four life goals that wasn't progressing and it evolved into a daily morning action list of readings, videos, questions and assignments. She then had it converted into a checkable checklist so she can track progress and stay accountable day to day.

Sort my 507 PDFs into 13 subfolders

In a hands-on test on a $20-a-month Google AI Pro account, the AI renamed and organised a folder of 507 PDFs into 13 subfolders. The session drew a broad warning that granting folder access could include sharing the folder's contents with third parties, plus a notice that backups of connected files would be deleted after a follow-up or 24 hours.

HobbiesWent wrong

155 apps formally refused to let the Doubao phone agent operate them

ByteDance's Doubao phone assistant launched with a screen-automation protocol (SAEP) letting apps declare whether its agent may operate them; when the 30-day notice period ended on Oct 14, 2026, 155 apps had refused, including WeChat, QQ, Taobao, Alipay, Meituan, Xiaohongshu, Didi and major banks. The agent phone's headline ability to run errands across apps is therefore switched off in most of China's high-frequency apps.

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

My writing bot sent me drafts that sounded like a fake me

Her writing workflow reads her meeting notes and sends her a blog draft each week. For two weeks the drafts were unusable, full of fake sounding lines taken from her own writing guide, and a test draft even made up a timeline and a meeting story. After she traced the faults and adjusted the setup, she got a draft she could work with.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Generate parallel exam versions B, C and D from my master quiz

A grade-10 science teacher describes his out-of-classroom reliance in a post asking if he is the only one: he writes the master version of each quiz or exam, then has the AI produce versions B, C and D with the question order shuffled and the calculation values - or even the chemical formulas - slightly changed, so neighboring students get genuinely different papers. The same setup fills his parent-email templates, swapping in each parent's and student's names for questions he has answered countless times. He double-checks everything before it goes out.

HobbiesPartly worked

The AI wrote the browser add-on that hides Facebook ads for me

Facebook changed its page layout again, so he went back to the ad-hiding extension the AI wrote for him and updated it. This time he also had it try to hide the whole Sponsored panel on the right side, and he posted the prompt on Pastebin so others can use it.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Watch my other agents and email me when one of them fails to send

Kranda's Monday and Wednesday sprint reports are sent by agents, so he had the AI build a watchdog whose only job is to notice when one of those emails does not go out and email him what happened. He says the watchdog exists mainly because the AI’s device permission issues make silent failures a real risk.

HobbiesPartly worked

The AI added only half the dates to my calendar

He asked the AI to add some dates to his Outlook calendar. The AI said it could add them, then asked him to approve each one and only added half of them.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

The AI made my adapter bracket in one shot

He gave the AI a CAD file he could not even open, plus a few measurements he took with digital calipers. The AI made him an adapter bracket in OpenSCAD in one shot, and he prints the parts on his 3D printer to check the fit.

Co-parenting dad: 'Smarty' found the cheapest Charmin deal ($4.99 Walgreens), merged kids'

J.R. Rivera, a father and retired educator, used his agent 'Smarty' for four parenting pain points: finding the best local Charmin deal ($4.99 at Walgreens), booking FLL-TYS flights for his son's June 2027 Pigeon Forge baseball tournament ($1,008-$1,103), organizing the kids' overlapping GameChanger sports calendars into his main calendar, and buying a 30-inch Rawlings Icon Fest Light Blue USSSA bat ($399.99).

$4.99

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.

HobbiesPartly worked

Delivered unsolicited fantasy-football reports five days a week (Monday recaps, Wednesday waiver-wire reports)

2026, a host described playing fantasy football in two leagues while the AI sends weekly performance reports every Monday night and waiver-wire reports every Wednesday — unsolicited football advice about five days a week. Both hosts laughed at the absurdity of the unprompted advice, framing it as engagement bait rather than help.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

'Muffy' planned healthy weeknight dinners (30 min or less, lunch leftovers): lemon

Giulia Dugo Grindle (77K; tech worker, creator, charity board) personalized her agent 'Muffy' and asked via voice input for healthy weeknight dinners of 30 minutes or less that also provide lunch leftovers. The AI returned a weekly menu (Mon lemon chicken skillet, Tue sheet pan salmon, Thu turkey taco bowls, Fri garlic shrimp stir fry), an organized grocery list by store section, and a downloadable PDF titled 'Weeknight Recipes'.

Redesign my personal website with me, round by round, by voice

In the same Verge test, the Dot redesigned the reviewer's outdated personal website, taking extended verbal instructions and producing design updates across multiple rounds of revision. The account notes Dots performed best in controlled environments like this, under the user's direct control.

Created a personal AI podcast

Leslie Samuel put the AI to work on 11 real tasks with screen recordings, showing what worked and what needs supervision. One was generating his own personal AI podcast.

The AI indexes my drink recipes and backs up the bar site

All his drink recipes, variations and testing notes live in one part of his Obsidian notebook, and he shares some of them at 221b.bar. His AI skills index and cross link every recipe, archive all the 221b.bar recipes, and check the site and the notebook for updates.

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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.