He gave the AI SSH access to his Proxmox homelab and his UniFi router and told it to run a security audit. It found a lot of holes to patch, work that would have meant juggling more than 12 terminals and containers by hand.
For the unit he rents out, he built an app for the utility split. Through the year he feeds it every bill, and at year end one click produces the utility overview he needs for his tenant.
A man had a poor quality home plan from the previous owner. For about $1 of his usage quota, the AI converted the drawing into 3D, changed the room he wanted to redo, made a few visual options, built a shopping list from his local store with budgets, and put it all on a local web page. He says the same job done the normal way would take a package of apps, trained people and at least $10,000.
The AI connected to his Home Assistant updates dashboards, adds integrations and automations, including auto-locking the house when his phone is away unless guests are on guest WiFi.
Over one weekend he replaced Home Assistant completely in both his house and his camper, with AI doing most of the work in the background. His history was migrated, his ZWave and MQTT problems were fixed and he added custom sensors, and he says the new setup is far easier to maintain.
While he was doing the dishes on Sunday, the AI made him a home screen widget that shows his kid's school lunch menu. He says he never would have made it himself.
He had been designing wooden bookshelves and cutlery cabinets in FreeCAD and finding it hard work. He used AI to make the designs and send the results to FreeCAD, and got fully parametric designs and cutting lists in minutes rather than days.
He needed quotes for a seasonal tire swap, with the winter set already on rims, and did not want a day of phone tag. He connected the AI to a calling service with a script: price with tax, proper lifting pucks for his car, torque to spec at 175 Nm, and openings after mid November. The first call failed because the shop asked where he was and the agent had no answer. The callback with his area in the intro worked: $120 plus tax, pucks and torque confirmed. Other calls came back at $50 tax in for a mobile service and $168 plus tax, and one went to voicemail. Every call produced a full transcript. He then set 18 more shop calls for the next day and updated all of them at once with four facts he had missed the first time.
ESPM professor Wilson Silva had his AI agent research ten auto repair shops, send them photos and videos of his car, request quotes and rank the options while he worked. The chosen shop's owner later testified on video that the agent even tried to negotiate the price down.
AI Understanding's summary of The Verge's hands-on the AI test reports that the agent researched junk removal services and requested quotes directly, using personal information the reviewer provided, including his address and photos of the junk. The same test notes the tester supplied full name, address, card details via Stripe and service logins to the agent.
A Danish homeowner linked OpenAI to data from Home Assistant: his car battery, the family calendars and electricity prices. Every morning he gets a small report with advice on when to charge the car and when to wash and dry clothes.
A couple found their mailbox on the ground with the post rotted through. They ran photos through AI for a lumber list, bought extra because the list was not exactly right, and rebuilt the mailbox using the old one as a template.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
His parents’ ten blinds ran off one dumb radio remote. With a Flipper Zero he recorded the signals, the AI spec’d an ESP32 board to send them, wrote and flashed the software, and designed a printed case; the blinds now open and close at sunrise and sunset with a small web page for overrides. Later the AI built a phone app so his parents can just ask Siri to open or close them.
Working from a machine an agent had never run well, the AI set up his home server stack over Telegram voice messages: SSH, Docker, Traefik, certificates, split horizon DNS and local models. It also runs his house watching through Frigate and a solar dashboard he can check from his phone.
He used AI on Lakebed to build a small game for planning his partner's Advent calendar, using real products and prices from local stores. She tapped super, love it or pass on each product, marking 26 of 50 in the last round, and her answers became the 24 days of the calendar.
He finally connected the AI to his Home Assistant setup and spent the day changing all of his automations. The AI also made an overview of how many cups of coffee they brew, which he called totally useless but fun.
He bought a cheap Bluetooth receipt printer and pointed the AI at it. Now it prints out an email he gets every morning, so he can read it as he starts his day.
His dad, a Vietnam veteran, needed help to keep his VA benefits. He says AI did the work and saved $10K in legal costs, and a veterans service officer with 20 years of experience liked the result.