A father of two walked his house photographing his belongings, including model and serial numbers where he could, and dropped the photos into a folder for the AI. In 20 to 30 minutes it produced a spreadsheet cataloguing the items with descriptions and current replacement values, each with a confidence rating, grouped by room, plus a tab for things needing a second look. He can add photos later and ask for the list to be updated.
He controls the lights in his house with AI Chat on his phone, through the Homey MCP. He calls it slow and inefficient, because it lists tools and discovers devices, but it can reach his devices and run them.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
His corals died but the tank lights still ran a coral schedule. The AI drove a Raspberry Pi over Bluetooth, changed the light and pump schedules, and found the lights had been dimmed to about 35 percent and their clock was 6 and a half hours late, then fixed the time.
He built a home dashboard with AI that pulls a dozen sources into one wall screen for the whole family. It shows the shared calendar, weather warnings, solar and battery levels, car charge and bin days, and it only brings things up when they matter, like bins out tonight or a frost warning.
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.
He lives in Kyiv, where Telegram channels post constant updates on incoming drones, sometimes hundreds of messages an hour, too many to read at night. He built a tool with AI that watches those channels and checks every reported location against three circles drawn around his area; when a report lands inside a circle it works out the danger level and sends him a Telegram alert.
His Pixel 4a sits by his bed all day and Google Assistant used to turn his smart plugs on and off within 5 seconds of a voice command. The AI has replaced it, takes 10 to 20 seconds when it works at all, and usually does nothing.
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The same man took a photo of a clock this morning and asked the AI to buy replacement batteries. The AI identified the clock from the photo, found its instruction manual, worked out which batteries it takes, and ordered them from Amazon.
During a week-long, move-in agent test, the journalist's the AI (Mark) logged into her Facebook, scoured Marketplace for couches, lamps and rugs, drafted and sent seller messages with her approval, and managed the replies. The hunt ended with a real purchase: an AI-sourced dining table.
A user built a custom the AI skill that remote-starts their car, reports EV battery level and monitors charging status from any chat. They published the skill because nobody else had made one for it.
He built a Lego mailbox with a small motorised flag. The AI hooks raise the flag when the AI finishes a task or needs him, and lower it when he writes a new prompt or leaves.
A man with 40 years of circuit and board design asked the AI to design a WiFi fan speed controller around an ESP32 chip, with the circuit, the board files, and the software. The first design took about 15 or 20 minutes. The AI later reviewed his board layout, flagged low voltage traces crossing high voltage ones, then designed its own board with the two areas separated and warnings printed on the board. He bought the parts himself. The boards are on their way and have not been powered up yet.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
He retired his Nest cameras and had the AI (alongside OpenCode) configure Home Assistant and the camera software on the PCs already in his rooms, Linux and Windows alike, so the household computers now double as his in-house camera system, checkable while traveling - no doorbell-cam subscription.
Spent an hour with AI migrating a Home Assistant setup to Tailscale, updating sensors and Pi-hole, and putting it all in one documented git compose file.
He gave an agent his favorite meals, his dietary limits and the food he has on hand. It makes a weekly food plan and a full grocery list, and he tells it over the week which meals he liked.
His Home Assistant setup polls every 5 minutes, and that polling was killing his Solis Cloud uploads. Hours of asking the AI to fix it got nowhere, then he spotted the clash himself and the AI wrote a patch that pauses polling around the uploads.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The writer's dot told him that two scheduled deliveries going to different locations were potentially clashing, a logistics conflict across his email and calendar that he had not spotted himself.
His old Tuneshine display for album art sat unused because it kept losing its connection and depended on a cloud service. The AI identified the display, ran pin tests, and wrote new firmware, and now a small program on his NAS shows album art or a world clock on it.
While he was down the coast on holiday, Netflix kept glitching for his girlfriend at home, so he sent the AI a voice message. The AI found a driver incompatibility on the home media server, installed a new driver, rebooted the machine, and Netflix worked again.