The AI can check my reef tank lights and pumps, but it cannot change them
He built an MCP server that lets the AI check on his reef tank's lights and pumps. It is read only, because he does not trust the AI or himself with the fish.
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Your place, your car and your pets · 265 ideasHe built a free tool that picks the right drawer insert and writes the cut list
After measuring 17 kitchen drawers by hand and still cutting one insert wrong, he built a free tool with AI. You snap photos of a drawer, enter five measurements, and it checks 46 Rev-A-Shelf insert sizes, picks the top three fits, and gives the exact cut sizes.
My bot found the broken part in my dryer, ordered it, and talked me through the fix
His dryer broke and he asked the AI for help instead of calling a repair company. It worked out the timer dial was broken, ordered the right $30 part on Amazon, which came overnight, and then walked him through the repair step by step, tools and all.
$200
Automated grocery shopping, cleaned up her email, identified items eligible for refunds,
Creator Arlicia Jones describes the AI automating her grocery shopping, saving money, cleaning up her email, identifying refund-eligible items, and building a working automated bot. She promotes the service with a referral code (ND6YC6).
Make my Canon photo printer work with Linux
A commenter in a hardware reverse-engineering thread says he had the AI develop a working Bluetooth CUPS driver for his Canon Zoemini 2 mini photo printer. Canon only supports the printer from smartphones, so the driver made it usable from his Linux machine.
It found why my baby's pediatrician appointment was invisible and fixed the calendar sync
A new dad, baby born the week before, found his phone was syncing the wrong Family calendar, so the pediatrician appointment did not show on his side. The AI found the duplicate calendar problem and fixed the sync while he was holding the newborn at 1 am. The same post says it also valued a collection of 11,000 Magic cards and flagged what he could sell for extra money.
The AI designed a replacement bottle cap and the 3D print works perfectly
His young daughter lost the small cap from a water bottle she likes a lot. He asked the AI to design a replacement, printed it in 3D, and says it works perfectly.
I replaced Google Assistant with my own agent on all my devices
He replaced Google Assistant with an OpenCode setup running GPT Live, connected to all the devices on his mesh. Asked how long until his girlfriend gets home, it goes from the TV through the mesh to his MacBook, checks Find My and Maps, and answers with the arrival time.
The AI extended his heating control system, now running a year as native thermostats
Used the AI to extend a local minisplit control system; in use for a year and showing as native thermostats.
I used AI to build a piano game for my nephew. He loved it.
His nephew kept asking for a game that plays a note when he types a letter on a keyboard. He used AI to build it and put it online, and his nephew loved it.
An agent drove his CAD tool from a screenshot and made a printable self-watering cat bin
Astra, driving Fusion from a screenshot, made a parameterized version of a self-watering cat grass bin in one shot and reworked it for printability.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
A Lego mailbox flag tells me when the AI finishes a task
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.
An agent set up his 100 home sensors and his pepper harvest was his biggest yet
A man let an agent live on his home network and finally get his hundred or so sensors and smart devices configured and talking to each other. This year he set up garden sensors with its help, tied soil, rain and sunlight readings into automated watering, and had by far the largest hot pepper harvest he has ever had.
His discount monitor saved about $2,000 on his renovation project
A man doing a home renovation uses a discount monitor alongside shopping list alerts and 3D models of the project. He says the monitor on its own saved him about $2,000 on the renovation.
$2,000one time
Negotiate my car purchase by emailing competing dealers
A case-study carousel describes buyer Advaith Sridhar having an AI agent negotiate a car purchase over email, pitting dealers against each other. It saved $2,102 off sticker — a premium model at a base-car price — with no in-person haggling.
$2,102
My agent reruns my used car search every morning and cuts cars that sold
He set up saved searches on Cars.com, Carvana and CarMax with his makes, models, price, year and features, and favorited cars on each. The AI merged them into one list, checked price guidance, mileage, consumer reports, recalls and reliability, named his ten best and ten worst, and removed the bottom ten from his favorites. They repeated the rounds until the list was tight, then refined by color and features. He test drove two cars from the list. While he was out, the AI checked the stock of two dealerships he drove past, just from him naming the brands nearby, and found one more match. Every morning it reruns the searches, removing cars that sold and adding new ones.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI set up his whole 3D printing hobby and runs the printer from plain English
A new 3D printing fan who did not want to learn the software first had the AI help pick a printer it could drive through its API, then build a small home server between the AI and the machine. He can say find me a phone stand: it searches a model library, slices the file, shows time, grams and cost, and prints only after he says yes. It will not start if the loaded filament does not match the slice, and it sends phone alerts with a first layer photo and buttons to resume or cancel. His partner can request prints through a chat page, which he approves. A firmware update broke the camera setup and the AI found and fixed it.
The AI brought my old album art display back to life
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.
AI did my dad's VA benefits work, saved $10K in legal fees
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.
$10,000
An AI one-liner fixed his home integration's restart bug; he keeps the fork himself now
AI fixed a Home Assistant integration restart bug with a one-liner that works for him, and now maintains his personal fork with the patch against upstream.
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.