The AI built a home screen widget showing my kid's school lunch menu
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.
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Your place, your car and your pets · 265 ideasMy agent hit a human check on Uber and could not finish the ride
Peter Yang used Duet's Uber ride skill and gave it the Palace of Fine Arts as his destination. Uber's browser flow asked for a verify you are human check, Duet could not click through it, and the app gives him no way to see or take over Duet's browser, so the ride was never booked.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
We built a local family assistant that runs our calendar and reminders
His family of three uses a local assistant called Sadie, built on a home server so their calendar, photos and messages stay off cloud services. Sadie runs their shared calendar, sends location based reminders, answers texts and emails, searches family photos, and sorts household mail, flagging bills and school deadlines.
Watch Autotrader and alert me to mispriced supercars
MindStudio tested an AI monitor that watches Autotrader listings and flags cars priced well under market. Scheduled checks deliver deal alerts to Telegram, and a continuity setting stops it re-alerting on the same listing.
He debloated his TV and replaced its assistant with AI
He debloated his Android TV and replaced Google Assistant with AI.
Measure my space, size the bookshelves, and order them from Home Depot today
The AI worked out bookshelf sizes from the user's space, selected matching units, and ordered them from Home Depot for same-day fulfilment.
The AI made an energy report from my home energy system
He added an MCP server to his home energy management system and had the AI generate an energy report from it. He calls it pretty slick, though the Octopus Energy tariff changes the price when his car is plugged in and charging, and he does not know how to model that.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
I linked the AI to my smart home hub and talk to my house
A Hubitat owner built a free app that connects his home hub to the AI. He asks the AI if the garage door is closed, tells it to set the house to Night mode, and has it write spoken alert rules, like warning him when a window stays open while the heat is on.
I built a Firefox add-on that shows extra data on Funda home listings
He used AI to build a Firefox add-on called FunData for Funda, the Dutch home listings site. It shows CheckJePlek data for each rental or purchase home, plus two map layers with land registry and livability data.
ChoreGig pays his kids in cash on Fridays for chores they claim by phone
He made a pocket money app for his children. Parents post chores with a payout, the kids get them on their phones, and the quickest to tap accept wins the job. The child adds photo evidence, the parents approve it, and the app totals the week's money on a leaderboard, paid in cash on Friday.
He used AI and adb to strip the junk off his Android TV
He connected the AI to his Android TV with adb and took off all the stuff that came preinstalled on it. He says the TV is now left exactly how he wants it.
Agents implemented 6 ways to update a smart device, on real hardware
AI coding agents implemented six ways to update a Matter device on real hardware.
The AI talked me through fixing my boiler. It works now.
Her boiler had stopped heating the water. She sent the AI about 15 pictures step by step, followed its instructions to turn it off, switch a few handles and reset the pressure, and the boiler worked again.
The AI said it turned off my lights. It had not.
Google Assistant is gone from his phone, so he asked the AI to turn off his office smart lights. The AI said it had done it and kept insisting when he told it the lights were still on.
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Identify my discontinued drill battery from a photo and find one on eBay
From a photo, the AI identified the user's discontinued drill battery and found an aftermarket replacement on eBay.
The AI reads my 7 school WhatsApp groups and posts only what is about our daughter
A father set the AI up to read 7 school WhatsApp groups twice a day on school days and post only the items about his daughter into a private chat he shares with his wife. It reads PDFs and images too, and caught his name on a volunteer roster he would have missed.
Every morning my setup tells me when to charge the car and when to run the laundry
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.
The AI modelled his broken microwave handle from photos; the print works perfectly
Gave the AI photos of a broken microwave handle part against a 1-inch grid, it made a 3D model, and his test print works perfectly instead of buying two 30 dollar parts.
$60
The AI turned my designs into 3D files I could print
He needed his designs as 3D files he could print. The AI created the renders in Blender via MCP, then optimized the files for his printer.
He became president of a broke condo association and built the system that pulled it out of debt
As the only financially literate owner, he ended up president of a condo association with negative money in the bank. He fired the management company, then built an owner portal with AI that handles accounting going back years, dues tracking, bills, payments, compliance and vendor records. The association is out of debt, and the whole thing runs on free tier services plus a domain.
I asked the AI to make an agent for my wife’s iMessages and got a watcher
He tried AI on his Mac and asked it to make an agent for his wife’s iMessages. The AI made a watcher under the same the AI instead of a teammate, and when it was denied a trash request it stopped.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Sell my house to friends on an AI-written contract
Mentioned in passing in a thread about an unlisted offer: the sellers' friends bought their house as-is on a contract the buyer had the AI write up - no agents, no lawyers - and the title company told them it was the smoothest deal she had ever handled.
My agent got my USPS shipping label ready to go
Figuring out USPS forms is a headache for this poster, especially for international shipping. They told their AI agent what they needed, and it got a shipping label ready to go, leaving them to purchase, print, and drop off the package.
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.
Research junk removal services and request quotes with my address and photos
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.
The AI revived my decade old smart plugs in five minutes
He remembered some smart plugs more than ten years old that use Bluetooth, and found Home Assistant could talk to them by pretending to be Apple HomeKit, but some functions were missing. He asked the AI to reverse engineer the plugs, and five minutes later they were fully revived with fully local control, with even more controls than HomeKit offered back then.
The AI put the school special days on our family calendar
He had the AI add all the special days from the Pittsburgh Public Schools calendar into the family calendar. It was a win, but the school calendar itself had errors, and he spent 30 minutes working out which day was wrong.
Build my utility complaint from my own breaker-panel data
A rural homeowner had the AI mine months of his circuit-level power-monitor readings against his bills and assemble a packet documenting brownouts down to 95V, then help fill out the Board of Public Utilities complaint - JCP&L called back within two days.
My agent found the fault on my combine that a paid mechanic missed
A farmer's John Deere combine had an electronics fault for days and a paid Deere mechanic could not find it. Working with AI, he built a test suite that read the machine's CanBUS messages and the traces from his oscilloscope, and compared both against a second working combine. They found two faulty controllers and the machine runs again.
The AI helped me unlock port mirroring on my EdgeRouter X
He used AI to test and document the unsupported switch controller in his own EdgeRouter X. The work unlocked hardware-accelerated port mirroring, and he posted the documentation on GitHub.
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.