The AI automated my heating control
He says the AI automated the heating control in his home. The post tags his heat pump and his Home Assistant setup.
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Your place, your car and your pets · 265 ideasThe 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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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.
He can't code. The AI built the plugin that switches his server.
He built a Homebridge plugin with AI that lets him turn his server on and off from Apple HomeKit for free. He says he does not know the first thing about coding.
My agent plans my meals each week and writes the grocery list
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.
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.
Set up a spare Android phone as the agent's own device: The AI
The open-source 'burner' project gives the AI a real spare Android phone (Android 11+). The agent uses the phone's apps exactly like a human would — opening them, tapping, typing, scrolling — and sends the user screenshots, extending its reach to marketplaces and shopping apps with no website or API.
The AI built a simple phone dialer for my dad, who has Alzheimer's
No app fit what his father needed, so the AI wrote a bare bones dialer in about an hour. It only shows accept and reject buttons, and he says it is perfect.
Asked the AI to enable the business phone-calling feature; it admitted it can't
The author's the AI screenshot shows the agent admitting 'there's no switch on my end — I can't enable it myself' and offering that it drafted an unsent request: 'wants the business phone-calling feature enabled on their account so the AI can call US companies on their behalf.'
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I told the AI to change the picture on my Samsung TV. It did.
He told the AI to scan his home network for his Samsung Frame TV and replace the picture in its art mode. The AI found the TV and swapped the picture.
The AI built our family dashboard. It only shows the bins on bin night.
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.
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.
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 drew a whole two-story house in AutoCAD in 88.6 seconds
The AI ran a script that drives AutoCAD and drew a two-story house: 524 elements in 88.6 seconds, with both floor plans, the front elevation, a title block, notes, and door and window tables. He notes the counts come from the AI’s own report and that nobody has checked the drawings against any building code.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Run an 8-bot crew to haggle my car purchase down $4,200
A buyer ran an eight-bot the AI crew for his car purchase: over nine days a SCOUT bot watched 1,412 listings, a VALUER bot built a price curve, and a HAGGLE bot sent 11 messages to the dealer. The dealer came down $4,200.
$4,200one time
The AI built my app for printing giant letters on A4 paper
He had the AI generate a JavaScript app that makes label style images and prints very large letters on A4 paper with a monochrome laser printer. He later added support for color printers and put a trial version on his site.
The AI keeps our household TV ledger and flags shows we will like
A couple keep a shared spreadsheet of shows coming soon, being watched, finished and dropped, plus their thoughts on each one. The AI reads and writes the sheet, adds picks from a list of autumn shows with reasons why they would like them, and will tell them when a show is out.
School prints go in Slack. Our family calendar fills itself.
A parent of three was copying school, cram school and nursery dates from paper prints, LINE and email into Google Calendar by hand, and nearly missed a field trip lunch. He built Hanamaru: the family posts a photo of a print in Slack, the AI pulls out the dates, and it registers them on the right child's calendar, asking in the thread first when it is not sure.
Order my Starbucks by voice while the car drives itself
Vancouver Tesla owner Devin Olsen used AI in his car to order Starbucks while Full Self-Driving drove, confirming the drink and total by voice before the AI placed the order for pickup on arrival. He described it as the first time the car felt like it could run an errand with him.
Agent 'Tay' planned a birthday party in an 8-page printable plan
Her AI Tay produced an 8-page printable birthday party plan ('Shine Like a Star') with a $700 budget breakdown; she approved it and Tay set three calendar reminders.
I stopped writing YAML. My home agent builds my automations now.
After three months with Home Assistant OpenCode and the free Big Pickle agent, a homeowner says he has written no YAML at all. He asks in plain words and it builds his dashboards and automations, like a goodnight routine that turns off downstairs lights, locks the front door and sets the thermostat, and it found the old guest mode condition that was blocking one automation.
I had the AI turn my ISP box into an access point
He had the AI find a way into his ISP device and change its settings. The AI turned it into a wireless access point with 802.11r, added an access point section to the control panel, and turned off the old ISP's updates and telemetry.
Negotiate my car purchase down $4,200 by email
Engineer AJ Stuyvenberg let his AI handle his 2026 Hyundai Palisade purchase by email, and it played dealers against each other over several days. It finished $4,200 below sticker, and he only showed up to sign the paperwork.
$4,200
My bot got tire quotes, paid, and booked the install
In the same week as his treadmill buy, a SpaceX launch engineer says his AI got several quotes for new car tires, paid for them, and scheduled the install. No prices or shop names were shown.
My AI writes the change log for my home server cluster
His AI creates journal entries on its own for his Proxmox VE server cluster. The entries work as the change log for his home lab.
The AI told me to pull a breaker out of my panel right away
He was researching new circuits for a heat pump he is putting in at home, and the AI urged him to remove one specific 60 amp breaker from his electrical panel right away, even though that breaker had given him no trouble. He took the advice and says it saved his house and probably his life.
The AI helped me build a Linux driver for my family film negatives
After his mother died he inherited a box of family film negatives and bought a Plustek 8200i scanner, then found its new chip had no Linux support. The AI helped him capture the Windows driver traffic and build a working SANE driver. Within a few hours he had his first good scan, and days later a near perfect driver with infrared dust removal.
The AI helped me set up my router to block ads
He had given up on setting up his router to block ads because the troubleshooting took more effort than he had. Working with AI agent, he got it set up.
After hours of trying, the AI wrote the phone app I needed
He spent hours trying to set up a phone for a man with Alzheimer's and could not get it right. Then the AI wrote the app he needed.
A photo of a clock was enough for his agent to find the odd battery it needed and order it
A man's clock needed a battery that was not a standard size, and the compartment needed a screwdriver to open. He took a photo of the clock and sent it to the AI, which worked out what battery the clock takes and ordered it from Amazon.
My cat feeder clips cost $0 a month now instead of $5
His cat feeder camera charged $5 a month to store motion clips. He had the AI reverse engineer the feed login so his home server could pull the video, spot the cats, cut clips, save them to R2, and play them in an iOS app, all for $0 a month.
$5a month
He 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.
Booked a locksmith through a cal.com link; the user forgot the appointment
The author lost house keys and asked the AI to find locksmiths. One responded with a cal.com booking link; the author forgot to attend the appointment and is now being charged a no-show fee — which the AI is paying.
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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.
List my house for rent, answer inquiries, and fill it in 14 days at asking rent
The AI listed the user's house on Facebook Marketplace, answered renter inquiries, scheduled viewings, and the home rented in 14 days at the full asking rent.
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.
Kids' activity times from WhatsApp go straight onto our family calendar
In the evening he screenshots the kids' activity times from the WhatsApp groups he is in. The AI puts them on the family calendar for him.
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.
The AI set up his Halloween lawn ornaments in Home Assistant in 5 minutes
The AI via MCP built a Home Assistant automation for Halloween lawn ornaments in 5 minutes, with a dashboard override button, and it ran.
The AI fixed my reef tank lights. They had been dimmed to 35 percent for months.
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.
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.