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.
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.
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.
He added a 10 foot Oogie Boogie figure next to Jack and worried strong winds would damage it. He had the AI build a script that watches wind speeds at the airport and turns off the WiFi switch running the fan when the wind passes a set limit.
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 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.
The AI took about a week with light steering to convert OpenStreetMap data into his car's map format, a project that would have taken him months to a year, and he now pulls fresh maps that work on the car.
His AI skill was built from his earlier renovation sessions and loads on its own whenever he mentions the house, the contractor or an invoice. It carries the project context, the key contract clauses and where every file lives, holds a step by step invoice verification checklist, and drafts his emails in a language that is not his own, with a pre-send check that every number matches the project register.
His new hardware device was faulty and the community had spent days looking for a fix that did not need a replacement. He plugged it into his computer, asked the AI to fix it, went to dinner, and came back to find it fixed.