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 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.
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 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.
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.
A man had a poor quality home plan from the previous owner. For about $1 of his usage quota, the AI converted the drawing into 3D, changed the room he wanted to redo, made a few visual options, built a shopping list from his local store with budgets, and put it all on a local web page. He says the same job done the normal way would take a package of apps, trained people and at least $10,000.
He gave the AI SSH access to his Proxmox homelab and his UniFi router and told it to run a security audit. It found a lot of holes to patch, work that would have meant juggling more than 12 terminals and containers by hand.
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.
He gave the AI 10MB of architectural plans. 35 minutes later it gave back a good interactive 3D walkthrough of the house, while the AI did the same job with several layout mistakes.
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.