The AI set up his hallway lights and motion routine from a plain description
The AI set up a complex Home Assistant routine with lights and motion sensors from a description, working when he walks past the sensor.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
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Your place, your car and your pets · 265 ideasFind a U-Haul lot that actually has a truck for my move
A Scientific American journalist spending a week with AI (Mark) and OpenAI's Dots (Sam) needed a moving truck. Her own search found no 10-foot trucks at the nearby U-Haul lot. Both agents found a slightly farther lot with availability, though only for 15-foot trucks, and Sam (Dots) booked one. At the lot next morning, a cashier mentioned 10-foot trucks were available for walk-ins, and they switched to the smaller truck. (Cross-agent event; the booking was executed by Dots.)
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
I photographed a clock and my agent ordered the right batteries for it
The same man took a photo of a clock this morning and asked the AI to buy replacement batteries. The AI identified the clock from the photo, found its instruction manual, worked out which batteries it takes, and ordered them from Amazon.
He photographed his whole house and the AI built his fire insurance list
A father of two walked his house photographing his belongings, including model and serial numbers where he could, and dropped the photos into a folder for the AI. In 20 to 30 minutes it produced a spreadsheet cataloguing the items with descriptions and current replacement values, each with a confidence rating, grouped by room, plus a tab for things needing a second look. He can add photos later and ask for the list to be updated.
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.
A local model lives in his smart home, answering voice questions about his solar and battery
His local LLM runs permanently as a Home Assistant agent with agentic access to his sensors, answering voice queries about his solar and battery data and creating automations.
I used AI to build a chronology of my life and ancestry. 9,200 entries.
She used AI to create a chronology of her life and her ancestry with about 9,200 entries. She says she can base a memoir, a biography, or a family tree on it, and that the AI is good at coordinating the data even if it cannot write the book.
The AI flashed his router with open firmware, running the exploit itself
The AI helped flash his router with OpenWrt, including running an exploit itself and instructing the UART steps to load the binary permanently.
Sell my car end to end, from listing to licensing paperwork
The AI sold the user's car end to end: listing it, handling buyers, collecting CarMax and Carvana quotes, and preparing the licensing paperwork.
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.
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.