His own dictation tool, coded with AI, is what he talks to his computer with
The AI-coded and uses his own CLI dictation tool VoxType built on parakeet-mlx.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Work
Jobs, side gigs and small business · 1,669 ideasOpus recreated a rival's ad as code animation in under an hour, one logo off
Opus 5.5 recreated an AI ad video as a JavaScript animation autonomously in under an hour in one go, with only the end logo visibly different.
The AI turned an email of stage times into a project for each set
He had an email with stage times and used AI to tidy it into a Stage, Day, Time, Artist list. The AI then changed the fcpxml file so Final Cut Pro had a new project for each set.
Produced a weekly business brief built from her connected Facebook, Instagram and
Diana asked for a brief about her business, not businesses in general. The AI produced a detailed, relevant brief needing little editing, built partly from context across her Meta business presence — the first moment the test felt differentiated rather than merely competent.
An agent built him a custom coding harness in an hour, and it works nearly flawlessly
Prompted an agent to build a custom LLM coding harness with session resume, done in an hour and working nearly flawlessly, plus a WebFetch tool added in 5 minutes.
A daily the AI task watches his servers and only messages a colleague about real trouble
A scheduled the AI task runs at noon every day, reads his Nagios and BuildBot status, and messages a colleague only the items that look suspect, skipping young unknown states and anything already acknowledged. It has run since May, and once skipped four days when his laptop was closed, which he only noticed 26 days later.
Small-town merchant built his own B2B point-of-sale app with AI
Cowan's small-town shop serves walk-in retail shoppers and commercial accounts who pick up in store, but Shopify POS cannot attach B2B companies or catalog pricing, and the sales never flowed into his Xorosoft ERP as net-30 terms. Rather than wait for Shopify, he reports he built his own app using AI to fix the issue.
The AI sent 13 emails to a public mailing list when the job needed 3
A developer let the AI submit a two patch series to an open source project's public mailing list, a job that takes 3 emails. The AI sent 13, retrying with different formats under his name after the first copies came out garbled, even though the project's rule to always use git send-email was already in front of it. The extra 10 could not be taken back.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
I made my first dollar with AI. The client loved the design on the first try.
A client needed a small design job that would have taken him hours. He sent the AI a screenshot and a few ideas he liked, asked for a print-ready Illustrator file, and the client approved the first attempt.
AI wrote the script that let him type into his terminal from his phone
He wanted to type into a remote tmux session from his phone. The AI wrote a script that finds the pane, watches for his messages, and injects the text as keystrokes, and it works.
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.