A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Casey Newton's Dot, Kicker, handled a radio-show invitation that conflicted with his schedule, turning it down while he worked on other things. Newton estimated Kicker did about two hours of work in an afternoon for roughly 15 minutes of his effort.
He used the AI API to draft his articles automatically for a week. Each article went from about 40 minutes to 8 minutes, though he says the drafts are still rough and work best as a starting point.
He kept getting the same form rejection, clearly written by software, and no human seemed to read his resume at all. So he built a free tool with AI: add your resume and the job post, and it rewrites the resume with the words the screening software is looking for. Using it, he got two interviews in one week.
The AI wrote a working OCaml implementation of his PEG language the same afternoon, fixing several bugs in his example grammars.
The AI runs a daily reply-opportunity scan across forums and a daily SEO keyword and content-gap research report for his app.
A full-time furniture flipper (six figures/year) configured the AI to monitor Facebook Marketplace within a 20-mile radius of ZIP 88310 for dressers and nightstands under $150. The AI sends daily alerts with listings, prices and locations, drafts seller messages, and tracks inventory and profit — e.g.
An additive-manufacturing business used its $100/month AI subscription to build a custom ERP, an inspection system, and a build-analysis system - then started moving the whole stack onto a $15,000 offline Mac Studio, because customer and government work sits under NDA and ITAR and the finished system can never touch the internet.
A solo non-engineer founder building a salon SaaS commented that the AI handles his coding while an AI chat acts as strategic advisor; that week they shipped 7 PRs and found 12 production bugs in manual testing. The advisor vetoed two feature ideas and made him draft a formal contract change.
He and the AI mapped published datasets and converted them into meshes for Moho depth, basin depth, and two sedimentary basin depths. The work pointed to a tight spot under the South Gate area of LA.
Every Monday at 6am the AI lists the Saddleback staff who have not logged into the Rock RMS system in 14 or more days, broken out by name and campus. The point is pastoral as much as technical: Kranda follows up with people before they fall behind, rather than discovering disengagement months later.
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.