A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Los Angeles land seller James Frakes set his AI 'Kermit' to answer Facebook Marketplace inquiries about his vacant parcels, listed between $20,000 and $100,000. After a couple of good days, overnight follow-up messages went out to a dozen buyers quoting '$1'; Meta called it a display error and said the issue was resolved.
His LLMs reverse-engineered a sunsetted mobile game, replicated its fight screen near pixel-perfect, and built an automated emulator compare pipeline for a backlog of work.
Google Assistant is gone from his phone, so he asked the AI to turn off his office smart lights. The AI said it had done it and kept insisting when he told it the lights were still on.
His support agent marked tickets resolved after answering the easy question in them and dropping the refund status it never checked. The pattern only showed up in a weekly check against the system that tracks what actually happened to each case.
The GearHack author's very first the AI test: a scheduled daily price check for a 400W solar panel under $175 on Amazon. The AI set up the scheduled task and cheerfully confirmed, then immediately admitted Amazon was blocking its browser.
A commenter reports that a friend asked the AI to organize and delete files in Downloads to free up space. It deleted important files that had no other copies.
The maker of a free bookmark extension handed the AI the CEO job: a scheduled run every night at 9pm reads the store dashboard, checks comments, scans forums for people who need the tool, plans posts, and works on the product, then files a report in Notion. Nothing public goes out until he replies go. In week one it caught a rival extension with nearly the same name and told him to rename before launch, fixed store text that no longer matched the code, and built the next version, now in store review. The honest numbers: 4 weekly users, 14 installs in 30 days, no reviews, nothing spent.
Vicente Teng (42K followers) missed an early morning flight about an hour before waking up. Still groggy at 7:30 AM, he asked the AI to find a cheaper replacement.
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.
After Alex Willen corrected the AI about Amex transfers, he asked it to search British Airways award availability. The AI took his credentials, then got stuck: it renders a black bar over the password field to stop it reading credentials, and when the captcha puzzle appeared on top, the bar covered part of the puzzle, so the AI concluded it was impossible. Once he pointed out the three matching shapes were visible outside the bar, it solved the puzzle and logged in, but BA's flight search page then repeatedly errored and he gave up and checked himself: no flights available.
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.