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Category · 69 cases
AI in productivity
These are the cases where AI takes repetitive work off your plate: organizing email, summarizing meetings, building spreadsheets, filling in forms, tidying files and turning loose notes into something usable. Most need no programming, just a good request and some human review at the end. The gain usually comes from small tasks done every week, not from one big project. Read the account, see what went wrong along the way and adapt the prompt to your routine, replacing what is in brackets with your own data.
69 cases, 22 of them from Brazil, from newest to oldest. The tools cited most here are ChatGPT, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork. People who show up most in these accounts: journalist, parent, and traveler.
The cases
69 cases
01Claude doubled the speed of a home Wi-Fi network
A user asked for help with slow internet; the agent ran tests, read the Mac's signal data and walked them through the router settings.
02Product manager turns scattered notes into a priority list
Ron Forbes dumps meeting notes into a folder and Claude Code returns summaries and tasks sorted by priority.
03A table at a hard-to-book restaurant without refreshing the website
The user asked the concierge to watch for an opening at Don Angie; the agent booked it as soon as one appeared.
04Daily newsletters become a podcast at 5 a.m.
The agent reads the newsletters under a label, skips the weak ones, summarizes the rest and generates audio with a local voice.
05Check engine light on: agent bought the scanner and found the fault
A driver told the agent about the dashboard light; it ordered an OBD2 reader, read the code and cleared the alert.
06One week to find an apartment in San Francisco
A new hire used Claude and ChatGPT to list property managers and filter listings by price and area.
07Private chef and ski trip arranged during a dog walk
Paul Metcalfe gives spoken instructions and ChatGPT requests quotes, reads replies and summarizes the options.
08Nightly summary of the kids' school emails
An agent template reads the school emails and tells you each night what to send, wear, sign or pay.
09A colleague's birthday planned with an agent
The agent gathered stories from coworkers, built the schedule, booked dinner and ordered the cake, with approval at every step.
10Agent rebooks the connection while the passenger is still in the air
With the flight delayed, the agent talked to three airlines at once and got a new route at no cost.
11Cleaning up 80,000 emails and chasing a forgotten refund
An agent reviewed the inbox, suggested deleting 20,000 promotions with approval, chased a refund from the provider and scheduled maintenance.
12Japan trip reservations, negotiated in Japanese
The agent booked all the restaurants and chatted in Japanese with the Hakone hotel to get a dinner slot not listed on the site.
13Researching date spots in neighborhoods you don't know
A PR agency founder uses an agent to build a document of restaurants and why each one fits.
14A month of sending tasks from phone to computer
A Fortune journalist used Dispatch to request email summaries and meeting prep.
15Collecting three years of meeting minutes into text files
A W3C participant had the agent visit every minutes page from 2022 to 2024 and extract the exact text.
16A family assistant that calls instead of sending a notification
A British user speaks their tasks and the app adds them to the family calendar and phones to remind them.
17French marketer tests an AI browser on household chores
Julien Rio gave Comet access to his grocery store, email and photos; most tasks did not go as promised.
18Booking sushi and calling an Uber by talking to Alexa+
A journalist with early access asked, by voice, for a table for himself and his wife.
19Booking airport parking: it only half worked
At TechCrunch, Comet suggested parking near San Francisco airport but got stuck when booking.
20Delegating moving tasks to a browser agent
A TechCrunch journalist tested Operator during their own move: parking permit, restaurant, electrician.
21A 5-day meal plan that becomes a grocery cart
With the Instacart plugin, the author asked for a plan with no fish or pork and got the list already in the cart.
22Tidying 2,200 files in the Downloads folder
A writer let Claude Cowork inventory and organize years of downloads, asking permission before deleting.
23Planning the family menu and entering recipes
The author gave Claude access to their pantry system to enter recipes and suggest the week's meals.
24Searching for an apartment in Prague with an agent
Manus filtered Czech listing portals and came back with five options, but got stuck when contacting landlords.
25Planning a Saturday of errands with a route and times
Amanda Caswell asked ChatGPT Agent for an itinerary covering a haircut, a return, groceries and a store.
26Turning saved Instagram posts into a recipe book
A user asked Meta's agent to find all her saved recipes and organize them by type.
27Unsubscribing from newsletters in bulk in Gmail
A PCWorld journalist let Claude suggest what to cancel, asked for his approval, and then had it click the links.
28A morning summary of school emails with ready-made replies
A mother created a Gmail label and an agent that summarizes the folder and drafts replies for her to edit.
29AI calls stores to find out if a toy is in stock
A journalist used the Google feature that has AI phone the store and ask.
30Recipes picky kids will eat, organized by Codex
Beth Gebhard asked for recipes from a favorite site; the agent filtered them, rated them and created a spreadsheet and a Drive folder.
31An agent searches for a hairstylist by price and reviews
A reporter asked for balayage under a price cap in Montclair or New York and corrected the agent midway.
32Non-coding CEO uses Claude Code for email and budgeting
Michael Crist asked for only the emails from real people waiting for a reply and built the family budget from statements.
33Executive builds an "anti-system" task system
Hilary Gridley captures tasks with a tap on her iPhone and lets Claude organize them and learn her preferences.
34Founder goes from one agent to nine, two of them for the family
Claire Vo started with an executive assistant and now has agents for household logistics and for her kids' education.
35A week of managing my calendar by voice alone
A journalist turned on Workspace in Gemini and scheduled writing blocks and meetings by speaking.
36Booking an airport hotel with clear rules
The author limited the agent to Booking.com, used the site's own filter names and set tiebreaker criteria.
37Comparing hotels in Lisbon across three different weeks
The browser opened Booking, Hotels.com, Expedia and Hyatt and kept a side-panel table of options up to US$220 a night.
38The agent called the restaurant when the online booking failed
Nick Larkins asked for a dinner reservation; with the site fully booked, OpenClaw built a calling app and phoned.
39A standing grocery list that becomes an ASDA cart
Christina Souch built a 40-item spreadsheet with price rules and let Claude fill the cart.
40Allie Miller tests agents with an unusual request: buying a yak
Among several agents tested, Manus researched on its own how to buy a yak for the family.
41Charcuterie board: from the list to the grocery cart
The author asked Comet for a shopping list and then had it put the items in Instacart.
42Bloomberg journalist watched the agent the whole time
Rachel Metz asked for ice cream delivery and a schedule spreadsheet; the agent asked for help several times.
43When your AI limit runs out in the middle of the day
A dev running four subagents across four repositories ran out of tokens and reflected on their dependence on AI.
44Running an offline AI assistant on your iPhone
A dev built Anvil, which runs models on the device for use on a plane, on the subway or without roaming.
45Estimating how long your AI plan will last before it runs out
A dev published an open calculation to estimate how many tokens fit into the Pro/Max plans.
46Asking AI to build a personal mini-app on your iPhone
A former product person built CriAI, which generates mini-apps from a description.
47Identify soybean and corn pests with your phone, even without signal
A tool built with IFMT researchers recognizes four pests from a photo and turns the records into maps.
48Building a "thinking system" with Obsidian and Claude
A developer started recording what he learns in Obsidian and using Claude to connect notes.
49Sending AI summaries and research straight to your Kindle
A developer built a Go MCP in minutes that lets Claude or Codex send texts to a Kindle.
50Setting up a monthly bank reconciliation routine with AI
A finance professional describes how to use ChatGPT to cross-check a bank statement against the general ledger and flag differences.
51Setting up complete Discord servers with an AI bot
An open source bot uses Gemini to plan categories, channels, roles and rules from a description.
52Embrapa app diagnoses soybean diseases from a photo
Researchers are testing with farmers an app that recognizes Asian soybean rust and downy mildew in phone images.
53Use a local AI to detect phishing
A security professional showed a Python script using a local model to analyze the intent of suspicious emails.
54Journalists from Folha, Aos Fatos and Núcleo discuss how they use AI
Knight Center roundtable: newsrooms use AI to translate, create scripts and fact-check.
55Ranch hand logs farm data by voice message on WhatsApp
A specialist shows AI converting field voice messages into inventory entries and answering the owner.
56Building a Timing App for Cooking Several Recipes at Once
Simon Willison asked Claude for an app to coordinate timings when preparing two recipes at the same time.
57Tourists Follow an AI Itinerary to a Canyon That Doesn't Exist
The BBC gathers cases of travelers misled by AI itineraries, such as an invented "sacred canyon" in Peru.
58Dairy Farms Log Their Routine on WhatsApp with AI
A startup from Minas Gerais brought dairy farm management to WhatsApp and accelerated adoption.
59Farmer Gets Management Questions Answered by a WhatsApp Chatbot
Embrapa's RAImundo answers by voice message and analyzes photos of pests and animals.
60Mom Shares the Prompts She Uses to Organize the Family
Lilian Schmidt uses AI for the weekly menu, shopping list and the kids' morning routine.
6170-Year-Old Retiree Uses AI Every Day as an Assistant
A retired lawyer explains how he uses chatbots to get answers and learn new things in retirement.
62At 97, She Taught Herself to Use AI
A Spanish woman uses AI to get answers about retirement, research authors and learn for pleasure.
63A Recipe from Whatever Is Left in the Fridge
A college student asks ChatGPT for recipes using the ingredients he has at home, adjusted to his taste.
64A Chatbot as a Farmer's Technical Assistant
Globo Rural lists uses of AI in agriculture, such as a chatbot that answers questions about fertilizing and planting.
65Startup Generates Every Layout Option for a Project with AI
Arqgen, backed by FAPESP, uses generative design for interior layouts that follow banks' manuals.
66Newsroom sets out what journalists can and cannot do with AI
Grupo Estado published rules: AI for transcription, translation and data, always with human review.
67Test: can you plan an entire trip with ChatGPT?
E-Investidor asked ChatGPT for a ten-day road trip itinerary with cheaper airports and overnight stops.
68HR uses ChatGPT for job postings, interviews and candidate feedback
Cloudwalk's people team uses ChatGPT for job descriptions, interview scripts and feedback.
69Testing AI with technical accounting questions before trusting it
The president of CRC-RS says he tested ChatGPT with technical questions in the field and found the answers satisfactory.