What are people actually doing with AI agents?
82 real use cases, each linked to the original post. Browse by category.
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Build a two-phone test robot for a couples app instead of paying $500/month
Testing Tom Eberle's couples app Loverzz needs two linked accounts, and paid testing tools cost about $500/month (Maestro Cloud is $250 per device). He had Claude Code build his own: one message ('new build is live, test it! FR / EN') makes an old Mac start 2 iPhone simulators, create and pair 2 accounts, play the quiz on both sides, check the partner sees it, and send a report to Slack.
Claude Code Coding & dev X · 2026-10-20Fix a broken website button with a custom browser extension
The 'Open in GitHub Desktop' button the user relied on for years stopped working. He asked Codex to triage it: Codex confirmed it was a real bug on the website, then wrote and installed a custom extension that fixed it, all in under a minute.
Codex Personal productivity X · 2026-10-20Build a dead man's switch so your clients aren't stranded
After losing his business during a 2012 hospital stay, web developer Peter Bishop wrote a detailed spec and had Claude Code build Death Plan Switch, a self-hosted, MIT-licensed dead man's switch that tells the right people if he goes missing or dies, so his business can keep running for his clients. It passed 42 unit tests and he has used it for weeks.
Claude Code Security Hacker News · 2026-10-20Win the race for parent-teacher conference slots
Elizabeth Knopf's agent (Dots) watched for the school's sign-up email, with her family calendars and time preferences already connected. When the email came, it booked her priority parent-teacher slots on SignUpGenius and saved the calendar invites while she was on a call, before the convenient times were gone.
Dots Home & life admin X · 2026-10-19Audit whether your '24/7' agent is really running (it mostly slept)
A user asked Claude Code to audit Richi, his '24/7 autonomous' crypto agent running on Hermes on a Mac mini and controlled over Telegram. The first line of the verdict: full autonomy is not verified. The Mac had gone to sleep 31 times in 20 hours 43 minutes, so the agent was mostly asleep.
Claude CodeHermes Coding & dev X · 2026-10-19Get roadside help abroad when you can't speak the language
Stranded with a broken-down car on a German Autobahn and unable to follow the insurer's German-only phone line, the user asked Grok Bot to handle it. It found the right roadside-assistance form, filled in the details, and help arrived about an hour later.
Grok Bot Travel & booking X · 2026-10-18Design on a live app by drawing on a whiteboard
Harshit Khemani asked Claude Code to connect his dev server to the tldraw desktop whiteboard. The result lets him swap the product's whole design system in real time, prototype ideas, and visually edit screens wired to the running app.
Claude Code Coding & dev X · 2026-10-18Have an agent pick your airline seat from just a booking number
Marwa Chreif gave Instinct, an agent that works over WhatsApp, her Delta reservation number. It found the booking and picked her window seat online without her opening the airline's app or calling support.
Instinct Travel & booking X · 2026-10-18Send your family a tidy travel itinerary in seconds
Before a trip to Guatemala, one agent coordinated airport cars and checked the weather, and a 15-second voice request to another (Dot) produced an email for the user's mother with his full itinerary.
DotMuse Personal productivity X · 2026-10-18Have an agent design and 3D-print a part for you
Guo Yu let Codex take over his Bambu Lab 3D printer. It designed a good-looking stand that holds an iPad at the right focus distance for scanning A4 pages, then ran the print, all started from his phone. (Post is in Chinese.)
Codex Fun & games X · 2026-10-18Catch up on overdue tax returns and claim your refund
Fede Ponte had never filed his 2024 German taxes, so the state held €1,144 of his money for two years. His agent filed that return plus 3 other filings in 3 days; 10 days later the refund letter arrived. He then turned the process into a reusable skill.
Personal AI agent Money & bills X · 2026-10-18Auto-repair client websites by rolling back broken releases
Julian had Claude Code build a repair bot for the client sites he runs. Every 2 minutes it checks each site; if one shows an error page two checks in a row, it restores the last working version and checks again. He only gets a text if it couldn't fix the problem.
Claude Code Coding & dev X · 2026-10-18Build a B2B lead list from public government data
To pitch his SaaS, Matheus Andrade's agent pulled Brazil's public telecom regulator data (Anatel), filtered it to fiber internet providers with 3,000–15,000 subscribers, found the decision-makers and wrote cold emails for 956 providers. He only approves what goes out.
Grok Sales & marketing X · 2026-10-18Track 600 new meme coins for 72 hours to see what really happens
dayvan had Claude Code watch 600 new pump.fun coins launched within 40 minutes on Oct 17, read-only with no wallet or trades. After 24 hours, 332 had barely moved, 202 were down, 28 had lost over 90% and 31 were up (best 8.3x, none 10x). Of the 7 that 'graduated', 6 were worth less than when first seen.
Claude Code Research & finance X · 2026-10-18Inventory your fridge from photos and cut domains you don't need
In one week, kukulobo's agent Muse catalogued his whole fridge and pantry from 17 photos, went through the domains he owns to decide which ones not to renew, and filed archive removal requests.
Muse Home & life admin X · 2026-10-18Build a medical image annotation tool with Claude Code
A clinician team replaced painful frame-by-frame IVUS annotation software by building Coronaut entirely with Claude Code for their daily Corelab work.
Claude Code Health X · 2026-10-17Run a free self-improving agent research lab on GitHub Actions
Agent Colony is a group of agents woken by free GitHub Actions crons every few hours; they pick math problems, write code to test claims, and improve without a paid cloud bill.
Custom agent Research & finance X · 2026-10-17Check citations against retracted papers with an agent
Bedrock is an agent that walks a bibliography and flags retracted research along the citation path, catching chains a normal reference manager misses.
Bedrock Research & finance X · 2026-10-17Strip bloatware from an old smart TV with a coding agent
Claude Code, running on a Mac mini, connected to a parents' Android TV over ADB, disabled bloatware, tracking and auto-installers, removed 11 unused apps, freed about 90% more RAM, and built a simple launcher, with every change undoable in one command.
Claude Code Home & life admin X · 2026-10-17Let your agent negotiate a better price with a company's support bot
A personal agent called Dot opened a company's customer-service chat, introduced itself as the user's agent and haggled on price with the company's bot, and both bots then brought in their humans to confirm the deal.
Dot Money & bills X · 2026-10-17Fix a daily Mac annoyance by having an agent read the system logs
AirPods kept disconnecting on every Mac user switch. Claude Code read the Bluetooth logs, found macOS wipes and restores iCloud pairings, and within an hour built a small background agent that reconnects the headphones automatically; the user also filed a bug with Apple.
Claude Code Personal productivity X · 2026-10-17Build a puzzle game with its own solver and level generator
A first-time game maker built a Minesweeper twist where chess pieces reveal squares by their moves, then had Codex write a solver and level generator; after beating all 54 levels they asked it for more.
Codex Fun & games X · 2026-10-17Dig for ticket discounts until you find a real deal
Wanting to see Phantom of the Opera, the user had her agent hunt for discounts. The first pass was mediocre, so she told it to dig deeper; it found a portal tied to her bank that cut 40% off, and the same approach got 40% off another show.
Personal AI agent Money & bills X · 2026-10-17Put a team of agents on meal planning, nutrition and groceries
Guo Yu set up a Grok Bot group chat with three agents: one books restaurants, one tracks calories and nutrition, one buys groceries. When a recipe's ingredients weren't sold at nearby online supermarkets, they worked it out together and switched recipes. (Post is in Chinese.)
Grok Bot Home & life admin X · 2026-10-17Move years of saved map pins into a new app without duplicates
While moving old notes out of Google My Maps, the user had Claude Code build a migration tool in one shot. It processes the KMZ export and checks each place against the existing database to skip duplicates.
Claude Code Personal productivity X · 2026-10-16Audit local business websites the way customers see them
When an agent's first before-and-after examples were generic, Trunnel & Co. had it audit real local business sites on a phone instead. It found a plumber's page that took over 15 seconds to load and another still showing a COVID notice.
Personal AI agent Sales & marketing X · 2026-10-16Build a 3D city scene in Blender without touching Blender
Claude rebuilt a Tokyo scene in Blender with 2,797 left-side-driving cars, cherry blossoms and a day-night cycle in 5 prompts and about 3.4 hours, without the user ever operating Blender.
Claude Fun & games X · 2026-10-15Hand your weekly grocery order to an agent
Nick Dobos has his agent do his grocery shopping, his second biggest monthly expense. When Amazon blocked the agent from ordering Whole Foods, it switched to Instacart.
Personal AI agent Home & life admin X · 2026-10-15Clear an Instapaper backlog with a daily Hermes cron
A Hermes agent cron pulls three random saved Instapaper articles each afternoon and sends them with an Archive All button so the backlog actually gets read.
Hermes Personal productivity X · 2026-10-14Recreate a video in a new animation style with one agent directing others
Asked to redo a 63-second video in a set animation style, Claude Code planned the job, launched 161 Codex sessions to generate frames with its image tool, managed memory and failures, and stitched the result back together.
Claude CodeCodex Fun & games X · 2026-10-14Fight a government records error with proof dug out of your own files
When the Nevada DMV claimed a 2018 insurance lapse and wanted an SR-22 fee, Claude Code searched the user's Gmail and Google Drive for proof of coverage, built an evidence packet and drafted the rebuttal.
Claude Code Home & life admin X · 2026-10-14Use a hold-to-talk Mac voice assistant on Claude
Atticus is a macOS hold-to-talk assistant that runs simple tasks locally in under a second and routes harder work through Claude, built by a 9th-grader and shown on HN.
ClaudeAtticus Personal productivity Hacker News · 2026-10-12Homeschool kids with a Hermes agent
A parent built a Hermes agent to help kids get unstuck while homeschooling, with a closely monitored Claude Code account for a teen and a Ms Frizzle-style agent for a younger child.
HermesClaude Code Personal productivity X · 2026-10-11Learn from an agent that posted bank details to Slack
A personal Grok Bot agent mishandled financial data and posted bank details into company Slack, a public cautionary tale about permissions and oversight.
Grok Bot Security Hacker News · 2026-10-10Analyze real-time satellite data for investing research
An investor runs an agent on OpenClaw that analyzes real-time satellite data and can be steered from a phone.
OpenClaw Research & finance X · 2026-10-08Hunt for an exoplanet candidate in public data
A hobbyist used Claude Code to search astronomy data and believes he found an unknown planet.
Claude Code Research & finance Hacker News · 2026-10-08Put an AI agent on a Nokia 110 feature phone
After Android install failed on 48 MB RAM, the builder reverse-engineered a Nokia 110 and got an AI agent running on it to automate a few actions while cutting screentime.
Custom agent Fun & games Hacker News · 2026-10-08Keep scheduled agent jobs alive across sessions
Built 'Chronos' so Claude Code crons re-arm every session with a headless backup.
Claude Code Coding & dev X · 2026-10-06Monitor running coding agents for stuck prompts
Built 'Hommies', a desktop buddy that watches coding agents so they never stall on permission prompts.
Custom agent Coding & dev X · 2026-10-04Manage a homelab through a CLI built for coding agents
A local CLI for Claude Code and Codex wraps Proxmox, TrueNAS, UniFi, DNS, Vault, Traefik, monitoring, patching and backups with typed commands, dry runs, approval gates and rollback.
Claude CodeCodex Coding & dev X · 2026-09-13Gate overnight crypto trades so an agent can't overspend
After an overnight Binance agent bought PEPE with funds it shouldn't touch, the poster built Assay so proposed orders are checked against set rules before the exchange sees them.
Assay Security X · 2026-09-05Let a coding agent diagnose a vendor bug and file the support case
Codex hit an OAuth blocker building a Salesforce package, isolated missing PKCE fields, and filed the support case.
Codex Coding & dev X · 2026-08-28Get warned in Slack about phishing emails
A self-built assistant flagged a test phishing email in Slack instead of leaking data.
Custom agent Security X · 2026-08-23Write reproducible bug reports with a coding agent
Compared config vs UI after a Codex scheduled-task glitch and filed a GitHub issue.
Codex Coding & dev X · 2026-08-21Build an outbound sales function in a weekend
A GTM engineer built outbound with Claude Code from one CLAUDE.md; first week booked 6 calls.
Claude Code Sales & marketing X · 2026-08-07Fact-check videos and articles with agent skills
Agent skills that fact-check claims in videos and articles.
Claude Code Research & finance Hacker News · 2026-07-29Automate an X account to share value from content
Spawned a GPT + Hermes agent with one goal: extract and post value from the owner's material.
Hermes Sales & marketing X · 2026-07-24Turn your screen recordings into agents
Screenpipe records how you work and turns repeat workflows into agents.
Screenpipe Personal productivity Hacker News · 2026-07-23Get quotes and negotiate a home-appliance replacement
After researching water-softener specs, the poster had an agent handle hunting for quotes and negotiating prices instead of doing it himself.
OpenClaw Home & life admin X · 2026-07-21Share one memory across several agents
Self-hosted semantic memory over MCP shared by Claude Code, Codex, Hermes profiles and Grok.
Claude CodeCodexHermes Coding & dev X · 2026-07-18Find and fix a bug in an agent framework with a coding agent
Debugging an OpenClaw agent with Codex surfaced a real OpenClaw bug; the user submitted a fix upstream.
Codex Coding & dev X · 2026-07-16Train a model with an agent that runs RL
RL-trained an agent that itself trains models with RL, for about $1.3k.
Custom agent Coding & dev Hacker News · 2026-07-14Draft follow-ups for prospects who went quiet
A Claude Code tool reads the inbox every morning, finds stalled threads and drafts the next follow-up line.
Claude Code Sales & marketing X · 2026-07-04Run a 24/7 agent team over Telegram
Explainer of a multi-agent team on OpenClaw and Hermes, driven from Telegram with cron jobs.
OpenClawHermes Personal productivity X · 2026-06-28Get a second opinion on an MRI
Used Claude Code to analyze his own MRI scans as a second opinion.
Claude Code Health Hacker News · 2026-06-28Build a personal sports-tournament tracker
Built a custom World Cup tracker with OpenClaw and Codex because big sports apps lacked the wanted view.
OpenClawCodex Coding & dev X · 2026-06-20Grab hard-to-get restaurant reservations at release time
A non-technical user set OpenClaw on a VPS (Telegram + Claude model + spend-limited virtual card) to book a Paris dinner slot released at 1am her time.
OpenClaw Travel & booking X · 2026-06-17Build an audit proxy to run an agent with traffic logging
Built (with an agent) a Go MITM proxy to run OpenClaw in Docker with full traffic audit and API-key swapping.
OpenClaw Security X · 2026-06-07Build a local agentic search pipeline
Implemented a Search-as-Code pipeline (fan-out, fetch, rank, dedupe, extract) in ~200 lines with Brave Search API.
Custom agent Research & finance X · 2026-06-01Track SaaS sign-ups to cut wasted spend
Automated tracking of everything a business signs up for; claims £210.72 saved on day one.
Custom agent Money & bills X · 2026-05-16Build dashboards as code with an agent
DAC: dashboards defined as code that agents and humans edit.
Coding agent Coding & dev Hacker News · 2026-04-29Wake up to scraped, scored leads and drafted DM openers
Claude Code handles lead scraping, scoring, health checks and DM openers, delivered as Telegram messages each morning.
Claude Code Sales & marketing X · 2026-04-25See what people actually do with OpenClaw
Ask HN thread collecting real OpenClaw usage from users.
OpenClaw Personal productivity Hacker News · 2026-04-15Run a daily content pipeline with an agent
Agent pitches ideas, drafts content and surfaces learnings every morning at 6am; human approves and schedules.
Custom agent Sales & marketing X · 2026-04-07Plan a company retreat with an agent
TeamOut's agent plans company offsites: venues, logistics, quotes.
TeamOut Travel & booking Hacker News · 2026-02-25Let agents play SimCity through an API
AI agents control a city-builder via REST API.
Custom agent Fun & games Hacker News · 2026-02-09Use OpenClaw as a life-changing personal assistant
Personal essay on daily life tasks run through OpenClaw.
OpenClaw Personal productivity Hacker News · 2026-02-08A bull case for a personal agent (Clawdbot)
Detailed account of real tasks delegated to Clawdbot/OpenClaw.
OpenClaw Personal productivity Hacker News · 2026-02-03Sandbox coding agents so they can't leak secrets
yolo-cage runs AI coding agents in a cage that blocks secret exfiltration.
Coding agent Security Hacker News · 2026-01-21Search and index a huge document dump
Open-source agent that indexes and searches the Epstein files.
Nia Research & finance Hacker News · 2026-01-14Discover connections between 100 books
Used Claude Code to map thematic links across 100 books into an explorable site.
Claude Code Research & finance Hacker News · 2026-01-10Code from your phone instead of doom scrolling
Setup to drive a terminal coding agent from a phone.
Claude Code Coding & dev Hacker News · 2026-01-06Vibe-code a static site on a $25 phone
Built a static site with an AI coding agent on a cheap Walmart phone.
Coding agent Coding & dev Hacker News · 2026-01-03Run everyday automations with an open-source agent
RowboatX: Claude-Code-style agent for background everyday automations.
RowboatX Personal productivity Hacker News · 2025-11-18Clean up annoying websites with a browser agent
Tweeks: describe a change and an agent rewrites the page for you.
Tweeks Personal productivity Hacker News · 2025-11-13Run Claude Code from anywhere on your phone
Omnara lets you monitor and steer Claude Code sessions remotely.
Claude Code Coding & dev Hacker News · 2025-08-12Have AI make phone calls to companies for you
Piper: an AI that calls customer-service lines on your behalf.
Piper Home & life admin Hacker News · 2025-07-28Use an agentic browser for web chores
Open-source agentic browser that completes tasks on sites.
BrowserOS Personal productivity Hacker News · 2025-06-20Operate an iPhone with an AI agent
Agent that taps through iPhone apps to complete tasks.
PhoneAgent Personal productivity Hacker News · 2025-06-02Automate email-driven workflows by forwarding
Forward an email to an agent address and it does the task (summaries, research, scheduling).
MXtoAI Personal productivity Hacker News · 2025-05-27Write a cited research report automatically
Open-source agent that browses and writes cited research reports.
Cleverb.ee Research & finance Hacker News · 2025-04-28Build a 35k-line recipe app by vibe coding
Solo dev built a full recipe app largely with AI coding agents.
Coding agent Coding & dev Hacker News · 2025-04-02