What are people actually doing with AI agents?
45 real use cases, each linked to the original post. Browse by category.
Latest
Analyze 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 · 2026-10-08Keep 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 · 2026-10-04Let 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