Real AI agent use cases, with sources and setup prompts
Always-on agents, local models and self-hosted tools people run on a Pi, a Mac mini, a spare laptop or a home server, each linked to the original post. 24 matching use cases below, each with a public source.
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A founder keeps a Mac mini at home running Hermes Agent, which helps manage the other Macs in his setup, often without him touching it. He co-built Beam to pull app windows from that Mac onto the one he is using.
A $400 robot vacuum sat in a cupboard for 2 years after the maker's cloud shut down. He used Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code to reverse-engineer how it talked to the servers, built a local server to control it, and scheduled weekday cleans at 40% suction.
STROT uses an LLM only once to compile your intent, such as "triage support tickets into the right workflow", into a small local decision model. After that every record is classified, scored or routed on your own hardware as typed JSON with a confidence score, and low-confidence records abstain instead of guessing.
He finally got a local model smart enough to drive his Hermes agent, DeepSeek V4 Flash on a Mac Studio, and shifted work off the cloud.
A developer made an iOS app that flips between individual Claude Code, pi and other coding agent sessions with swipe gestures, and shows mockups right in the app instead of local or Tailscale links.
A builder had Claude Code inspect the Android TV box from his TV provider from a prompt and one photo, install a Linux shell built for its chip, add a wake lock and battery whitelist so Android cannot kill the agent, and wire the agent to his own Telegram bot with no open ports.
For people running agents in tmux and checking on them with Termius and Tailscale, Tenax lets you sign in and see your sessions without SSH keys or a VPN. It pings you when an agent needs you or finishes.
A builder making his own JARVIS had Grok write the code for an MCP server on his TV, so Grok Bot can read the screen and drive it like he would. Next he plans a Raspberry Pi that runs the whole house.
He set up OpenClaw on an NVIDIA DGX Spark with a local Qwen3.6-35B-A3B served by vLLM in NVFP4, adding MTP-3 speculative decoding.
A builder argues the provider dashboards are not real token statistics and routes every agent, harness and app through a self-hosted LLM proxy instead. One endpoint covers many providers and models, logs which key called which model from which client and when, and hands out virtual API keys so the main key is not pasted into every tool.
A retro fan plugged a Raspberry Pi into an old TV and pointed Claude at it. It now runs his own cable network with internet streaming, live weather and movies from his NAS, plus a phone remote he built.
To see which posts actually land, he built a small self-hosted X stats dashboard with Grok Bot's help: follower growth, impressions and engagement per post, shipped as one Go binary.
SpaceApp is a self-hosted workspace that runs AI coding CLIs side by side in persistent rooms: OpenCode, Codex, Claude Code, Gemini, Qwen, Kimi, Grok and DeepSeek, each in its own pane on your own machine.
A builder vibe coded a setup using Claude Code's self-hosted runners feature plus Tailscale, so the same dev environment works seamlessly across laptop, web and mobile. The box also runs Paper so the whole team can design on it.
A founder's Grok Bot agents made a video start to finish: one wrote it, drew the team, gave each member its own voice, rendered it on his Mac Mini and posted it.
His OpenClaw agent, running Claude Opus 5.5, made a set of clips, and he put them on a loop on a Raspberry Pi reachable over Tailscale so his coworking monitor shows something when he is away.
A self-hoster cancelled their Hermes Agent VPS because it mostly sat idle; now Grok Bot spins Hermes up on its own computer when it is needed.
A homeowner uses Grok Bot to write and set up Home Assistant automations running on his Raspberry Pi.
After years of reactive DBA work, the ReadySet team built RDST, an always-on local agent that watches database stats for slow queries and missing or harmful indexes, so problems are caught before the database falls over.
One user offloads work to OpenClaw and uses OpenAI dots as a proactive, interactive executive assistant.
Built a tool so Grok Bot, Muse, Codex, Claude Code and other agents can message each other securely over Tailscale.
Repurpose a $145 mini PC to run a remote Cursor session and the Hermes agent all day.
A founder built a self-hosted company OS that he uses to run his business: every agent runs Claude Code or Codex CLI as a persistent sandboxed process with its own workspace, memory, schedules and tools, and teammates collaborate on the agents.
Ran a 35B Qwen model on a Pi with connectors to the car's OBD port and the maker's cloud service.
How to make faceless YouTube videos with AI · How to automate work with n8n and AI · How to vibe code an app with Claude Code · How to build AI agents for SEO and ads · How to run multiple coding agents together · How to build an MCP server for AI agents · How to add memory to coding agents · How to secure vibe-coded apps and agents · How to observe and debug AI agents · How to build agent memory and context layers · How to control coding agents from your phone · How to add payments to vibe-coded apps · How to run local LLMs with AI agents · How to set up Grok Bot agents for real work · How to build with Gemini 4 Argon and Gemini agents · How to use AI agents for taxes, bills and budgets · How to make AI video ads and Reels with agents · How to set up Hermes Agent workflows · How to vibe code a game with AI · How to replace SaaS subscriptions with vibe-coded tools · How to use AI agents for errands, calls and shopping · How to use Cursor agents and automations · How to make 3D scenes and models with AI and Blender · How to use Claude Code skills and plugins · How to cut AI coding agent costs and token use · How to automate a small business with AI agents · How to compare AI models on the same prompt · How to build hardware projects with AI agents · How to make AI music videos and songs · How to use AI agents with Obsidian and your notes · How to build apps and games for your kids with AI · How to use ChatGPT for real projects and everyday tasks · How to make AI agents ask for approval before they act · How to build AI trading and investing agents · How to build AI agents that make and answer phone calls · How to plan meals and groceries with AI agents · How to use AI agents for fitness and health · How to undo, checkpoint and stop runaway coding agents · How to use AI agents for job hunting · How to automate social media posts with AI agents · How to build a smart home and voice assistant with AI agents · How to make money with AI agents · How to build a website with AI agents · How to use AI agents for research and science · How to build an iPhone or Android app with AI · How to automate email and your inbox with AI agents · How to use AI agents for Linux, servers and homelabs · How to build Telegram, Discord and WhatsApp bots with AI · How to research memecoins and crypto with AI agents · How to remove ads and bloatware from your smart TV with AI · How to learn anything with an AI tutor · How to build an AI second brain and personal wiki · How to reverse-engineer and revive old devices with AI
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