AI agent use cases from Thursday, October 22, 2026

An email assistant that only writes drafts still made 4 quiet mistakes

The poster built an n8n workflow that sorts unread Gmail into leads, support, newsletters and other, labels each email, and has an AI model write a reply that is saved as a draft. Nothing is sent automatically. Every run showed as successful, but the drafts had problems: one offered a 15% discount nobody approved, all were signed "[Your Name]", the recipient field was empty, and one run made two drafts for the same customer. He fixed it with clear rules in the prompt, the right recipient setting, a "processed" label and marking emails as read. The workflow file is free on GitHub.

Two slides gave different numbers for the same thing

Looking back over many Hermes Agent sessions, the poster says one of his biggest lessons came from a slide deck where one slide said 14 and another said 10 for the same figure. Now he has the agent show how it got every number and double check them before he sees the result.

Find out your dog needs a groom from your robot vacuum's photos

The poster's Grok Bot looks through the obstacle photos his robot vacuum takes every night. One morning it told him his dog Pretzel was due for a groom: in the clearest photo, the hair over her eyes was in her face and her leg fur was long, so it said to do the eyes first.

Give each bot one job and a list of things it never does

The poster runs several Grok Bots and shared the first message he gives each new one: a name, a role, one job and a list of things it never does. Every bot has to ask him before anything involving money, signatures or posting in public, and write down how it was set up the same day.

Don't hand your bank password to an agent

Axios reported on Oct 22 that big US banks are finding AI agents inside customer accounts, often signed in with the customer's own password. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley are restricting agent access, and a Chase spokesperson said customers shouldn't give their username and password to anyone. Most banks are moving toward read-only access instead.

Shop around before your home insurance renews, then ask your insurer to match

The poster's agent reminded him that his home and contents insurance was about to renew at a higher price. He asked Grok Bot to find alternatives, and it came back with a better quote. He then connected a voice tool so the agent could call his current insurer, and says that once they shared the lower quotes, the insurer cut his renewal price. He says it took about 10 minutes in total.

He says his annual renewal dropped by $2,500. We have not verified this.

Ask your hotel for a better nightly rate with a short email

The poster had Grok Bot write a quick email to his hotel asking whether they could offer a better rate. He says the front desk called him back and lowered the price from $330 to $240 a night, and that the whole thing took about 30 seconds of his time. His point: most people never ask.

He says he saved $90 a night. We have not verified this.

Have several reviewers try to prove the work wrong

In an interview posted by Marina Mogilko, Felix Rieseberg, who helped build Claude Cowork at Anthropic, explained how he catches confident mistakes. He has Claude start five threads that each try to prove a document wrong, then a separate Claude judges which points hold up. Every number gets checked against a primary source, and he rarely lets a session grade its own work.

Hand off the monthly admin for a rental

The poster says keeping up with the admin for his rental, like bank transactions and utility invoices, used to need a coding agent and screen-scraping scripts. Now he says ChatGPT Work handles much of it, including running it on a schedule.

ChatGPT kept putting simple questions into Work mode

The poster says ChatGPT kept defaulting to Work mode, even for simple questions and searches, which used up his Codex quota. Work and Codex draw from the same allowance, so quick questions asked in Work eat into the limit you may want for longer jobs.