Bragging about AI home hacks

	Ben Heckendorn, a cat dad who built a robot can opener 🥫 for his sick cat Bud
	Caleb Leak, a dog dad whose pup Momo "learned" to vibe code video games 🐶
	Ryan Doyle, a guy who used AI to hack the ads and bloatware off his TV 📺… and kicked off a whole internet trend

Let's get into today's bragging! — Adam

HI IT'S ME   Pic of the week! You might remember me from my CatGPT 🐈‍⬛ project. I created it in a single day to show that people can make fun stuff with AI, and millions of people loved it!! 😻   New here? Did someone forward you this? Join 100,000+ awesome humans here →

In September 2024, Ben Heckendorn’s cat, Bud, got really sick (a urinary blockage 😿) and the vet put him on prescription wet food.

That meant Ben had to open a can of food every single morning before his alarm even went off ⏰... and Bud did NOT like waiting.

Most automatic pet feeders only handle dry food. So Ben (who’s known on YouTube for building wild custom game consoles) came up with a clever idea… a robot that could serve Bud’s wet-food breakfast all by itself!!

And it's SO ridiculously satisfying to watch 😹👇

 

 

(Fun fact: popping that little cat food tab takes about 20 POUNDS of force!! 💪)

Ben's AI-assisted robot holds 6 cans of cat food, wedges under the pull tab, peels the lid off, and slides dinner down a ramp to a (sometimes startled) Bud 🐈



The best part? Ben used AI coding tools to help write the software, then put all the code online for FREE so other cat parents can build one too.

Ben… Bud is officially the most spoiled cat on the internet!! 👏👏👏

If you’re like 58% of people who work from home in the US (according to one survey), you’ve probably had a pet crash your workday before 🐾

That’s exactly how this story started.



Back in December 2025, Caleb Leak’s dog Momo typed a bunch of gibberish into his computer (and stole his lip balm while she was at it 😹).

Then in January 2026, Caleb got laid off from Meta. So with a little extra time on his hands, he had a wild idea: what if he sent Momo’s gibberish to an AI… and let it build something?

I promise this is real 👇

 

 

Caleb spent about 2 weeks teaching Momo to swipe at a keyboard on the floor. And every time she typed enough, a smart feeder gave her a treat!! 🦴

Then he sent everything she typed to Claude Code, and told it the gibberish was “secret cryptic commands” from an eccentric video game designer… and Claude totally went along with it lol.

The AI even played its own games to find the bugs and fix them!

So far Momo (the dog) has made a sheep-herding game 🐑, a drumming octopus game 🐙, and a game starring a fortune-telling frog who has to tie up a giant kraken 🐸. Caleb even put all of his code online for free, so anyone can try it.

Not bad for a pup who just wanted snacks lol... go Caleb!! 👏👏👏

 

 

Did you know that Vizio makes more profit from ads than from selling TVs? 😳

According to its 2021 earnings, its ads and viewer data business made more than 2X the profit of its TV sales. That’s great news for companies like Vizio… but not-so-great news for anyone who just wants to watch Netflix in peace 📺😹

Just like any other smart TV owner, Ryan Doyle had had enough of the ads. His smart TV was laggy, packed with apps he never asked for, and showing him ads on a screen he already paid for.

So using Claude Code (and a little determination), Ryan set out to strip away the junk and take back control of his TV.

Now it's your turn to vote!