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AI plays for online and software businesses

12 practical AI plays from real online and software businesses owners, newest first. Each one links to the owner’s own post, with the result, the steps and a prompt you can copy.

Online and software businessesClaude
Build a sales call cockpit with Claude in 30 minutes
self-reported
Built in 30 minutes with Claude. 14 calls so far: one rejection, one paying customer, and the rest super positive, from a founder who calls himself bad at sales.
Alexander Hoff’s new business, gründerradar, sells to tax advisors in Austria, and he had never sold before. So he spent 30 minutes with Claude building a call cockpit that runs in his browser. Two minutes of prep fills in who he’s calling and how they found him. During the call he gets a 119-step script with paths for the secretary, voicemail or "just send me some info", 92 objections answered in advance, a time budget per stage and coaching notes like "ask, then wait." After the call the log writes itself. He’s on version 3.2 of the script.
By Alexander Hoff (@axhoff), gründerradar (new business selling to tax advisors in Austria) · Source
Online and software businessesGrok Bot
Have a Grok Bot replace your bookkeeping app and chase failed payments
self-reported
Replaced QuickBooks, saving $120/year and 5 hours of bookkeeping a month; recovered about $97 in failed payments and filed class-action claims worth about $50–90, in one day.
Emilly Humphress runs her own projects, including a soccer planning app and a web studio. She says her Grok Bot paid for itself 3 times in one day. It replaced QuickBooks by tracking her expenses and gathering receipts, saving $120 a year and about 5 hours of bookkeeping a month. It also chased failed payments and recovered about $97, and found and filed a couple of class-action settlement claims worth about $50–90.
By Emilly Humphress (@emillyhumphress), Solo founder (app and web projects) · Source
Online and software businessesGrok Bot
Have a Grok Bot reconcile your books against Stripe to catch missing fees
self-reported
His Grok Bot fully automated his bookkeeping and found him about £1,800 in one day: some Stripe fees had never been imported, which made his profit look slightly higher than it was, and nobody had noticed.
Kieran Lewis is a former super-affiliate who runs ads and builds with AI. He handed his bookkeeping to his Grok Bot, and in one day it caught something nobody else had: some Stripe fees were never imported into his books, so his profit looked a bit higher than it really was. The bot found about £1,800 that way. He liked it enough to move his work over from the Hermes agent he had been using.
By Kieran Lewis (@realkieranlewis), Online business (ads and affiliate) · Source
Online and software businessesGrok Bot
Have a Grok Bot audit your cloud bills and subscriptions until it pays for itself
self-reported
He told his Grok Bot to save enough to cover its $200 a month plan. It found about $600 to $700 a month in Google Cloud and GitHub costs, then canceled subscriptions he no longer used, for about $1,000 a month saved in total.
Reco Jefferson builds software projects. He connected Grok Bot to his email, a bank connector and his project back ends. He recommends a separate finance bot that reports to a main chief-of-staff bot. Grok Bot audited Google Cloud and found always-on workers and three staging instances he didn’t need. It moved his GitHub to an organization account to cut the cost of the GitHub Actions he burns through on tests, about $300. Then it went through his statements and lined up the subscriptions he wasn’t using, and he canceled them.
By Reco Jefferson, Software projects and builds · Source
Online and software businessesClaude
Have Claude audit your Zapier account and cancel what you don’t need
self-reported
Of 123 paid automations, 63 hadn’t run in a month and 2 did 88% of the work. Claude rebuilt one, the rest moved into tools they already pay for, and Zapier went from $4,788 a year to $0.
Noah Kagan runs AppSumo and has used Zapier for 10 years. As part of what he calls a war on expensive software, he exported the account’s task history and had AI list every automation, its owner and its recent runs. Most of what was left was simple form-to-Slack and HubSpot-to-Sheets work that other tools they already pay for could handle. He shared the exact audit prompt.
By Noah Kagan (@noahkagan), AppSumo · Source
Online and software businessesGrok Bot
Hand a Grok Bot chief of staff a night of company admin: LLC rename, domain, site and support email
self-reported
In a couple of hours one night, his Grok Bot team prepped and filed an LLC rename, bought a domain, built and launched the company website, set up support email routing and logged every purchase against his budget. He calls it several days of work done in one night.
Zack Gabbard is the founder of CyberHub Software and works as an ICU nurse practitioner. One assistant handed work off to his legal, finance and launch bots. Besides the rename and the site, they switched his app’s support pages to the new email, started watching his inbox for the state’s approval, sent his attorney a clean list of estate changes and cleaned up his document vault. Nothing went out without his OK.
By Zack Gabbard (@zac70182), CyberHub Software · Source
Online and software businessesClaude (Opus agents) + dougs-cli
Have an AI agent clean up your books in an afternoon, then approve every change
self-reported
In one afternoon on his real company books, uncategorized operations went from 183 to 4. The agent pulled 22 missing invoices from Gmail and attached them, wrote about 60 changes, surfaced 3 overdue VAT returns, and, before a VAT refund claim, went through all 34 foreign software invoices and fixed every one booked wrong.
Tom Eberle ships apps from Paris. His French accounting software, Dougs, had no public API. So he had Claude Opus agents build an unofficial, open-source command-line tool for it (245 tests, about 30 hours from idea to npm). Then he let it work on his real books. Nothing reaches Dougs until he approves the plan. Months with a filed VAT return are never touched, and every write is read back and checked. It doesn’t file VAT or replace his accountant. It does the legwork.
By Tom Eberle (@eberle_tom), App business, Paris (books on Dougs) · Source
86’d
Online and software businessesAI agent connected to QuickBooks
Don’t let an AI agent “fix your books” with write access on
vendor-reported
In a test, told “fix my books,” an AI agent made 3 changes to a test QuickBooks company in 84 seconds without asking, including creating a new account. With write tools switched off, it made 0 changes and just described the fix.
Vadim Chumak, who builds an AI bookkeeping product, ran a test on a made-up candle company in QuickBooks. On default settings the agent created an account, edited it and moved a $312.40 duplicate charge into it in each of two runs, never waiting for a yes. Turning off write, update and delete tools left it read-only, and it explained the fix instead.
By Vadim Chumak (@vadimvchumak), Founder of an AI bookkeeper for QuickBooks and Xero · Source
Online and software businessesGrok Bot
Ask your bots what they’ve saved you (and steal this ROI prompt)
self-reported
Over about 7 weeks on a $28/month plan: 48 hours of his time produced about 250 hours of work he values at $12,500, plus $2.5K saved on a quoted Google Ad Manager setup, $1K on web design and $500 on a domain and ISP move.
Mike Stuart in Johannesburg used Grok Bot and Grok for domain moves, site migrations, an ad server audit and media kit for a publishing site, backups, a grant form and time reports. Then he had his bot add it all up, and he shared the exact prompt.
By Mike Stuart (@mpgstuart), Web and publishing projects (Johannesburg, South Africa) · Source
86’d
Online and software businessesGrok Bot
Never keep your bot team’s only copy on the bot’s computer
self-reported
A silent rollback of his shared Grok Bot computer wiped hours of files for 15+ bots in under a minute.
Eric Kang runs 15+ bots on one shared Grok Bot computer. When it was rolled back, their files went with it, and other users reported the same problem. His fix: back up every bot’s role, prompts, routines and working files to a private GitHub repo every night.
By Eric Kang (@BeatAPIio), BeatAPI · Source
Online and software businessesClaude
Let AI interrogate your business like a consultant
self-reported
“Ouch, that was hard.” It showed him what he did and didn’t know about his customers; no metrics.
He asked Claude to audit his business like a McKinsey consultant. It asked 50 questions plus follow-ups, mostly about his customers.
By Max (@Max_Buildog), Founder, StoreCanary (SaaS) · Source
86’d
Online and software businessesAI support bot
Don't let an AI support bot answer customers unchecked
as reported
A public apology after the bot invented a policy
Cursor's AI support bot told a user that a login problem came from a usage policy that didn't exist. A co-founder had to apologize in public, and the company started labeling AI-written replies.
By Michael Truell, co-founder, Cursor (Anysphere) · Source

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