Putting together a menu takes up so much time and energy every week. Sue the Sous Chef is an app I'm planning to build to handle this task. Sue will maintain our family's recipe database, tracking attributes like tastiness ratings, whether our son likes it, difficulty level, main ingredient type (meat, seafood, or vegetables), and how recently we last prepared each dish. Having Sue will be sort of like having our own home chef who crafts balanced weekly menus for us. Each week, Sue will present recommendations in a Tinder-like interface—we'll simply swipe right to accept or left to reject suggestions. Once the menu is finalized, Sue will send the recipe URLs to Expeditr, which will consolidate all ingredients into one convenient shopping list. Et voilà!

Our family needs to pick 10-15 new children's books ever few weeks. Furthermore, as our son enjoys science experiments, we'd like to get a new experiment idea about every month or so. Researching and evaluating all the options out there takes a huge amount of energy. Automating these tasks would be a huge help. Given a database of our family's favorite books and science experiments so far, a recommender system could learn our family's preferences and deliver tailored suggestions on schedule. Heck, it could even order the books from the library for us!

As time goes by, my friends and I get busier with family and work. It's harder to stay in touch. We slowly and sadly fade from each other's immediate consciousness. Growing new friendships is also challenging. Spontaneous hangouts and random chitchats that are so helpful for exploring new connections are disappearing from our daily flow. (Doesn't it feel like everything needs to be scheduled, agenda-ed and calendar-invited these days?) It may sound silly—actually, the silliness might be the fun part—but I'd love to have a robot call my friends periodically to say hello and find out what's going on in their lives. My friends will hopefully find it amusing to be interviewed by a robot, and the topics uncovered will hopefully lead to real, engaging, robotless conversations afterward.

I struggle with information overload from technology and business newsletters. These resources seem valuable but aren't immediately relevant, forcing me to choose between protecting my focus and giving in to FOMO. I plan to build a personal knowledge repository where I can save these resources for later use. When needed, I'll ask questions like "What advice do my saved materials offer about identifying ideal customers?" and have an LLM search my personally curated articles for insights.

When negotiating a car lease, the consumer often feels outmatched by the dealer's control over information. Key details like money factors, incentives, and fees are unclear, making it hard to know if they're getting a fair deal. Unlike car loans with legally mandated APR disclosures, car leases remain frustratingly opaque with complex calculations. I want to help car lease consumers confidently assess offers so they can negotiate without second-guessing. I'm guessing they could use a lease advisor tool to let them input lease offers and receive an instant assessment. The tool will highlight missing details, suggest follow-up questions, and provide clear, data-driven recommendations—empowering consumers to negotiate with confidence and avoid hidden costs.

I want to shop in person at neighborhood boutiques, but I lack the patience to browse the stores blindly or research their websites one by one. I'd love to build an app that pulls all clothing images from the local store websites and presents them in a swipeable, Tinder-like interface. I could swipe left and right while waiting for the bus or my salad. After swiping through items, I'd know exactly which local stores to check out. Also, the swiping data could provide valuable insights to boutique owners about what people like and don't like.

Every weekend, my husband and I feel the pressure to find 'good' activities for our young son. We want great ideas without spending hours scrolling through newsletters and websites. The signal-to-noise ratio of these resources can be kinda low. I'd love to have a tool that automatically scans information sources and delivers a personalized email each Friday with five curated activities that match the vibe we're looking for.

I want to connect better with people through conversations, and like with everything else, practice is key. While I'm familiar with techniques such as active listening and asking open-ended questions, practicing them "in the wild" feels risky. (The last thing I need is to weird out my conversation partners more than I probably already do!) I'd like to build a tool for practicing communication skills with AI conversation partners. It will allow me to isolate specific techniques, receive real-time feedback, and review recordings to track progress. Unlike in real-world interactions, I could practice without fear of messing up.