AI use cases for business, with receipts.

21 sourced examples of founders, sellers, creators and agencies running parts of their business on AI. Each one shows the source, how it actually went, and a prompt you can copy.

New this week

Oct 15, 2026. The strongest new tools and use cases, with the setup note.

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  1. Tool update Oct 10, 2026 Shopify adds a Grok connector for store operations

    Grok and Grok Bot can now work with products, inventory, orders, customers, discounts and analytics, within the permissions a merchant grants. It cannot refund or cancel paid orders, change payment settings, or publish to a live theme.

    The article shows only its opening until you sign up.

  2. Tool update Oct 11, 2026 Grok Bot 0.70.2: email addresses for Bots, X search, QuickBooks and payments

    Bots can claim their own email address, and mail they send from it waits for approval on a draft card. They can search X without a connected account, connect to QuickBooks Online, and pay with X Money or Stripe Link. Before anything it can’t undo, a Bot now checks for your approval.

  3. Tool update Oct 7, 2026 Nous Research raises $90M to take Hermes Agent to businesses

    Per Dealroom, citing The Wall Street Journal, the round values Nous at $1.5B. The money goes into Hermes for Businesses, which lets companies pick models by price and goal, keep their AI use private and own their company knowledge.

  4. Use case Run SEO with Claude doing the work and Search Console data doing the thinking

    A 50-page blog went from 1,500 to 15,000 monthly clicks in three months without a new article, by pruning and retargeting pages with real Search Console data. Self-reported, with honest notes on the times Claude broke live pages.

  5. Use case Send your whole Bot team to find one improvement each

    A one-line prompt sends every Bot on an account to find one improvement. Replies say it surfaces good gaps, and also that it can eat a large share of a week’s usage and pile Bots onto one computer.

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Use Cases

Editor's picks: strong sources, honest results, prompts worth copying.

All 21 use cases
Evidence grade B

Operations

Give an always-on agent a revenue target and let it run the business

Nat Eliason's OpenClaw agent, Felix, builds and sells digital products around the clock and reports $177,417 in lifetime revenue.

How it went

In an interview, Felix reported $177,417 in lifetime revenue across products and services.

  • Revenue is self-reported from Nat's own dashboard.
  • Nat still sets strategy, makes judgment calls and corrects tone; Felix can't take calls and runs into context limits.
  • Distribution did much of the work: one analysis notes Nat's 100,000+ newsletter subscribers and 300,000+ X followers.
  • Nat put in long days early on, building the system around the agent.
View prompt
PromptWritten by our editors from the source
You are [name], operator of [company]. Target: $[X] in revenue by [date].

Every morning, write a five-line plan tied to the target.
Every night, post a revenue review to [channel]: sales, refunds, what worked, what to stop.

You may build and publish digital products priced under $[N] on [Stripe or Gumroad], post from [X account] up to [3] times a day, and answer customers at [agent email].

Ask me in [Discord] before refunds over $[amount], new spending over $[amount], legal terms or partnerships.
thenextnewthing.beehiiv.com
Evidence grade B

Content

Make launch and product animations with Claude in code, and budget for follow-ups

A creator's lab notebook shows Claude Opus 5.5 producing three studio-style animations in code, and how many follow-ups and hours each one really took.

How it went

Each piece took real iteration. The chrome loop took about 2 hours, 10 picture follow-ups and 12 transition checks, plus about 45 minutes and 5 follow-ups for sound.

  • The vague earbuds prompt came back with most of the clichés the directed prompt banned; the directed version took 15 follow-ups and about 90 minutes, plus 90 minutes and 12 follow-ups for sound.
  • The mascot took about 2 hours plus 70 minutes of sound; all 71 frame checks passed after 6 failures were fixed.
  • Claude can't hear: early mixes landed hits late and put energy where phone speakers play nothing.
  • A creator's own experiments, not client work.
View prompt
PromptWritten by our editors from the source
Make a 6-second seamless loop, 1080x1080 at 60 fps, as a single HTML file using three.js [pin the version].

Goal: [one sentence on what the viewer should feel or understand].
Timeline: 0–1.0s [action]; 1.0–2.5s [action]; 2.5–6.0s [action].
Use easing [cubic-bezier(0.22, 1, 0.36, 1)], a 60 ms stagger, and anticipation before every big move.
Ban: dark space backgrounds, glowing rings, bloom, floating particles and made-up taglines.

After building, render frames 0, 30, 60 and onward, check every transition against these timings, and list what's off by frame number before fixing it.
x.com
Evidence grade B

Support

Run customer support with a bot that asks before refunding

ChatPRD's support Bot works the Intercom and email queues every hour. In the week before the write-up, several customers asked where they could leave a review.

Grok BotStartupsApprove-to-send
How it went

Claire reports that in the past week, several customers asked where they could leave a review for the support they got, which had never happened before.

  • No resolution-rate or ticket-volume numbers were published.
  • Refund authority stays with a human by design.
  • At the time, Grok Bots couldn't join group chats.
View prompt
PromptWritten by our editors from the source
You are Holly, the support teammate for [product].

Every hour from [6am] to [9pm], sweep [Intercom] and [support inbox].
Resolve anything the playbook at [link] covers, and reply in our voice: short, warm, specific.

You may request refunds but never issue them. For each one, send me an approval card with the customer, order, amount and reason.
Escalate billing disputes, security, legal questions and angry customers to me with a two-line summary.

Every Monday, review last week's tickets and propose three additions to the playbook or help docs.
chatprd.ai
Evidence grade C

Support

Automate order-status and return tickets on a Shopify store

Footwear brand Orthofeet automated 56% of support tickets in under two months with Gorgias's AI Agent, beating its goal of 30% in 30 days.

How it went

Gorgias reports 56% automation in under two months, first responses down to 35 seconds for email and 13 seconds for chat, and double-digit yearly growth without adding headcount.

  • Vendor case study.
  • A third-party review of Gorgias's case studies puts typical automation between 26% and 56%; Orthofeet sits at the top.
  • Model the AI Agent's cost against your ticket volume before switching it on.
  • Text channels only; phone volume is not automated.
View prompt
PromptWritten by our editors from the source
Audit our last 500 support tickets. Group them by intent: where's my order, returns, exchanges, sizing, product questions, other.

Show volume and average handle time for each, and mark which ones can be answered from order data and our policy pages alone.

For the top three, draft guidance in our brand voice with clear hand-off rules: health questions, angry customers and orders over $[amount] go to a person.
gorgias.com
Evidence grade C

Content

Run a weekly local newsletter with a six-Bot team

The Arlington Bagel, reported at about 6,000 weekly readers, runs research, compilation, editing and email on six Grok Bots that replaced an intern.

How it went

Per the write-up, six Bots now cover research, content compilation, editing and email correspondence, replacing a human intern.

  • No revenue, open-rate or time-saved figures were given for the newsletter.
  • This is a secondhand write-up by Stork.ai, not Billy's own account.
  • Greg Isenberg, quoted in the write-up, advises keeping Grok Bot on one project; running several businesses at once lets context bleed and burns through usage.
View prompt
PromptWritten by our editors from the source
You are Chief of Staff for [newsletter], a weekly newsletter about [topic or town] for [audience].

Read our Notion, Slack and Gmail. Write a one-page audit: what we publish, each step and how long it takes, and where revenue comes from.

Recommend the two or three Bots that would save the most time or earn the most first, with a one-paragraph job description for each.

Don't create Bots, send email or change anything until I approve.
stork.ai
Evidence grade C

Marketing

Run SEO with Claude doing the work and Search Console data doing the thinking

ChatSEO's co-founder says pruning and retargeting pages took a 50-page blog from 1,500 to 15,000 monthly clicks in three months, and documents the times Claude broke live pages.

How it went

He reports going from 1,500 to 15,000 monthly clicks in three months on a 50-page blog without publishing a new article, by cutting dead pages and pointing pages at queries Google already showed them for.

  • Self-reported, and he doesn't say how much of the gain came from AI.
  • Failures: Claude rewrote city pages and dropped their ranking tables, found live during a podcast recording; another edit deleted the key section of a comparison page.
  • On a fresh domain chasing competitive terms, he says the same process produces pages that rank around 40th.
  • Promotional: the course routes data through his product. A free route uses Search Console exports and Google Suggest.
View prompt
PromptWritten by our editors from the source
Using my Search Console data, list every page with zero clicks and fewer than 50 impressions in the last 90 days, excluding pages published in the last 3 months.

For each page, recommend delete, merge (and into which page), or rewrite, with one line of reasoning from the data.

Safeguard before any live edit: list every table, form, call to action and embed on the current page, confirm each one survives in your edited version, and stop to show me the difference if anything is missing.
x.com

Income Automations

Money-making workflows people have shared. Unverified income claims are labeled.

All 5 workflows
Evidence grade B

Let an AI agent build and sell digital guides

Nat Eliason's OpenClaw agent, Felix, launched a site selling guides overnight and later built a marketplace for agent skills. Felix reports $177,417 in lifetime revenue across all streams.

Unverified claim$177,417 in lifetime revenue across all streams, self-reported from the owner’s dashboard

How it works
  1. Give the agent a name, its own X account and a revenue target.
  2. Have it create a first product it can make entirely on its own, such as a guide, and put it up for sale.
  3. Let it answer customers from its own email address, with helper agents for support email, coding, and SEO and content.
  4. Hold it accountable with a daily plan and a nightly revenue review.
  5. Keep strategy, judgment calls and tone corrections with you.
View prompt
PromptWritten by our editors from the source
You run [business name]. Target: $[X] in sales by [date].

Create one digital product you can make entirely on your own, such as a guide or template for [audience], priced under $[N]. Draft the sales page and the launch post, and show me both before anything goes live.

Every night, post a revenue review to [channel]: sales, refunds, what worked, what to change.
Ask me before refunds over $[amount], any new spending, or anything legal.
thenextnewthing.beehiiv.com
Evidence grade B

Build a free browser game with AI and sell ad slots inside it

Pieter Levels built a free flight simulator by prompting Cursor and sold placements inside the game. He reported a $1M annual run rate 17 days after launch; a 2026 recap says it now earns nothing.

Unverified claim$87,000 a month, a $1M annual run rate, 17 days after launch (self-reported); later listed at $0 a month

How it works
  1. Describe the smallest playable version to an AI code editor, then keep improving it with short follow-ups.
  2. Launch it free in the browser and share the build in public.
  3. Sell placements inside the game, such as billboards or branded objects.
  4. Add one paid upgrade for keen players.
  5. Share revenue updates in public, as Levels does.
View prompt
PromptWritten by our editors from the source
Build [game idea] as a single-page browser game in plain HTML and JavaScript using three.js.

Start with the smallest version someone can play in 30 seconds. Then list the next five improvements and wait for me to pick.

Add an ad-slot system that reads sponsors and their placements from a JSON file, so I can sell spots without changing the code.
404media.co
Evidence grade D

Let a Bot answer sponsorship inquiries in your business inbox

Creator Alex Finn says he gave Grok Bot his business email and told it to reply to and negotiate with legitimate companies, and that it closed a $10,000 deal within four hours.

Unverified claimA $10,000 deal closed within four hours (self-reported)

How it works
  1. Connect the business inbox where sponsorship requests arrive.
  2. Tell the Bot which companies count as legitimate, and what your rates and terms are.
  3. Let it reply, ask qualifying questions and negotiate within your limits.
  4. Our addition: approve the final terms yourself before anything is agreed.
View prompt
PromptWritten by our editors from the source
You handle sponsorship inquiries for [creator or brand] at [inbox].

For each new inquiry, check the company is real (website, product, recent activity) and fits [audience and topics]. Skip anything on [no-go list].
Reply with our media kit and rates: [rates]. Negotiate only within these limits: [minimum price, deliverables, exclusivity, payment terms].

Before agreeing to anything, send me the final terms on an approval card: company, deliverables, dates, price and payment terms.
Log every inquiry in [sheet] with its status and next step.
techora.ru

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