ChatGPT examples: 282 real use cases with prompts

Plan a sunset hike from a ChatGPT itinerary and get stuck at the summit after the last ropeway had gone (failure)

Dana Yao and their spouse used ChatGPT to plan a romantic hike up Mount Misen on Japan's Itsukushima island. They set off at 15:00 to reach the summit for sunset, exactly as ChatGPT had told them. ChatGPT said the last ropeway down was at 17:30, but when they got to the station to descend, the ropeway had already closed, and they were stuck at the top of the mountain.

Cut broadband and energy bills by about £782 a year with negotiation scripts from ChatGPT (partial)

Finance writer Jessie Hewitson tested ChatGPT on household bills. It had Hewitson find a cheaper competing broadband deal (£23 a month with Virgin against £35 with Vodafone) and wrote a script; read word for word on the phone, it got Vodafone to offer a £22-a-month reduction, which Hewitson says saved £156 a year. An emailed tariff review with Octopus turned into a phone call that moved them to tariffs worth an estimated £626 a year. Not everything worked: a ChatGPT-written appeal against a £90 Transport for London penalty failed, and a home-insurance quote it led to came in at £1,627.24 against £436 before.

Stop an insurer's repeated document requests with a firm ChatGPT letter and get ₹85,000 approved the next day

Jacinth Paul Z submitted a ₹89,000 hospitalisation claim, of which ₹65,000 was marked claimable, and sent every required document within a week. After three months of silence the insurer asked for more documents three times, each needing a trip to the hospital. The fourth time, Jacinth used ChatGPT to draft a firm, legal-toned letter saying enough documents had already been submitted, that the requests looked like a delay tactic, that no more would be sent, and that HR was being told how the claim had been handled. Jacinth uploaded the letter instead of more documents, and the claim was approved the next day for ₹85,000.

Build a goodwill case with ChatGPT and get a €6,000 out-of-warranty engine replacement for free

Thomas Weilbach's car was out of warranty, and the dealership said the only long-term fix, a full engine replacement quoted at €6,000, would be paid out of pocket. Weilbach used ChatGPT in research mode to dig into the symptoms (oil consumption, juddering under load and limp mode), known problems with that engine, service bulletins and how others had handled similar cases, testing each possible cause against the symptoms. ChatGPT then helped turn it all into a clear, structured argument. Weilbach took the case to the dealership, and the manufacturer approved the full engine replacement under goodwill at no charge.

Cut a family's grocery spend from $400–$500 every few days to $140 a week with a ChatGPT meal plan

When Brooke Ferrier, a parent of two on the NSW Central Coast, and their partner both lost their jobs, Ferrier asked ChatGPT for a low-cost meal plan for two adults and two toddlers, then refined it with follow-ups: hidden vegetables, low-carb options and no lentils. ChatGPT gave one recipe per meal with variations for each person, compared supermarket prices and produced a categorised shopping list with quantities. A week of breakfasts, dinners and snacks came to $140, against the $400–$500 Ferrier had been spending every four or five days, with much less food thrown out. Ferrier also uses it to find recipes for long-forgotten pantry items.

Get a reluctant reader through spring-break reading homework with ChatGPT stories about their favourite topic

Lisa Durant's almost-9-year-old has special needs, struggles with reading and resists books without pictures, so reading homework often ended in meltdowns. For the spring-break assignment (20 minutes of reading at least five times, any material), Durant asked ChatGPT for a short, silly, age-appropriate story about tornadoes, the child's special interest, starring the child and a younger sibling, and had the child read it aloud. The child soon started writing their own prompts for new stories, and reads them without protest, picking up good vocabulary along the way.

Turn long recipe steps into an importable to-do list with a custom GPT so every Thanksgiving dish is on time

Amanda Parsons, who has adult ADHD, finds recipes pack too much into one step. While planning Thanksgiving, Parsons asked ChatGPT for help with the cooking schedule, then found it could turn recipes into CSV files for the Todoist to-do app; for the first time, dinner was ready on time and every dish made it to the table as planned. After a chaotic batch of English muffins without it, Parsons built a custom GPT to do the conversion, going through five rounds of tests over an hour until the CSV imported successfully.

Turn a photo of a cafe's daily inventory sheet into shopping lists for three suppliers with a custom GPT

Cole Morgan runs a small cafe with no single major supplier, so they drive to three stores. Staff fill in two paper inventory forms each day and upload them to Slack, and turning those into a checklist for each store took 2–10 minutes. An off-the-shelf OCR tool that worked well cost over $250 a month, and a Python script they had ChatGPT write wasn't accurate enough. So they built a custom GPT, 'C&K Inventory Manager', trained on a spreadsheet of every item and its vendor. Now they upload the sheet photo and get a checkbox list grouped by vendor, ready to paste into Obsidian. It asks about items missing from the sheet, such as whole milk. Accuracy improved with GPT-4o with no change to the instructions, though it sometimes asks too many questions and they have to tell it to just output the list.

Make a grade-4 math practice game with ChatGPT after its first try didn't work

The poster asked ChatGPT for a math practice worksheet for their fourth-grade daughter. Its first attempt, an HTML page, didn't work. It then rendered a personalised practice game directly in the chat, which worked perfectly; the daughter's verdict was 'beat that IXL!', the homework software their school assigns.

Plan 15 family meals a week from a recipe library and make the shopping list with Grok Bot

After a decade of trying to automate meal planning (a spreadsheet, then a self-built app), the poster now has a custom Grok Bot that plans 15 meals a week for the family. It keeps a library of recipes as Markdown files, makes a printable weekly meal plan and produces a shopping list, which the poster pastes into ChatGPT to fill an Instacart order.

Make a 21-page vacation activity book and gamified chore charts for three kids with ChatGPT

Sara Sprong, a parent of three in Colorado, uses ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner to make printable resources. For a trip to Rhinelander, Wisconsin, it helped create a 21-page activity book for their kids and cousins, with Mad Libs about their activities and a scavenger hunt around the resort, formatted for printing. Sprong also made a 'Bedroom Boss Battle' chore chart in timed levels and a tracker for one-on-one parent–child dates, and says it has helped cut screen time at home.

Spot low brake fluid behind recurring brake warning lights with ChatGPT after two garage visits

The brake warning lights on the poster's car kept coming on. A mechanic claimed to have fixed it, the lights came back, and on a second visit the garage said it couldn't work it out without a fault code. At home, the poster noticed the brake fluid was low, confirmed it with ChatGPT from a photo, bought fluid and topped it up, and says that fixed it.

Plan a six-day Oregon trip day by day with ChatGPT and Google Maps

The poster booked flights and Airbnbs, then for each day gave ChatGPT the start and end Airbnb, the kind of places they like and how much walking they were up for, and asked what to see along the route. They checked every suggestion on Google Maps, asked for hidden spots, then asked whether each day was feasible and what they'd missed, which turned up a redwood trail. Planning took about four hours; the poster says the plan worked almost perfectly without feeling rushed.

Audit a year of medical bills against your insurance contract with ChatGPT (partial)

CNET's Robin Hartill, a certified financial planner, hit a $10,150 out-of-pocket maximum in under five months after two eye surgeries. Hartill redacted and uploaded 14 itemised bills and EOBs, a 149-page insurance contract and a spreadsheet of 87 claims to ChatGPT with an auditor prompt. It flagged nothing new on its own and showed an insurance rep had been wrong about a $250 co-pay. When asked directly why Hartill had paid $11,512, it confirmed a $1,512 overpayment on the second surgery and explained why.

Let ChatGPT handle airline and car-rental disputes from Gmail and recover about €200 so far

The poster connected ChatGPT to Gmail and lets it handle disputes on its own. So far it has got €100 from an airline for a broken stroller and a €108 refund from a car-rental company for a very dirty child seat; the poster puts the total at €200 so far, with a trickier dispute still ongoing.

Clear over 9,400 unread emails safely by building a 'safe list' first with ChatGPT

Back from a week away, Abha Malpani Naismith had more than 9,400 unread Gmail messages. Claude couldn't act inside the connected inbox for them, so they switched to ChatGPT with Gmail connected. It analysed the inbox by sender, subject and category without opening emails, built a 'Safe List' of financial, legal, medical, school and travel mail never to touch without approval, and then helped archive, label, delete or unsubscribe in bulk. They archived or deleted more than 4,500 emails and reached inbox zero in about 30 minutes.

Match a 1999 wood floor stain from a sunlit photo and order a quart with ChatGPT

A Hacker News commenter needed a stain to match the wood flooring in a house built in 1999. They uploaded a clear photo taken in bright sunlight, ChatGPT searched online for a matching stain colour and presented ordering options, and a quart was delivered the day before they posted.

Compare options for towing a car cross-country with your truck with ChatGPT

A Hacker News commenter needed to tow their daughter's car across the country behind their truck: trailer or dolly, what each costs, and whether the truck could handle the combined weight. After a couple of piecemeal questions they gave ChatGPT the whole picture in one prompt (car make, truck model, start and end points), and it came back with a report with comparison tables and calculated towing weights for the different options.

Cook and freeze a vegan red lentil and potato curry from a ChatGPT recipe

The poster asked ChatGPT for an authentic vegan Indian curry with potatoes, red lentils, coconut milk and tomatoes, followed the recipe with a few changes of their own (extra spices, red curry paste, ground cumin in place of seeds), and calls it the best Indian curry. They froze the leftovers in meal-prep containers with rice; the poster says they reheated well over several weeks and the family ate every one.

Win a Lufthansa refund for a cancelled trip over months of ChatGPT-written emails

After a Lisbon–Frankfurt–Miami flight was delayed, boarded and then cancelled, the poster gave up the trip and flew elsewhere. Lufthansa tried to charge for the Lisbon–Frankfurt leg and offered only 'the difference'. The poster fought it entirely by email using ChatGPT, and after months and a long chain of emails got the refund. They still lost money, days and the trip with their mother.

Learn what limp mode is at the roadside and get moving again with ChatGPT

On the way to work, the poster's car suddenly crawled at about 4 mph with the check-engine light blinking and other dashboard lights on. They pulled over and asked ChatGPT, which explained limp mode. The poster switched the car off and on again, and says it worked fine afterwards, saving a panicked call to a mechanic.

Write a complaint that got a health insurer to reverse an ADD assessment refusal with ChatGPT

Natja Vinkler, 21, was refused cover by their Danish health insurer, PFA, for a private ADD assessment because they'd been assessed as a child. Vinkler gave ChatGPT the correspondence and their childhood records, then spent several days going back and forth, adding PFA's guidelines, asking for different drafts and fact-checking everything before their mother and a colleague read it. About a month after Vinkler sent it, PFA called to say it would cover the assessment. PFA confirmed to TV 2 that the complaint led it to look again.

Practise interview answers out loud with ChatGPT voice mode, not memorised scripts (partial)

On their way to interviews at Microsoft, Bain and Sweetgreen, a job seeker who writes the Ambitious Slacker newsletter pasted job descriptions into ChatGPT and had it interview them in voice mode, answering out loud and asking for feedback. That practice helped. Having ChatGPT write answers to memorise backfired: after a final round at Target, the interviewer said they were the best candidate but the company chose an internal candidate because they sounded too scripted. Once they stopped memorising and practised a few stories out loud, they did much better.

Draft a 13-day cross-country motorcycle route with Grok and ChatGPT, then catch a badly wrong route map

Planning a 13-day cross-country motorcycle ride for a year ahead, the poster asked Grok and ChatGPT for an initial route and itinerary. Grok's itinerary was 'a little wonky'; ChatGPT's schedule and route looked great. But when asked to draw a map of the route it had described, ChatGPT produced one that the poster says gets worse the more you look at it, making them question whether the itinerary itself was accurate.