31 Ways to Use Claude in 2027: Hack Your TV, Fix Wi-Fi, Find a Planet

Nick Saraev rounds up 31 real ways people are using Claude and Claude Code, from stripping ads out of a smart TV to finding an exoplanet candidate in NASA data. In his 14-minute video (published November 2, 2026), Saraev argues we are in a “capabilities overhang,” where AI can already do far more than most people use it for. The examples range from hardware hacking and home security to cancer research, biotech, genealogy and game preservation. Most are anecdotes from people sharing their projects online, so treat the specific numbers as their reports, not verified results.

TLDW

Saraev groups the use cases loosely into hacking and repurposing consumer hardware (TVs, Kindles, routers, drones, old iPads, a $60 BlackBerry), cutting costs (replacing paid apps, cancelling subscriptions, letting agents haggle), personal security (finding a hidden crypto miner, auditing a car’s head unit, sweeping a hotel room), science (cancer research, a one-person biotech, a planet candidate, a new CRISPR-like enzyme), and everyday life (3D room planning, family trees, learning from podcasts, reviving old games). His point is that none of this needs a smarter model than what exists today.

Thoughts

Discovery from neglected data is the category in this list that matters most. One person had Claude write around 1,500 scripts to comb seven years of NASA telescope data and surfaced a planet candidate; someone else repeated the approach the next morning and reported two more. Anthropic, Saraev says, pointed about 1,000 Claude agents at a large DNA database and found a CRISPR-like enzyme nobody had described. Saraev’s own framing is the right question: how much discovery is sitting in archives that are simply too big for people to read? The caveat is that a “planet candidate” is a signal worth checking, not a confirmed planet, and the history of exoplanet hunting is full of candidates that turned out to be noise. The real shift is economic. Searching a public dataset used to need a funded team and a reason to look. Now it needs a curious person and a few dollars of compute, which means the number of people checking old data is about to grow enormously, along with the number of false alarms reviewers have to sort through.

The most quietly alarming detail is the haggling experiment. Saraev describes Anthropic giving 69 employees their own Claude agents and letting the agents buy and sell goods with each other, closing almost 200 deals on their own. Agents running stronger models got better prices, and the agents on weaker models “didn’t even notice.” That is a preview of a market where the quality of your agent is a direct price advantage, and where the losing side cannot tell it is losing. Saraev’s suggestion to “rip it on Facebook Marketplace,” and his decision to skip the ethics of an agent that swipes on Hinge for you, show how fast this moves from a lab experiment to everyday use. If agent-to-agent negotiation becomes common, the gap between people who pay for frontier models and people on free tiers stops being about convenience and starts showing up in what they pay for a used car.

The cancer story is the one that most needs careful reading. Miriam, a 35-year-old software engineer with stage 4 breast cancer and a rare tumor, set up roughly 30 Claude agents to research her case, and Saraev says the resulting biopsy plan was reviewed and then improved by a lab at Dana-Farber, after which Anthropic gave her $30,000 in credits. The important part is the review. The agents did not replace oncologists; they gave a technically fluent patient a way to arrive at specialists with a far better-prepared plan. That is a realistic and valuable model for AI in medicine. Saraev’s jump from there to personalized vaccines being “achievable right now” goes further than the story supports. The anecdote shows research assistance working, not a cure.

Many of these examples share a common thread that matters a lot for software businesses: people are rebuilding the tools they used to pay for. A parent whose baby-tracking app suddenly dropped its free tier had Claude build a replacement and released it for free. Pieter Levels reportedly cut his bills down to eight, two of them utilities and taxes, by having Claude build replacements for his subscriptions. Saraev puts a walk-through 3D house model from a floor plan at about $5 in tokens. The hardware hacks point the same way: a TV without ads, a Kindle without Amazon, a Civic head unit audited for an always-on microphone and a vendor back door. Any product whose value is a thin app over a commodity, or whose margin depends on the user being unable to change it, is now competing with its own customers’ weekend projects.

Key Takeaways

One user sent Claude Code a TV’s store listing, asked it to remove the ads, and ended up with rebuilt software and a custom screensaver showing calendar and weather.
Claude designed a dictation microphone from scratch, choosing parts, designing the circuit, writing firmware and modeling a 3D-printable case in a couple of days.
An old Wi-Fi router got about 8 times faster after Claude went through every setting from a photo of the device.
Old hardware gets new life: a jailbroken Kindle became a home dashboard, a 2010-era iPad became a smart-home wall panel, and a $60 BlackBerry became a pocket Claude Code terminal.
A DJI drone with a spare phone attached was turned into a home security drone tied to an alarm, with no cloud service.
In an Anthropic experiment with 69 employees, Claude agents closed almost 200 deals, and agents on stronger models got better prices while weaker ones did not notice.
A simple temperature monitor led Claude to a hidden crypto miner using all 12 cores of a Mac.
Claude Code connected to a Honda Civic head unit reportedly found an always-listening voice assistant, a Bluetooth call recorder and a vendor back door.
Claude can sweep a hotel room or Airbnb for Wi-Fi cameras, Bluetooth trackers and phone spyware.
A solo founder named Cody ran a biotech company with Claude agents and part-time help for a year and a half before, Saraev says, Anthropic acquired it in October.
Given a single birth record, Claude traced one person’s family tree back five generations.
Forty hours of developer hiring podcasts were condensed into one short, dense playbook.
Mapping roughly 150,000 Steam games and asking Claude to find the gaps produced an untouched concept: a co-op factory game where one player secretly shorts the company’s stock.

Chapters

0:29 Hack the Hardware You Already Own

The video opens with a TV stripped of ads and bloatware, a custom dictation microphone built from parts Claude picked, a better air conditioner interface than the manufacturer’s app, and a Kindle jailbroken onto a private network. Saraev’s line for this batch is that you can “hack for good.”

2:01 Fix and Repurpose Old Devices

Claude tunes a slow router for an 8x speed boost, turns a cheap receipt printer into a morning newspaper, makes a DJI drone into a cloud-free security guard, turns an old iPad into a smart-home panel, and turns a used BlackBerry into a $60 Claude Code phone with a physical keyboard.

3:45 Cancel Subscriptions and Let Agents Negotiate

Pieter Levels replaced most of his software subscriptions with apps Claude built. Anthropic’s internal experiment showed agents haggling on their own, with stronger models winning better prices. Saraev also mentions someone who wired Claude Code to Hinge on an Android phone and got 25 matches a day.

5:15 Find Hidden Miners, Car Back Doors and Spy Cameras

A temperature monitor exposes a hidden crypto miner. An audit of a Civic’s head unit reveals a listening assistant, a call recorder and a back door. A hotel room sweep checks for Wi-Fi cameras, trackers, phone spyware and hidden lenses.

6:26 Research Your Own Cancer, Run a One-Person Biotech

Miriam, a software engineer with stage 4 breast cancer, used around 30 Claude agents to build a biopsy plan that a Dana-Farber lab reviewed and improved. Saraev also mentions personalized therapies for pets and a solo founder whose agent-run biotech company Anthropic acquired.

7:43 Find a Planet, Discover an Enzyme

Claude-written scripts searched seven years of NASA telescope data and found a planet candidate, and a second person found two more the next morning. Anthropic’s 1,000-agent search of a DNA database turned up a new CRISPR-like enzyme.

8:46 For Kids: Translated Games and a First Website

A parent had Claude extract, translate and revoice a game in French using free local voice models so their four-year-old could play it. Another parent’s nine-year-old built a whole website about favorite books just by talking to Claude Code.

9:23 Plan Rooms and Houses in 3D, Trace Your Family Tree

Room dimensions and four photos were enough for Opus 5.5 to build a walk-through 3D planner to test whether a bed would fit. Saraev used the same approach to place photo frames around his home, and says a floor plan can become a walkable model of an unbuilt house for about $5 in tokens. A Czech user traced five generations from one birth record.

10:43 Replace Paid Apps and Learn Faster

A baby-tracking app that started charging was rebuilt and released for free. A Claude skill produced a realistic drone-building and flight simulator so beginners can practice without crashing real hardware. Forty hours of podcasts became a compact hiring playbook.

12:02 Revive Old Games and Find the Game Nobody Made

People have decompiled Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in about a month, revived 3DS games, restored an older look for The Witcher 3 and ported games to old hardware without emulators. A map of the Steam catalog revealed an unmade game concept. The video closes with an overnight AI photographer and quick mentions of fitness, glucose and genome projects.

Notable Quotes

“Paying for a Claude and then using it just to send emails is like buying a Lamborghini and letting it idle in a Walmart parking lot.”
Nick Saraev, opening the video

“We’re in a massive capabilities overhang right now. AI can do a lot more than most people think.”
Nick Saraev, on why he made the list

“Turns out you can hack for good.”
Nick Saraev, on jailbreaking a Kindle with Claude

“And then, interestingly enough, the dumber models didn’t even notice.”
Nick Saraev, on Anthropic’s agent haggling experiment

“How much discovery is currently sitting around in sources that we just have too much data for human beings to go through.”
Nick Saraev, after the NASA planet candidate story

“You can now decompile games and then recreate them and make them however you want them to be.”
Nick Saraev, on reviving old video games

Watch the full video here.