Stupid Minutes

A developer known as spookyuser has launched Pelicart, a beta AI agent designed to eliminate the tedious 'stupid minutes' people spend on mundane online tasks, starting with grocery shopping at Woolworths in South Africa. The core concept, detailed in a viral blog post titled '8 Stupid Minutes,' defines these moments as time spent on necessary but automatable chores that a machine could do cheaply and well, like comparing toilet paper prices. Pelicart operates entirely through WhatsApp, where users message it a shopping list—which can be handwritten, emailed, or even a recipe. The agent then securely accesses the user's existing Woolies Dash account to search for products and populate their cart, completing the task in about two minutes while the user does something else.

The system currently handles three core actions: search, add to cart, and remove from cart. It stops at cart population, requiring the user to review the selections and proceed to checkout in the standard Woolies app, maintaining a human-in-the-loop for verification. The developer frames this as a step toward 'disposable programs' and the end of traditional apps for simple tasks, arguing that AI should be used to automate errands like buying toilet paper, a luxury previously reserved for the wealthy with personal assistants. The post contends that while the ethical boundaries of AI use are complex, using it to reclaim personal time from trivial chores is an unambiguous good. The launch highlights a growing trend of hyper-specific, agentic AI tools designed to integrate seamlessly into daily communication platforms to handle real-world tasks.