About this AI Exemplar

WhenIsBins.com tells you when to put your bins out. Enter your postcode, pick your address, done. Add the dates to your calendar or get an email reminder. All of it built by LLMs.

But a UK-wide bin day website isn't the point. The point is to learn how to respond to what's coming. And what's coming is AI agents.

Preparing for agents

An AI agent doesn't just answer questions. It goes and does the task, step by step, using whatever tools it needs. Meta's Muse, launched in September 2026 in the US, is the consumer version: give it a goal and it will find and fill in forms, send emails and make bookings for you.

In a few years time - maybe sooner - you’ll be able to tell your agent "I've moved" and it will go away and do it. It’ll update the local council, your utility companies, the tax office, your GP and the electoral register. It’ll even sort out council tax at both addresses, without you touching a single form.

Millions of people will soon have agents acting for them, tirelessly, at 11.52pm. Or 3.52am. And these agents won’t ask nicely. They’ll do what they did to build this website: mooch around, interpret your instructions, click through forms, and keep trying until they succeed. WhenIsBins is polite and respects councils’ attempts at bot-blocking. Some agents will force their way past. I'm not sure everyone is ready for what's coming.

The jury is still out on exactly how AI Agents will end up accessing services. Muse seems to like using a service's website, but other agents prefer using an API.

Councils wanting to prepare for the arrival of AI Agents would be wise to make their websites really fast, clear and accessible, ideally based on a well-supported design system.

And as for bin collection calendars, as Matthew Somerville suggests, councils should publish them as open-standard iCal files, not just put the dates on a webpage. Some more enlightened software vendors already offer this. This is 'data as a service'.

Nearly every residential property now has its bin calendar data published in iCal format (.ics) via a url like this: https://whenisbins.com/[UPRN].ics

For example, the url https://whenisbins.com/100120830271.ics is the iCal bin collection calendar of this unique house.

We'd like public services to shape how they are used by AI Agents, not just sit back passively and accept what comes.

Who made this?

WhenIsBins.com is made by Public Digital. We're a consultancy that helps governments and large organisations respond to the raised expectations of the agentic era. We've done this in more than 30 countries, for public sector and private sector clients. Several of us helped set up the UK's Government Digital Service.

We built this to see what working with LLMs with an eye to the future feels like. If working out what LLMs and AI agents mean for your organisation is your problem too, get in touch. Or just read along: we write about all this at public.digital/insights.

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