The 48 bytes of sram are enough to encode several state machines. It has pwm and dedicated IR signalling output, but no ADC for input.

It's generally designed to be a very simple controller-of-things. Push an up button, increase the pwm output up to some limit, etc. remote controls, fans, etc.,

Indeed. I've seen a retail toy use a similar microcontroller from Nyquest to accept infrared control commands and drive some H-bridge drivers to make a simple, cheap RC car.

Use a neural network to detect numbers? (Well, this runs on a slightly more capable MCU, though)

https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2024/05/02/machine-learning-mn...

Most simple home appliances - microwave, air fryer, mixer/blender of some sort.

Toys, like a house which blinks lights and plays tinny music when a button is pressed (as long as speech / complex sounds atr bot involved)

Remote control toys (with external transceiver)

Make a LED candle?

https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2019/09/28/a-led-candle-based-...

It looks like this chip is powerful enough to run a more "cinematic" looking gust/wind/topple/rise flicker model: https://blackdice.github.io/Candle/

The 38kHz signal support clearly indicates that this is a TV Remote Control chip.

Yeah, you can find them in all kinds of low-cost remote controls:

https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/9838991700773145118.file-1700...