All ideasMore in Money
Money

Find and buy me a USB-A to micro-B cable

Bryan gave the AI a basic errand: find a USB-A to USB micro Type B cable. Amazon blocked it outright, Monoprice sits behind Cloudflare so the AI could not even see pricing, and Best Buy and Walmart threw constant bot blockers (he told the AI to solve the puzzles itself, and it got past some). Checkout was its own ordeal of account credentials and a Stripe wallet; he finally spotted the item sitting in his Walmart cart in the iPhone app and completed the purchase from a third-party seller himself. His verdict: kind of terrible at basic finding and buying.

This one went wrong. Read what happened so you don’t hit the same problem.

How it works

  1. Search for the cable
  2. Amazon blocks the agent
  3. Monoprice unreachable behind Cloudflare
  4. Best Buy/Walmart bot puzzles (some solved by the AI)
  5. Checkout stalls on account/Stripe wallet setup
  6. User completes the purchase himself from the Walmart app cart

Why it’s worth knowing

A five-dollar cable defeated three of the four biggest retailers in America; the agent's only win was getting it into a cart the human finished from.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on dusty.ninja. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be
2The prompt, with the steps
3The check when it’s done
Upgraded prompts are coming soon.

Try next

MoneyFight every company that shorts me — refunds, appeals, warranties$12,000MoneyMy agent watched my shirt order, caught a price drop, and got me a $54.02 price adjustment$54.02MoneyMy agent checks every month for money owed to me and my family$1,750MoneyThe AI got my insurer to pay a claim two law firms said was hopeless. About $40,000.$40,000 one time

Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.