His writing agent drowned the book in continuity ledgers and lost the story

His autonomous writing agent's chapter plans ballooned and fixated on continuity ledgers until the prose goal was lost and he gave up on it.

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

How it works

His autonomous writing agent plans chapters
The plans balloon
It fixates on continuity ledgers
The prose goal is lost and he gives up on it

Why it’s worth knowing

The bookkeeping ate the book.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on news.ycombinator.com. 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

HobbiesThe AI built its own mail app in 23 minutes HobbiesThe AI fixed the gapless playback on mp3s I ripped 20 years ago HobbiesAudit my whole drive every week, flag 380GB to delete — and delete nothing HobbiesAn AI assistant traced my family tree past 1,200 people and 13 generations

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.