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Jobs, side gigs and small business · 1,668 ideas

My agent built a web tool so our whole university can transcribe interviews in seconds

A university worker used AI to build a web version of a transcription program that used to need a special Windows machine reached by remote desktop. The new tool pairs a speech model with speaker detection on the university's own systems. Twenty minutes of interview audio now transcribes in 40 seconds with the speaker changes right, and students and staff can use it from a browser.

Agents exploited a lab flaw and built the defense pack

Locally hosted agents rebuilt a Conductor flaw in an isolated lab and got root access inside the test container. The team checked the flaw was gone after the upgrade and turned the work into signatures, rules, a playbook, and a paper.

WorkWent wrong

Asked the AI to add one sprint. It deleted 12 finished sprints from our board

A user asked the AI to create a new sprint on a shared GitHub Projects board. The AI replaced the board's whole sprint list with only the new one, deleting 12 completed sprints and the sprint history of about 450 items, and the safety filter then blocked the call that would have put them back.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

Clean my giant inbox by sender — trash only, never delete, undo everything

Dheeraj Sharma built an AI cleanup agent for decade-old Gmail inboxes like a reader's 130,000-message one, then ran it on his own 7,610-message mailbox in four gated stages: census, editable plan, dry run, apply. One approved run moved 2,896 newsletter and notification emails to Trash in 107 seconds (unread fell from 5,013 to 2,237), with deletion impossible by design and every change logged for a one-command undo.

Her work diary writes itself because the agent is the one doing the work

A German business consultant stopped keeping her time spreadsheet by hand in October 2026: since the AI does much of the work with her, it also keeps the log, writing into her running 'current state' document after every work block what was finished, where it lives and what she decided, tagged with one of four categories (revenue, acquisition, building, admin), a duration, and who actually worked, her or the AI. On Sundays she types one word, 'Wochenbilanz', and gets hours per category plus the loops nobody notices (items resurfacing a second or third time); the monthly version confronts her with last month's goal quoted verbatim, which at her first review she no longer remembered word for word.

WorkWent wrong

An agent without proper guardrails refunded $8,000 of his orders

An agent he had not yet set up with proper governance or skills refunded $8,000 of orders. It did ask 'You sure?' before acting, but he blanked on the confirmation and approved it. He puts the fault on his own setup more than on the agent.

$8,000one time
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

Prepare me for my call — from the right email thread, unprompted

In AI Agents Library's structured 10-task business test (Sept 27, 2026, free plan, real business material), Diana gave the AI almost nothing for meeting prep: it found the correct email thread among several plausible candidates, located the calendar invitation, and prepared questions — including some she had not thought of. The task scored 10/10, the best result of the test day.

59-year-old non-coder's the AI posts 95 times a week across six accounts

A 59-year-old Japanese logistics worker who has never coded has the AI run 38 routines, including daily posts for three regional 'free places this week' Threads accounts; the agent published 95 posts in Oct 9-15 and one AI-written intro post passed 51,000 views. He reviews output five minutes morning and evening from his 4.5-hour commute.

WorkPartly worked

Build a source-checked mini-site in five minutes — but it can't go public

Business Insider's reporter had Dots build a Tumblr-style site called Strange Endings with six source-checked cases in about five minutes. The site could not be made public because the publication's workspace barred public links, and the agent could not access the site's update endpoint for automatic updates.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Non-coder had the AI build his personal blog content studio, then tested it until 114 of 114 content blocks matched the original

Korean blogger Jiwon4u, who says he barely codes, had the AI build him a personal 'content studio' (draft generation, private publishing, human review, public publishing, card news, analytics) driven by an 88-line CLAUDE.md of rules, including model tiering (Haiku for light jobs, Sonnet for drafts) and per-call cost logging (about $0.10 per draft conversion). The work queue has run 446 jobs since Sept 30, 2026. He verified quality numerically: a feature converting published posts back into drafts was tested three times against the original until all 114 blocks matched in order and formatting, after the first run silently dropped all 9 links; card news produced by the studio was actually posted to his Instagram and Threads. He upgraded from Pro to Max after repeatedly burning the 5-hour and weekly limits during development. (The article also carries a disclosed referral link for the Aside test browser; the AI account itself is first-hand.)

His wife's payroll migration check covered 400 staff across 18 PDFs in five minutes

His wife was migrating almost 400 employees across two companies to a new payroll system and had to confirm every bank detail had carried over, two days before payday. The AI wrote a local script instead of uploading personal data, matched employee codes and bank codes across 18 PDFs in different formats, and produced summary spreadsheets with the checks. The script can be rerun for the next migration.

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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.