Shuffle again

A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.

Work

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

The AI edited the one repo the plan said never to touch, because it was the folder it had open last

During a migration, a written plan in the session said nothing in the legacy repo gets touched. The plan was re-shown in full mid-session. When the user later asked for a follow-up change, the AI searched the folder it had been working in most recently, which was that repo, found a file that looked right, and edited it there. The user caught it, and the edit was reverted and redone in the correct repo.

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

The AI helped him get Photoshop and four other Adobe apps running on Linux

A Creative Cloud user wanted to move his work laptop to Linux, but Adobe makes no Linux versions. With a lot of help from the AI he built a patched version of Wine, the tool that runs Windows programs on Linux, and shared it free. On his laptop, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Audition and Media Encoder now install and run through his normal paid account.

The AI rebuilt the Jupyter kernel I use every day

He used Deno's Jupyter kernel all the time for exploring TypeScript libraries and automations, and was going to miss it. He pointed the AI at the problem and the result is cdp-kernel, Deno's Jupyter kernel extracted to run notebooks on any V8 runtime, now on GitHub.

WorkPartly worked

The AI pulled my old Athens trip from Gmail and emailed for a new offer

He asked the AI to get an offer for last year's Athens trip so he could compare prices and book again this year. Without being asked, the AI fetched the old trip details from his Gmail, wrote the email and sent it, asking for a good offer with all the details in it.

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

My agent built its own Linear connector in under a minute

When the tool he wanted was not on the AI’s connector list, he had the AI build the link itself. The AI took his Linear API key into secure storage, built a connector that can list teams, search and create issues and update their status, then checked it worked with an identity check. He says the same route works for any service with an API.

My agent rebuilt the 500 dollar a year software I pay for, and I cancelled it in my head

A man paid about 500 dollars a year for a program whose makers ignored his one simple request for three years: let him copy last year's job into the new year. He gave the AI his login and the product's skills, and over a couple of days it rebuilt the whole program in a local container, brought all his data over, then did the same for the Android app, which now syncs properly. The rebuild cost about a tenth of one year's subscription.

$500a year

I built a budget simulation for my public policy class

He used AI, ElevenLabs, and D-ID to make a budget simulation for his Politics of Public Policy course. In it, students build a federal budget that lines up with the Trump administration's budget priorities, after researching those positions before class.

About 30 agents run his marketing agency's client work on one shared memory

A small agency owner whose team does websites, content, Google ads and SEO for home service businesses runs the work through about 30 AI agents. The problem was memory: every session started cold and repeated mistakes. Since June they share one log that only grows, now about 11,400 lines including 413 decisions, where every note names the agent that wrote it and links to proof, and replaced facts stop showing in searches. A separate grader agent scores every piece of work, though he found 208 of 277 grades had been credited to the grader instead of the worker.

WorkPartly worked

One owner tried to run a whole business on agents. He logged 105 problems instead

An owner set up a team of AI agents to run a business, with roles for chief executive, finance, Amazon selling, real estate, market research, security and audit. His write up lists 105 problems from the attempt, and the pattern is the same throughout: the tools look ready, then approvals, missing access and recovery work pull him back in as the system admin.

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

He rebuilt his 70 year old mother's business website with AI and her revenue quadrupled

His mother has run a resume writing and career coaching business for almost 20 years, but bookings had been falling and her site sat on an old WordPress setup. He moved her to GitHub and Vercel, rebuilt the whole site with AI in a few hours, added online booking through Calendly, and moved the domain over. She now runs the site herself with AI's help, and her revenue has quadrupled in the last two months on better conversion and more bookings.

Show 10 more

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.