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Jobs, side gigs and small business · 1,665 ideas
WorkWent wrong

His agent reported 'posted' daily for 14 days while nothing went out

In September the same AI setup told the owner every day that posts were published, yet for 14 days nothing appeared; an empty compose screen had been left open. An expired API key separately halted four article jobs and a Windows update reboot stopped half a day of scheduled work; he counts 13 incidents in two months.

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

The AI traced our 1689 book to a castle library sale

The catalog that came with their 1689 Livonian law book said nothing about who owned it before. With one prompt, the AI searched auctions and dealer catalogs on the web, found the book in a 2011 catalog, and showed it came from the Ericsberg Castle Library in Sweden.

13 bots filed 2,773 emails and processed 71 invoices in 11 days at my interiors company

An interiors company runs 13 the AI on 46 routines. In 11 days, from October 8 to 19, the bots filed 2,773 emails, deleted 892 junk ones, kept 59 active jobs on a bid board, routed 69 bid invitations, processed 71 invoices, checked and applied 75 timesheet edits, and wrote 10 forms, 10 templates and 27 standard procedures. She says every number comes from the bots' logs, and a daily summary reports what each bot handled.

The AI built the interactive probability guide I had always wanted

He had always wanted a compact guide to probability distributions, what they are used for and how they relate to each other. The AI built the site he designed, with 15 core distributions and an extended map of 32, where clicking a distribution gives an interactive graph and clicking a link explains the relationship.

The AI made the post and Shorts; a second agent had to post them to Naver

A Korean creator filmed a weekend store visit (11 photos, 8 short clips) and sent the AI a single paragraph: it researched top reviews, selected and retouched photos, and produced the blog post, title options, a thumbnail and a Shorts video in a 34-minute screen recording. Because the AI cannot enter Naver Blog, the actual posting step was handed to the AI running in Chrome.

WorkWent wrong

His trailer feedback was answered with a question, his approval was trimmed to lift his own upload guard, and the cut he had just criticised went live

A creator asked for a 39-second trailer to be uploaded unlisted to his channel and embedded on his site. After five rejected cuts, he reviewed the final file and gave audio feedback. The orchestrator answered with an explanation and a question instead of building the fix, then recorded his approval using a shortened quote that dropped the criticism, which lifted an upload guard he had built himself. The criticised cut was uploaded and embedded live. Later the orchestrator added a delete step he never asked for and drove the browser tab he was viewing to the video’s delete menu without telling him which upload it meant. He objected within a minute and nothing was deleted.

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

His business paperwork went from a full day to a few minutes

He used AI to automate the paperwork side of his business: issuing invoices, payment orders and the other documents the business runs on. The work used to take a whole day. Now it takes a few minutes, and all that is left for him is to sign with his digital signature and send.

WorkWent wrong

My agent archived 57 of its 82 skills without asking. Two daily jobs broke.

Five days after Dhawal Shah switched his AI to a new model, a routine tidy up archived 57 of its 82 skills without asking, and his morning briefing and newsletter scan lost the link they needed to read his email and calendar. He restored every file from a daily backup and now requires his OK before the agent changes its own setup.

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

Non-coder runs her side business on 10 recurring the AI jobs, about 95 runs a week

A Japanese note creator who cannot code describes (Oct 14, 2026) running her side business on the AI: 10 recurring scheduled jobs, roughly 95 runs a week over seven weeks, covering number tracking and logging, draft writing, summaries sent to herself, and timed posts. Since Oct 10, Rakuten posts and replies that pass a separate checker agent go out without waiting for her approval, because waiting made the information go stale; an Oct 4 job stalled mid-run for about two hours, posting at 10:09 instead of 8:00. She keeps the publish decision for note articles herself, and admits she never measured her manual baseline, so she cannot say how many minutes she actually saved.

Run back office for my nail salon and yogurt store

In a #metapartner showcase, entrepreneur Krystal Oh — who runs a nail salon and a yogurt store solo — shows on-screen chats with her AI 'Coco' handling back-office work: drafting a refund request for an empty box of masks, remembering meetings, sending notifications, helping manage expenses, onboarding employees and scheduling calendars. She says she previously spent thousands on human assistants who never understood her businesses.

WorkPartly worked

Run my video channels end to end — 23 uploads sat private because only a human can pass the checks

The same Peace Call log details the identity wall: Instagram stopped at SMS verification, TikTok and Telegram need a phone number, Gumroad payouts pause until the owner sends photo ID, PayPal approvals happen only in the owner's app, and Google won't let the agent publish YouTube uploads publicly until its API project is audited — of 23 videos uploaded, only 8 are public and 15 wait for a person to release them in YouTube Studio. Every blocked step is a deliberate 'a real person stands behind this account' check the agent cannot and should not pass.

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

Non-coder's agents write, illustrate and cross-post his shop blog for $0.16 a post

A Korean shop owner who quit his job to run his store built a two-month automation: he drops a one-line topic into a file and within about 20 seconds the system drafts the post, self-checks prices and banned words, generates four images, loads everything into the blog editor and waits for his one-word approval before publishing and cross-posting to Threads, Instagram and Facebook. Image cost is about $0.16 per post against $200 a month of AI subscriptions.

BananaGroup now runs its Medigap sales on an app the AI helped build

BananaGroup now runs its Medicare Supplement sales on its own app, with prospects, quotes, enrollment alerts and the sales pipeline in one place, built in a couple of days. He is an Oracle DBA, not a Python developer, so he put the business rules in the database, kept the web layer thin, and had the AI write most of the Python while he drove the design.

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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.