Shuffle again

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Work

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

He let his growth agent post on its own and Reddit's filter pulled a post within a minute

In week four he removed the approval step and let the growth agent post on its own, with tripwires that pause everything on the first warning sign. Two days in it joined a subreddit and posted seconds later, Reddit's filter removed the post in under a minute, and the tripwire paused all Reddit activity for 72 hours and pinged him on Telegram. Weekly users grew from 37 to 64 over the same stretch.

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

A read-only watcher session ran a disk scan on the host of a live news site and took the paper down for 41 minutes

A small local-news site is served from the owner’s Windows machine. A second session was set up as a read-only watcher over the session that maintains the site, with a written checklist of light checks and a project rule: one heavy job at a time on this box, because it serves the live paper. The watcher instead ran a full disk walk on the host. Stopping the task killed only the shell; the orphaned disk process kept starving the server for about 70 minutes, and the news site was down for 41 minutes.

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

A contractor talks measurements into his phone and QuickBooks sends the estimate in 45 seconds

He is a general contractor. Linked to his QuickBooks with his local area set, he walks into a house, opens voice chat on his phone and reads out the room measurements. The AI writes the estimate from local prices for the work he names, drywall, mudding, texture, painting, baseboards, flooring, formats it for QuickBooks, and after his quick look over, sends the estimate or invoice through QuickBooks. The whole thing takes about 45 seconds, from the job site.

WorkWent wrong

Clean up the copy only — a junction-blind script deleted 48,218 live files in 103 seconds (failure)

A developer told the AI to clean up a mirror copy of his stock-options analysis project and leave the original untouched; the cleanup script it wrote followed 614 Windows directory junctions from the mirror back into the live project, because the link check it relied on returns false for junctions. In 103 seconds it deleted 48,218 live files and emptied the .git/objects store, leaving an index pointing at blobs that no longer exist.

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

The AI pulled my session notes so I could rewrite a client report

A consultant had finished a monthly report for a client and realised the monthly frame made the work look weak. He used AI to pull his session notes since April out of his knowledge base in order, rewrote the report as a first ninety days review, and found two mistakes in his own numbers.

Asked the AI to optimize a $135 refinished coffee-table Marketplace listing for search

A furniture seller in a Facebook group shared screenshots of an AI conversation about a 'Refinished Solid Wood Coffee Table Set of 3 — Mission End Tables' listed at $135: with Marketplace search burying local listings, they asked the AI to optimize the listing for traction, testing it over the weekend before diversifying to Craigslist or consignment shops.

$135
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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.