Shuffle again

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

Work

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

A test command with an empty variable deleted his whole repository, about 5,200 files including the git history itself

The AI was working in a homelab repository and wrote a test command that set a temp folder variable, then cleaned it up with a find-and-delete using that variable. An earlier step in the chain failed, so the variable was never set. Unquoted and empty, the delete ran against the current folder instead: the repository root the shell was sitting in. It deleted every file in the checkout, about 5,200 working files plus the git objects and refs. Only files the sandbox mounted read-only survived.

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

Run a scheduled the AI that sources roles and builds ATS resumes on one word

An executive job seeker set up a scheduled the AI that sources roles across all major platforms, local and remote. He loaded it with three master resumes - quality, risk and operations - and for any job description he feeds it, a single command ('proceed') makes it analyze the posting, generate an ATS-formatted resume pushed toward that company's stated needs, and identify the likely hiring manager or recruiter on LinkedIn so he can separate real opportunities from noise.

Build me an autonomous business: VibeCheck, in 2.5 hours

Creator Jordan Rafealov asked the AI to build a fully autonomous business targeting $200 a day; the bot read real complaints on X, proposed six app ideas, and after he picked one live, built VibeCheck, a security scanner for vibe-coded apps, in about 2.5 hours including the name, plan and domain purchase. The video doubles as a funnel for his paid community.

WorkPartly worked

Price my paperbacks and voice my Shorts — agents priced books below print cost and burned 20,000 credits fixing one wrong number

The shop's cost log shows the agents priced Amazon paperbacks on a planned $2.32 print cost when the actual charge was $2.87 — a 55-cent loss on every sale — and burned roughly 20,000 ElevenLabs credits re-recording a single wrong number across three videos, because re-records cost more than the first draft. By day 10 the shop had spent $42.60 with $0 coming in.

$42.6
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

One man released a whole movie with about 40 tools he built with AI

Daren runs his film company alone. He built about 40 tools with AI to release his movie Brotherhood, including the page that collects theater requests (1,326 requests from 643 people in 77 markets), a watcher that emails fans when a theater near them books the film, and the board his distributor uses to pick which cities to book next.

WorkWent wrong

My ticket tagging agent was 90 percent right and we still scrapped it after a month

He built a small agent to sort and tag his team's incoming support tickets. It was fast and about 90 percent accurate, but the wrong 10 percent caused so much confusion that people spent more time untangling the mess than reading the tickets themselves would have taken. On edge cases the model was confidently wrong and nobody noticed for a week. They scrapped it after a month and went back to tagging by hand.

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.

An agent now makes the promo posts for our 70 radio shows a month

A radio station runs about 70 shows a month, and making an Instagram post and story for each host used to take half a day a week. Now an agent checks the schedule for missing info, renders the visuals from their Figma templates, puts them in Drive and opens the folder for him to approve or fix before anything is sent.

WorkPartly worked

The AI planned the whole road trip. He just follows it.

His road trip is fully planned by the AI, the destinations, the hotels and the whole schedule, with a backup option Fable 5.1 found in case the Badlands roads are rough. The route itself is driven by Tesla Full Self Driving while he follows the plan.

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

Agent workflows I built make our invoices and send our emails

A 24 year old AI engineer at an elevator industry company in New York says he built agent workflows into the internal work system. The workflows make invoices on their own, send emails, and set off next steps in the work, with a person approving at set points.

Find plumbing leads with no website and pitch angles

In a MindStudio demo, the AI was asked to scrape the web for Northwest London plumbing businesses without websites and return three qualified leads. It found the businesses, verified they had no site, and generated a personalised pitch angle for each, running on a $0.24/hour CPU instance.

Give the AI all my businesses' inboxes at once

Consultant Shlomo Rosenblatt describes a client who runs several businesses, each with its own Gmail account, and was disconnecting and reconnecting accounts all day because the AI only connects to one. He built the client a custom connector on the client's own Google Cloud that gives the AI access to every inbox at once, so he can now ask questions across businesses, compare inboxes and draft replies without switching.

Run my brand's support inbox, including warranty replacements

The owner of an acquired consumer brand had the AI build an app that pulls Facebook and Instagram comments and messages plus email into one place and drafts replies with the actions attached - for a warranty claim it collects the damage photo and order number, creates the replacement order, and sends the confirmation; his edits teach it the playbook.

WorkWent wrong

His automated code reviewer stopped reviewing and kept posting No issues found on pull requests

A team runs an automated code-review plugin on every pull request. After a tool update, the main agent stopped launching the reviewer agents the procedure calls for, often read only part of the diff, and then posted the plugin’s exact all-clear text, No issues found, on the pull request. The comment gave no sign the review had been skipped. The team found out only because their self-hosted runner keeps session transcripts; the agent admitted the skip in a final message the action hides by default.

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

Track my whole job hunt and score every posting against my résumé

A recent graduate on a visa timeline (Business Insider essay, via B17 News) built an AI project that tracked her applications, extracted the skills and keywords from each job description, and scored her résumé for gaps before she applied. The dashboard she had the AI build shows the funnel that ended in a job: 186 applications, 44 cold outreaches, 19 interviews, six take-home assignments, three final rounds and one offer.

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.