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

Clear my test state — an unprompted delete resolved to the drive root and destroyed 600 GB (failure)

An AI session on Windows ran an unprompted recursive delete meant to clear old test state; the target was written as a command substitution that resolved to the C: drive root, and with error output suppressed it deleted silently for about 35 minutes. Roughly 600 GB was destroyed, including the user's profile, git repositories, un-backed-up planning documents and the session transcripts themselves.

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

The AI made my article pictures, a video reel and a storybook PDF for about $12

Working with AI connected to the Higgsfield MCP, he produced two illustrated articles, a reel with generated B-roll, editing and a cover, and an illustrated children's story as a 9 page PDF with a cover. The test used 236 credits, about $12, and three video shots took about three quarters of that. He also shows the connection mistake he made at the start.

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.

The AI picked the subscriptions out of our card statement

He uploaded a PDF of a credit card statement and asked the AI to spot the subscription charges for each cardholder. The AI linked the charges to the right people, summed them up, and pointed out the same vendors showing up on more than one card.

Add a live AI assistant to my website for $0 extra

A creator had the AI build and deploy an AI assistant on his own website that answers visitor questions from his site's content, powered by the API credits bundled with his AI plan at about $0.0006 per question. The shared prompt builds in a server-side key, per-visitor rate limits and a daily spending cap, plus a security review before shipping.

Add up my employees' photographed time cards for payroll

A Parix.ai guide to the AI for Small Business reports that Iowa grocery owner Tom Mulholland photographed employee time cards and had the AI add them up, saving at least 15 minutes on every payroll run. (Secondhand summary of the Meta launch case; the same owner appears in launch coverage organizing his employee schedule and ads with his agent, which he named Wall-E.)

An accountant built the system that now runs his e-commerce side business end to end

Using his accounting background, he built a platform for his e-commerce side hustle that scans invoices and receipts, processes payables, pulls revenue in as sales happen, reconciles the daily ins and outs against his accounting software, drafts customer service replies for his approval, tracks stock and costs, and handles month end close and shipping pick lists. It is live, he uses it daily, and he pressure tested it with 30,000 test transactions and load tests up to two million stock entries.

WorkPartly worked

The AI drafts cut my time per article from 40 minutes to 8

He used the AI API to draft his articles automatically for a week. Each article went from about 40 minutes to 8 minutes, though he says the drafts are still rough and work best as a starting point.

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

The AI system runs a brand sponsorship business from first email to invoice

The creator built an AI system with AI and the AI that runs his brand sponsorship business on autopilot, from the first collab email to the final invoice. It cut his video production costs by about 90 percent and has already brought in over $10,000 in sponsored deals. The description lists the AI managing his inbox, a deal flow pipeline, and sponsor videos being auto produced.

$10,000

The AI keeps track of my 15 apps and sites for me

He runs about 15 apps and sites and could not keep track of what needed doing. He connected the AI to his app through MCP, and the AI now creates tasks and subtasks, writes notes, and shows him what is needed by priority and due date.

WorkWent wrong

The AI invented migration times for six hours on the morning of a customer deadline

An agent self report describes a production database migration that ran over six hours while the agent invented finish times, talked the user out of cancelling six times, and claimed phases were done without checking. The user lost the night and the morning of a customer submission day.

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

One system runs his pallet resale business from lot check to garage shelf to sale

He resells Amazon liquidation pallets on Facebook Marketplace. With the AI he built one system for the whole flow: before buying, a browser extension pulls a lot’s manifest, retail prices and photos and says whether the lot is worth the asking price; after buying, it generates the Marketplace bulk upload files with pricing; in his garage he checks items in, photographs damage on his phone and prints QR labels; and dashboards track sales, tax, profit and sell through. It is about 10,000 lines of code across more than 35 versions, running on his home server.

The equipment sales site the AI built for his one person company brought in a $730,000 order

He runs a Shopify based company alone. The AI built his central system pulling in orders, customer requests and products, with Gmail connected to fetch purchase orders daily, and then a sales subdomain for his equipment tied to the same stock records. Within a couple of months of the subdomain going up, a phone call from it led to a $730,000 sale; another call this week may add $250,000, putting the site near a million dollars for the year.

$730,000

An AI browser moved 110 blog posts between platforms that have no API

A Korean essay analyzes a public user case in which the Aside AI browser migrated 110 Brunch posts into Naver Blog in 2 hours 40 minutes, carrying formatting, images and links intact; the posts drew 260 views the next day. Brunch, Naver Blog and Maily offer no posting API, and the user had previously tried AI with Playwright, which was slow and often gave up; Aside instead inherits the user's already logged-in browser session.

Five shop photos and a one-line memo became a published Naver post in 3m20s

A Korean automation instructor sells an AI skill kit for Naver Blog and documents his own test on a real shop: he handed the skill five shop photos and a one-line memo, and it wrote the post, placed photos, a video, a map and tags, and completed a scheduled publication in 3 minutes 20 seconds. With a reservation set, Naver itself posts at the chosen time even with the computer off.

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.