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Work

Jobs, side gigs and small business · 1,665 ideas
WorkPartly worked

The AI drafts and schedules her note posts, but cannot upload the cover image

A Japanese creator in vocational training had the AI analyze her past articles' tone, draft two note posts and build a review board with cover-image briefs; both posts reached scheduled publication with only her OK. The one step the AI could never complete was uploading the cover image, because the OS file-picker dialog is unreachable to it, so that step stays manual every time.

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

A roofing estimator’s system breaks down huge drawing sets, tags every fact, and checks his final number before it goes out

He works as a commercial roofing estimator for a large regional contractor in the NYC metro, and his work starts with large PDF construction drawings and specifications. Over eight months he built a system he calls Estimator-OS. Incoming drawing and spec sets get broken into the standalone sheets and sections relevant to his trade, filed and organized, then chunked, documented and tagged into a local database for the project. From there it runs his RFI process and addendum reconciliation and issues his pricing requests to vendors and subs. Before takeoff he gets an HTML dashboard of the project with all the facts, details and gotchas. He does the takeoff in the software they use, then gives the final number back to the AI for review and final checking. He runs it on a Max 20x plan and values the usage at about $6,000 at API prices, and says he moves through projects more quickly and with greater accuracy.

Work

A whiskey firm's Shopify reporting runs itself after four weeks of watched runs

Shopify hid the data his whiskey company needs for accounting and compliance, so reporting was a manual merge every week. He built an automation that pulls the raw data through the API into an Excel sheet in Google Drive and flags orders that need a manual look. He built it in a week, then ran it watched for four weeks of fixes until it ran clean, and says it saved him hiring a programmer.

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.
Work

Software he built stops his wife's law firm losing a day of case updates to the ERP

At his wife's law firm, lawyers update an ERP generated spreadsheet with the day's cases and send it to their supervisor, who imports it. The next day the ERP generates a fresh sheet with all past cases but ignores everything the lawyers wrote the day before. His software takes the day one sheet and the day two sheet and writes the updates into the new one, so a day of work is no longer lost.

Work

A solo builder shipped a paid Mac app in five weeks and 60 people have bought it

A builder in Bangalore started a menu bar app that plays mechanical keyboard sounds on September 4 and shipped it five weeks and 242 commits later, built with AI. More than 60 people have paid the one time $4.99 price. His hardest lessons were practical: The AI guessed at a sound bug twice before he made it measure the real event timings, and on launch night the thank you page still pointed at an old build that macOS blocked for his first buyer.

Work

The AI built a client's store that syncs with her stock system

A women's clothing brand needed an online store synced to its 1C stock system and matched pixel for pixel to its React design, on a budget that ruled out the usual platforms. He built it solo on WordPress and WooCommerce while the AI wrote most of the code, and the store shipped with real time stock sync and zero dollars in platform licenses.

Work

The AI helps run my websites. Two are 95 percent automated.

He runs a website business where the AI has SSH access to each site on his own servers, with about 15 skills that each act like a staff role covering revenue, content, images, rules and checks, plus APIs for revenue sources, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Two sites are 95 percent automated, his main sites still need his approval, and he says the setup knocked out six to nine months of work in four days.

WorkPartly worked

Act as my project lead: pick a strategy and build a product to sell

A Shopify/CRO freelancer gave the AI a hard $100 budget and 30 days to make a real profit, acting as autonomous project lead with a public ledger; he only authorizes spending and accounts. On day 1 the agent researched the market, rejected two strategies, and built the product: a 26-skill pack that runs a freelancer's proposals, SOWs, invoices and client updates from one personal business context file.

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

A batch file the AI wrote deleted 1,068 files in my project

The AI wrote a Windows batch helper as a UTF-8 file with LF line endings. On this Japanese locale machine the last byte of a Japanese full stop swallowed a line break, a variable stayed empty, and a delete meant for one file deleted every file in the project folder, 1,068 files in one second. 123 files could not be recovered.

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

He left the AI running during his waiter shift and came home to a finished show episode

A waiter who produces a small game show in his spare time left the AI running with his evening list before a nine hour shift. He came back to 14 merged pull requests, just under 5,000 passing tests, two production promotions, and the first full episode his pipeline has ever cut end to end, queued for YouTube, Instagram and TikTok with a cover, title and chapters. The agent also found two launch blockers nobody had listed, and stopped at the one step that needed his signed waiver instead of faking it. One sweep did overwrite four finished masters; the safety gates caught it and the files came back byte for byte from backup.

WorkPartly worked

Run a marketing bot tasked with growing social reach 2% a week

The same solo founder gave an AI marketing bot a standing goal of growing PromptBase's social reach 2% per week, with freedom to experiment. It started a TikTok profile and a YouTube Shorts channel on its own; the founder reports it seems to be working, with no metrics shared.

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

Build my brand strategy, then check back when I stall instead of assuming I failed

Creator Kalena Waters-Gardner, who says she has ADHD, gave the AI her business information and had it organize and structure her brand and generate a brand strategy in week one. She says the AI sends reminders and, when she has not completed something, checks back in with reassurance instead of assuming failure, and that she completed tasks on her calendar as a result.

Work

Run our whole website through AI with checks

Pelcro moved its site off Wix and now runs every change through AI: a custom migration skill rebuilt the old pages, and each new change goes branch, pull request, automated checks, human review, sandbox, then live. Nothing ships unless lint, type, build and content checks all pass.

Work

The AI read 10,000 job postings against my resume and I got two offers

Fed up with scrolling LinkedIn and Indeed for internships, he built a tool that lets the AI pull live postings from more than 40 hiring systems and judge each one against his resume every night. Out of about 10,000 postings it picked 190 worth applying to, he applied, and he ended up with two offers.

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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.