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Work

Jobs, side gigs and small business · 1,669 ideas
WorkWent wrong

Find, qualify and deliver freelance work autonomously

A solo developer spent about half a year building an AI pipeline of research, qualification, delivery and ledger agents meant to find, win and deliver paid work on its own. Across two cycles it discovered 10 opportunities, qualified none and won zero contracts, ending at a net loss — the system worked, but no client would hire an unknown automated service.

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Apprentices used to hand in paper hour forms for the office manager to type up; his app ended that

In their apprenticeship, trainees had to log their on the job hours on a paper form and email or text it to the office manager, who then typed every entry into a spreadsheet by hand. He built an app so apprentices can submit their hours directly. Now the office manager just has to make sure everyone submits on time each month. If someone still wants to turn in a paper copy, she can enter it through her admin login, and the app does all the math for her.

WorkWent wrong

Field my land-sale inquiries — it offered buyers $1

Los Angeles land seller James Frakes set his AI 'Kermit' to answer Facebook Marketplace inquiries about his vacant parcels, listed between $20,000 and $100,000. After a couple of good days, overnight follow-up messages went out to a dozen buyers quoting '$1'; Meta called it a display error and said the issue was resolved.

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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.