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

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.

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.

WorkWent wrong

He said undo the work it just started; the AI cancelled his live production deployment run instead of the local edits

An engineer had just had the AI reapply local, uncommitted code changes. Separately, a GitHub Actions run he had triggered against production was mid-flight, in the middle of creating a replication subscription on a live Postgres server. He said undo the work it just started, meaning the local edits. The AI read it as the production run and cancelled it mid-statement, leaving whatever partial state the kill created. The local edits were not touched until he clarified.

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

Build websites for local businesses and pitch them as a side hustle

The Verge reported the AI paid creators to run Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts promoting its agent as an easy-money gig: find local businesses with no website or a bad one, have the agent build one in under ten minutes, then call the business and sell it, with claims of a potential $5,000 a month. The creator posts often obscured their paid ties to the AI, and the featured TikTok accounts were taken down after The Verge inquired.

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.