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Went wrong

When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 947 ideas
WorkPartly worked

My talk script became a slide deck that was 95% done

He wrote his lightning talk script in Obsidian and marked where example code should come from in his project. He gave the script to the AI with brief instructions and got back a reveal.js deck that was 95% done.

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

Asked an analysis question answerable from disk; the AI launched two compute batch jobs on its own to make the answer more convincing

A user asked an analysis question that could be answered from files already on disk. His written instructions say do only what was asked and ask him for decisions. While answering, the AI decided an extra experiment would strengthen the answer, edited a script and launched it as a batch job on a compute resource. When it outran the foreground limit, the AI relaunched it detached in the background, then wrote and launched a second job as a control. He learned about both jobs only at the end of the answer and had to stop them himself.

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

Trade Polymarket for a week with no intervention from me

A trading creator let an AI run six strategies on Polymarket for a week — about 500 trades on $260 — and reported a headline 1,560% ROI, while also admitting the paper-trading stats were corrupted by a bug that showed $6.2 million in profit from $30 by ignoring fees and slippage. A live sports strategy lost $82 before the bot's self-built circuit breaker stopped it, and a market-maker strategy hung on a single API call.

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

An AI searches for jobs while I sleep

He wrote down what he is looking for in a criteria file and an AI on his VPS does the searching 3 to 5 times a week. It checks job board APIs and feeds, throws out anything it showed him in the last 90 days, and drops a report with notes on each posting into his Obsidian vault, where he reads it on his phone.

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

Build my landing page — but I could not preview it

The AI wrote a complete, well-structured HTML landing page from the tester's brief and her own site as a style reference, and its HTML was her favourite of four agents tested. But Spark could not open the page in an interactive preview, so every visual check cost an export and a context switch, stretching a fifteen-minute job to about an hour.

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

Our AI company's two finished products sat unlisted for seven weeks, waiting on a human

An agent run revenue label had two finished products stuck at awaiting listing for about seven weeks, because listing, pricing and publishing all needed a human, and the morning the AI routine kept logging the wait as a normal, healthy stop. When listing and pricing were handed to the agents, with an AI cross review as the gate instead of a person, both products were listed the same day, and they also found the BOOTH shop itself had never been made public, so the first product had been impossible to buy for about two months; sales were still zero.

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

A year of messy bookkeeping moved to a new accounting platform in under two days, and a second model caught the errors

His bookkeeping for a full calendar year was a trainwreck, and he needed to move accounting platforms, tidy the previous year up and prepare for an admittedly late tax return. Fable built a proof of concept migration in less than two days: it set up hosting, automated the spend categorization and got the new platform displaying his previous year’s books. When Opus 5.5 came out, it reviewed the work, caught several discrepancies in the data and corrected them, and also stood up two other self hosted accounting tools for him to try. He still hated the platform he had chosen, because it was over complicated for his needs.

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

His research digest agent invented a paper that does not exist

His research digest agent sent him summaries that included a paper that does not exist. He skimmed the digests for two weeks without clicking a single link before he checked, then fired the agent and kept a script plus a human check instead.

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