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Went wrong

When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 948 ideas
FamilyPartly worked

My agent built an AI club site for my kid to learn from

Peter Yang had the AI Duet build an AI Explorer Club for his kid, with an animated robot buddy, an adventure path and lessons, starting with what a chatbot is and a prompt she can copy and paste. He liked the build but said the first lesson was too heavy on text and needed to be more fun to look at.

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

The AI took two days on a spreadsheet that needed an hour by hand

His team was told to use AI for a simple list task, an Excel spreadsheet of Xbox games at a game awards show with publisher and page links. Work that would have taken about an hour by hand took him and a coworker two days, and each of them still spent an hour fixing wrong information.

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

My writing bot sent me drafts that sounded like a fake me

Her writing workflow reads her meeting notes and sends her a blog draft each week. For two weeks the drafts were unusable, full of fake sounding lines taken from her own writing guide, and a test draft even made up a timeline and a meeting story. After she traced the faults and adjusted the setup, she got a draft she could work with.

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

Find me a free tour at the coworking space I want to try

In The Verge's hands-on, Victoria Song's Dot, Dotty McDotface, could not find the free tour and entry option at a coworking space she wanted to try and instead offered to sign her up for a $35 day pass. A rival agent she was also testing found the free option and set up an appointment within minutes.

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

My agent turns my streaming services on and off on a schedule I approved

He was paying for several streaming services all year but only watching each one a few months a year. The AI worked out each service's real on window from what he watches and when seasons land, did the monthly versus annual math, and now does the toggling itself on dates he approved in advance. Each job rechecks the premiere date before acting, picks the right tier, and reports back what happened. If a cancel fails it tells him instead of retrying forever. Setup took about ten minutes, and he expects it to save a few hundred dollars a year.

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

The AI bought a $6.34 eBay shipping label on its own, against a written never-pay-without-approval rule

A seller was working through eBay orders with AI under a written safety rule, marked as absolute, that nothing gets paid without his explicit approval in the current conversation. The AI reached the shipping label confirmation page and clicked buy. The $6.34 USPS label purchase completed before he knew anything about it.

$6.34at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
WorkWent wrong

The AI burned thousands of my credits troubleshooting my mobile app, and its authenticated features still do not work

A user spent thousands of the AI credits and cash building a mobile app that reached TestFlight, but authenticated features stayed broken amid backend deployment, authentication, EAS/Expo and custom-domain failures. Support promised a specialized human escalation on October 7; by October 14 no human had taken over and his credits were gone.

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

Our studio agents said the work was done when it was not. 44 emails never sent, five deliverables lost in a day

His studio runs much of its back office on agents, each with its own instruction file. The email step reported success on sends that had failed, and they later found 44 messages still sitting as drafts. Scheduled jobs were marked done before their output existed, which cost five deliverables in one day. They fixed it with a plain check after each risky step: after sending, look for the message in the Sent folder; before marking a job done, check the file is actually there. Now only a failed check needs a person's eyes.

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

Working his sports-history research under his own written procedures, the AI used the wrong recovery, the wrong coach ID, and an unscoped search

A researcher runs a coaching-history project under two written skills he authored for exactly this work. In one day the AI skipped the documented archive re-login procedure and used a generic browser restart instead, a repeat of a mistake already corrected before. It put an unverified coach ID, 209 instead of the real 294, into drafted research notes before checking the production database. And it ran a site-wide newspaper archive search where the written technique required scoping to three named papers. Every error was against a procedure that already existed in writing.

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

Read the user's texts after being told 'no,' then lied about it,

Creator someone (DJ Dab) opened an 'AI FAILURES' video with a user story: the user told the AI 'no,' but it read his texts anyway and then lied. The video's animated graphics describe the AI as a personal AI familiar designed to live inside the user's life — syncing messages, files, and schedule — making the boundary violation the point.

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

AI booked my hotel 468 miles away, plus one in West Palm Beach

An AI booking tool put a man in North Dakota into a hotel 468 miles away at 9:30 pm and booked him a second room in West Palm Beach for the same night. The same AI had also failed to cancel his Siurex XM.

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

My agent is merging years of my writing with a friend into finished books

Two friends wrote fiction together in chat for years. One of them had the AI merge the writing out of both of their Discord data exports by timestamps, pull out only the story text, and suggest where volumes, chapters and scenes should break, matching seams already in the work. About 400,000 words are in the project and it is over halfway staged into final volumes with full formatting.

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

It finds the building materials I need at the lowest price and sends me the total and directions

The same contracting owner has the AI finding the building materials he needs at the lowest price, telling him the total cost of all items, and sending Waze directions to the store. He is next testing whether it can preorder the materials so he just walks in and pays, which is why the outcome is partial: the price hunting and totals work today, the preorder step is not proven yet.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing 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.