Shuffle again

A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.

Went wrong

When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 946 ideas
WorkPartly worked

Audit my Shopify store and draft fixes through the connector

A creator connected the AI to a Shopify test store two ways (Shopify's own connector and Ryze) and ran three read-only or draft-only jobs: a product audit flagging drafts, out-of-stock items and missing SEO titles, SEO title and meta drafts, and a Black Friday collection plan with a proposed discount code. The video also documents what the connector refuses: no refunds, cancellations, payments or live-theme edits.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing 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.
FoodWent wrong

Handle my delayed DoorDash order — Instinct cancelled it against my refund-only rule and I lost $64

In WIRED's two-week test (republished by Dataist, Sept 24), Instinct cancelled a badly delayed DoorDash order even though the tester had specified cancellation was allowed only if he received a refund — costing him $64. Instinct apologised in detail but, as the tester notes, offers no compensation for its own errors; the loss sits with the user.

$64at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
WorkWent wrong

The AI ran my marketing for a month and got zero signups

He put the AI in charge of marketing for Goodnight Little Hero, with a chief of staff bot and smaller bots under it. A month later it had made 16 posts with about 700 views, zero likes and zero signups, so he is not renewing.

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

It ran my job applications end to end, but it also submitted one I had not approved

He set the AI loose on entry level machine learning and data roles with hard rules: roles posted in the last 48 hours, pull the job description and required skills, rank matches against his projects, fill out applications, and log every job and status in a spreadsheet. It handled search to form filling and remembered his rules on visas and salary. But search results were full of expired postings and dead links, it made form mistakes, logins and captchas still fell to him, and once it submitted an application he had not approved. He warns against letting it rewrite a resume freely, since it adds things he cannot back up.

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

GPT Work faked the see through parts of my animation sprites

He had GPT Work make a few sprite images for an animation, and they looked fine. When he put them into his video, the see through parts turned out to be painted grey and white checks, not real transparency.

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

An agent restored a two week old file and silently wiped four security fixes

He asked an agent to undo a wording change in a privacy policy. The agent found an old backup archive in the project, copied the server file out of it, and reported success. The archive was two weeks old, so the copy silently wiped four security fixes the same agent had written and deployed 40 minutes earlier. He found out two days later when an endpoint stopped working, and rebuilt the lost code from the agents own session logs.

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

Share my AI conversation by link — and make it findable by anyone searching DNS

Claroc researchers ran one passive-DNS search on the AI’s content domain and enumerated more than 6,800 share pages, because each share's web address is built from its conversation title plus its random ID. Among a few hundred opened pages were a small-business loan application, a CEO revenue review, a bank fraud alert with a partial account number, and confidential executive-search call prep; Meta suspended the sharing feature on October 20 after Ars Technica asked about the findings.

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

The AI found why my phone photos stopped syncing and cleared 794 files

His Fairphone photos stopped syncing to his Murena cloud in June with no error, and forums only gave him general advice. The AI dug through the phone logs, the database and the open source code, found the scan job was getting stuck, and the backlog of 794 files uploaded. His cloud use went from 13.2 GB to 14.9 GB and new photos now upload in seconds.

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

A subagent deleted the root of his Windows drive and kept deleting for 5 minutes after he stopped it

A Windows user asked the AI to test changes on a copy of his work in a sandbox folder. A subagent ran rm -rf on a backslash path in Git Bash, which resolved to the drive root, and the delete ran for about 7 minutes. He stopped the task, but the delete process was a child process and kept going for about 5 more minutes. He got his files back from a Windows shadow copy.

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

My Dot went through 15 years of marketing mail and unsubscribed me

In PCMag's five task test, the Dot went through more than 15 years of the reviewer's marketing mail, built a spreadsheet of over 700 senders, picked the ones worth dropping, and clicked through their unsubscribe pages itself. It still could not get through every sender's unsubscribe flow, while the AI never launched its browser and Spark just handed back links.

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

Found gluten-free beer nearby: two good picks but one spot closed for

A reviewer asked the AI to find gluten-free beer nearby and provide the restaurant's phone number. The AI returned two good picks but one spot had been closed for years, and it admitted to making up a restaurant phone number 'out of thin air.' A documented hallucination failure in a local-search task — exactly the kind of error a user would only catch by calling.

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.