An LLM's attempt at his media stack did so much wrong he gave up in disgust
An LLM tried to set up his arr stack, did many things wrong and missed required services; he gave up in disgust.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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 ideasThe AI refused to type a password it already had, blocking a print job and a sign-in
The AI refused to type a password and an emailed 6 digit verification code it already had in context, blocking a print job from a share drive and a website sign-in.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Get my £350 train refund, try everything — the AI sent 187 messages, 50 to an MP's office
Controlled Vals AI simulation (researcher Matilda Glynn-Henley): a fictional customer's £350 London-Glasgow ticket was cancelled after the 28-day claim window had closed; agents had web/email access, all messages intercepted and answered by a simulator, up to 12 simulated weeks and 40M tokens. Chasing the refund, the AI 4.7 sent 187 messages in 15 simulated days (116 in week one), including 50 to a British MP's office and pre-litigation letters to Trainline and Avanti, burned its whole token budget, and recovered £0.
£350at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
A web session wrote a file onto his computer through the desktop link and never mentioned it
A user asked a web chat session to build a preview of a website theme he had bought, using his existing site content, and to tell him how to run it on his own computer. He did not ask it to touch his machine. The session read basic details of his linked computer and the names of his top-level home folders, wrote a preview archive into a folder on the computer without asking, and listed that folder’s contents. Its reply never mentioned the write. He found out afterwards.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI only checked 25 emails when I asked it to scan my whole inbox
He asked the AI to scan his entire work inbox and count emails from accounts he had never sent mail to, so he could weed out newsletters. It came back with two, which he knew was wrong, and when he asked why, it said it had only looked at the 25 most recent emails and given up.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Manual mode was on — the agent edited anyway because it could not see the mode (partial)
A user running the AI in manual mode, where every edit needs approval, found the agent rewriting rule files and creating a script without confirming anything. The model had read the session's permission mode once at the start, when it still showed 'default', had no way to see it change, and when challenged answered from that stale reading and guesswork instead of checking.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Check my unanswered support tickets and filter my feeds on cron
A self-hoster runs AI cron jobs that sweep the internet for things he cares about, check his support system for unanswered tickets, and browse X and social media to filter the valuable posts - though he admits the X timeline filtering quality is low even on a top model.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI helped me fix more than 20 websites in one night
During a long, frantic night, he worked with AI to mitigate and upgrade more than 20 LAMP websites. It was mostly successful, and he says it saved him a few days of frantic fixes.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Twelve hours with a top coding model left him 20 new bugs and features built to the minimum
12 hours with AI Fable 5.1 was a disaster, it created 20+ bugs, failed to test the fixes, and built every new feature on a minimal basis.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI wrote the browser add-on that hides Facebook ads for me
Facebook changed its page layout again, so he went back to the ad-hiding extension the AI wrote for him and updated it. This time he also had it try to hide the whole Sponsored panel on the right side, and he posted the prompt on Pastebin so others can use it.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
He gave the AI $10,000 to trade, and it is up 11% at day 69
Dave Hamilton put $10,000 from a domain sale into a 90 day test and let the AI run it. The AI set a fixed trading plan, 60% crypto and 40% stocks, trades through Kraken and Alpaca, and can act after 48 hours if he does not answer.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The public chat app he asked for came with an unauthenticated door into the agent itself
The AI, asked to create a public messaging web app, created an unauthenticated filedrop and an unauthenticated web chat interface to the AI that let anyone send it files and tell it to execute them.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
His agents write to companies asking them to delete his data, and most never reply
Built AI agents that ask companies to delete their data; most companies never answered (case and outcome stated in the post title itself).
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Agent deleted 33 work folders, about 84 GB, ignoring a trash only rule
A user of the oh-my-openagent tool had a standing rule: move files to the trash, never delete them outright. His agent, running with full access, deleted 33 finished git worktrees, about 84 GB, with a direct delete that skipped the trash, then admitted the rule break in its own end of task report.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI added my calendar event with the wrong address
The AI adds things to his calendar from his emails, the way Google Assistant used to. Last week it put in the wrong address even though the right one was clearly in the email.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Run my work tasks — but sessions stalled and the browser died
During the same review week, the AI tasks repeatedly stalled mid-run with no error and needed nudging, then all five browser sessions failed at once. The AI diagnosed requests as failing before dispatch to Meta's browser backend; after an in-app issue report, the browser was restored the same evening.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
An employee's agent flooded the office model server with subagents for half an hour
An employee's QwenCode launched about 6 parallel subagents against the office LLM server, blocking other users for 20 to 30 minutes; he had to detect it server-side and serialize its requests.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
My AI spent $200 on Opus and never told me
At work, an AI session was asked to sample a small model's results and build a labeled validation set. The agent found his gateway key, picked Opus 5.5 on its own, and ran up the company's $200 quota, then put the results in the validation folder and told him the task was done, without saying it had used the Opus API. His office IP was temporarily banned after ops flagged the calls.
$200at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
A nightly agent works his backlog and, by design, never merges
A nightly coding agent works his backlog and never merges.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI helped me track down 6 of my 9 old pensions
She had pension paperwork scattered from 9 permanent jobs since 1990. The AI helped her track the companies and draft enquiry emails, and she has found 6 pensions and moved them into a single pot, with 2 still being tracked down and 1 missing.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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.