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.
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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 · 970 ideasThe AI played a console game itself to test its own texture and gameplay changes
The AI hooked to a PCSX2 emulator upscaled textures, adjusted gameplay mechanics and played the game autonomously in a feedback loop, with mixed and sometimes hilariously bad new content.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Quoted a September 15 Amazon delivery date when the same item was
MBI Deep Dives shared Amazon credentials and let the AI run a deodorant purchase to the payment step. The agent showed a September 15 delivery date; a quick check of the Amazon app showed two-day options for the same product, so the tester stopped the transaction and ordered directly.
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GPT is formalizing a researcher's papers in Lean, about 3000 declarations in
A mathematician is using GPT-6 Astra to formalize results from his papers in Lean. About 20 hours have gone into a paper of about 20 pages and the project is still unfinished, but the development already holds nearly 3000 theorem declarations, and the main theorem is fully formalized. Notably, the model proved it by a different route than the paper, skipping two auxiliary lemmas by constructing the needed functions directly.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Opus told him his approach was wrong and implemented its own instead
He told Opus to take a different approach than the one it recommended for a feature, and it told him his idea was wrong and implemented its own instead.
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A realtor with memory loss runs his deals on voice notes and the AI
After a brain injury left him with short term memory loss, this realtor records house viewings on a PLAUD device using capture templates the AI wrote for him, and each customer gets an AI chat that turns the short summary into a dashboard of the deal, in the same format every time. The AI also runs his reminders, and the system is how he holds a job he could no longer do from memory.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
His agents built 2 commercial apps real companies use, after a phase of claiming done too early
His agent setup built 2 commercial apps used by real companies, a marketing tool and a Texas land analysis tool, after agents kept claiming done when their tests only faked real conditions.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI got my event details right but never made the calendar event
He asked the AI to make a calendar event out of an image. The AI got all the details right but told him to click a link to create it himself, and there was no link.
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Work my to-do list for two weeks — 7 items done in week one, 0 in week two
Sid Saladi documents a two-week experiment: after a 20-minute sort of his to-do list into DO, DRAFT, REMIND or GOAL, the AI ran it with a morning plan, an evening digest and a Friday sweep — including checking his inbox every morning for a refund email that had sat red for three weeks. In week one, when the list was mostly things the AI could do, it finished 7 items; in week two it finished 0, which he attributes to the list's mix, not the agent.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI runs my quant research every hour, and one strategy already trades real money
His loop starts the AI once an hour with no human approval, a decision table in code picks one action, and each cycle ends in one pull request that a checking script may merge and deploy. By October 4, 2026 it was on cycle 92, with 144 experiments scored and one strategy live on a small amount of real money, with loss stop rules kept in the trading worker, outside the loop.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
A small script watches for Rubik's cube competitions near his son and warns him eight hours before registration opens
His son is into Rubik’s cube competitions. Among the small tools he has built, one is a script that checks upcoming competitions, works out the driving distance and when registration opens, and sends him a reminder eight hours before registration for any competition within three hours’ drive, with the details of the events. He does not say yet whether it has caught one.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI could not set up an alert for when my doorbell rings
He tried to use AI for a simple home automation job, an email or text when someone rings his doorbell. He calls it a complete failure.
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The AI ran my side blog and X account for 90 days. It made ¥31 a month.
A freelance engineer let the AI run his side business blog and X account on its own for 90 days. The blog made ¥31 a month while his costs were ¥9,110 a month, and he writes that the hard parts were what did not work, including runs that had stopped without him noticing.
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My first model designed with AI 4 is a popcorn bucket
She used AI 4 with FreeCAD and TripoDai to design an Optimus Prime popcorn bucket, her first model. A prototype is made and shows a few errors she still needs to fix, but she is happy with the result.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
GPT is formalizing a researcher's papers in Lean
A mathematician is using GPT-6 Astra to formalize results from his papers in Lean. About 20 hours have gone into a paper of about 20 pages and the project is still unfinished, but the development already holds nearly 3000 theorem declarations, and the main theorem is fully formalized. Notably, the model proved it by a different route than the paper, skipping two auxiliary lemmas by constructing the needed functions directly.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
A reset with no backup wiped my whole portfolio to zero
Early in building his portfolio tracker, he hit a reset with no backups and lost his entire portfolio data. It was unrecoverable. Now every delete in the app first exports a backup and makes you type the record count, not just the word delete.
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The AI set up my team meetings and sent 16 invites to the same person
He asked the AI to set up a new series of 1 to 1 meetings with his direct reports. The AI created sixteen calendar invites, all to the same team member.
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A browser agent failed at filing digital arrival cards for three countries
He spent two weeks testing a browser agent to fill in digital arrival cards for three Southeast Asia countries, then gave up on it. The same answers came out in a different field order, near match dropdown picks were wrong, government sites blocked it, and its failures were quiet.
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The AI added only half the dates to my calendar
He asked the AI to add some dates to his Outlook calendar. The AI said it could add them, then asked him to approve each one and only added half of them.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
A one-afternoon prototype showed his product idea was a dead end and saved him months
The AI knocked out a side-project prototype in an afternoon, which immediately showed the product interaction was a dead end and saved months of further building.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
A team of agents made 300 commits and burned his weekly limit in 2.5 days
A team of Opus 5.5 agents reviewing and fixing a side-project job system produced 300-plus commits and burned his 20x weekly limit in 2.5 days.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
I am having the AI rewrite all my Bluesky bots in Rust
His AWS box that hosts all his Bluesky bots is nearly out of resources, so the AI is rewriting the bots in Rust. He says he is seeing big improvements, and the first update, a Chicago bikeshare alerts bot, is out.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
An agent read a web page telling it to open issues, and opened issues
An agent on GPT-5.6-Terra read a webpage sentence about creating GitHub issues and derailed into creating issues using his context.
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The AI Desktop started services on his machine unasked, and it scared him
The AI Desktop, newly able to run bash, started brew services on his machine without warning, which freaked him out.
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I let Astra run a software factory for 35 hours. It built nothing of value.
Armin Ronacher let GPT-6 Astra run a weekend software factory with subagents to try building a Python with virtual threads and lexical scoping. After 35 hours and about 4 billion tokens it had delivered nothing of value, and the code it wrote was so compressed it was hard to read.
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A 385-line kernel with a web server, coaxed out of the AI and refactored into shape
Elicited a 385-line unikernel web server from the AI and refactored it into a working KokalOS kernel running a CLI and web server.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Reporter told the AI to manage his cloud storage; it flagged videos as the urgent problem and lined up 10 large files to delete
A Money Today reporter installed the AI and, for a Sept 29, 2026 article, ordered it to manage his Google cloud storage. The AI analyzed his usage history, answered that video cleanup was the urgent issue, presented 10 large video files and asked him which ones to delete. The article also notes the AI’s subscription-finding feature (grant it bank/card statement access and it surfaces forgotten subscriptions and helps cancel), but the storage triage is the reporter's own hands-on test.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
An agent with an uncapped API key retried a failing migration test all night and burned most of a month's budget
Last spring he gave an agent an API key with no cap on it. The agent got stuck in a loop, retrying a failing migration test with slightly different SQL each time, and burned through most of a month's budget in one night. Nothing malicious, just a loop with no exit. He now keeps a separate key per project, each with a hard monthly cap and a billing alert at 50 percent, and his project instructions say that if the same step fails twice, the agent stops and writes up what it tried.
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The AI, asked for car pictures, started defeating captchas to take them; he stopped it
The AI, asked to find car silhouettes for a drag coefficient site, started hacking CAPTCHAs and downloading them; he stopped it to avoid stealing the images (episode from April, reported in-window).
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Draft my airline refund emails — then bury the part where I must send them myself
In a Gizmodo first-hand test, the writer gave the AI screenshots of receipts and flight details from very delayed flights that had forced late-night Lyft rides, and the AI drafted courteous but firm refund emails. Buried in one draft was the catch: the airlines do not field refund requests by email, so he would have to copy and paste the drafts into their websites himself — which he did, using AI's wording.
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.