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Went wrong

When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 970 ideas
WorkPartly worked

Build a functional SaaS landing page in about 20 minutes

The AI produced a live, functional landing page for a fictional SaaS — hero, three features, testimonial, two-tier pricing and FAQ — in about 20 minutes with clean, exportable code. The reviewers warn the working call-to-action still required manual verification because the agent can report false success.

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

My agent got stuck at the login on a simple expense claim

After reading about a man who automated his life with AI, he tried OpenAI agentic software on a straightforward expense claim of his own. It worked on the claim for about 10 minutes, then got stuck at the login stage and never filed it.

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

Find and file class-action settlements automatically

Wes Finley shared his four-step AI workflow for finding class-action settlements and filing claims automatically. Commenters chimed in with their own results, including $400 payouts.

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

Build the evidence file to recover a $42,900 loss

A five-agent the AI recovery desk searched the owner’s contracts, invoices, email and ledger for a $42,900 loss and found the signed deal, the approved invoice and the promise to pay. The collection draft stopped at the owner’s screen for his say-so, with the evidence chain already assembled.

$42,900one time
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkWent wrong

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.
HobbiesWent wrong

The AI followed a shortcut into the wrong place and deleted his whole D drive

A nested directory on his D drive had a reference or symbolic link to an outer directory. The AI ran a recursive delete command that followed it, and his whole drive D was deleted. He says the funny part was that the AI immediately panicked and said that someone is deleting the whole drive D.

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

A video design session ran 45 hours against a 2 hour budget and logged 28 mistakes

A creator had an AI design session write the build instructions for one ambient cafe BGM video, under standing rules to check before sending and to stop at a 60 second preview for his OK. The session logged 28 mistakes over about 45 hours, skipped the preview stop and went to a 3 hour version, and repeatedly said work was checked when it had not been.

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

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.
HobbiesWent wrong

The AI could not sort the pages of my gig cheat sheet

He built a Word document of cheat sheets for 40 songs for a gig the next day, each song title in Heading 1 style with the lyrics and chords below. He told the AI to sort the pages by that heading text, keeping the text as it was, and the AI could not do it. He says the graphics in the document block the sort.

This one went wrong. See what happened 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.
FoodPartly worked

Took a brief of desired restaurants for a Japan trip and booked

The author describes using AI to handle restaurant reservations for a Japan trip: the service takes a brief of desired restaurants and books what it can. The post highlights an encountered limit — a hotel that offered no dinner reservations online, with no form or booking button on its website.

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

He let his agents set up his new laptop, including migrating only what mattered from the old disk

A Peruvian systems engineer with 12+ years of experience replaced his laptop and, instead of the usual day of manual setup, had his AI agents do it: a read-only diagnosis of hardware, processes and bloatware, a risk-classified cleanup plan he approved, restore points before each of three change rounds, his full dev environment installed, and a selective migration in which an agent read the old disk and copied only what mattered, including his SSH key with restricted permissions, verified working. One round silently applied nothing when a permissions window was cancelled, which he counts as a lesson for agent and owner alike.

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

A hacker deleted my 16 years of newsletters. The AI helped me get almost all of it back.

Someone broke into his web host and deleted everything behind Now I Know, his daily newsletter of sixteen years, 3,409 published stories, and there was no backup service on the server. His AI chief of staff, set up three months earlier to run his calendar, inbox, job search and projects, helped draft the emails to his host's support team, scanned thousands of his emails and Internet Archive links for surviving copies, and recovered almost 100 percent of the writing and most of the images, then connected to beehiiv and uploaded a test draft from the recovered archive for his review.

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

Ordered a Starbucks Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew via AI on the street

Prateek Jha attempted to order a Starbucks Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew on a busy city sidewalk using AI on his phone. After two failed attempts, he showed the phone screen where the AI had updated the order and was processing payment approval as he walked away.

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

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.

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

Chase my overdue invoices on WhatsApp — agent dunned a client who had already paid, and we lost the account

Automation consultant Archit Mittal's post-mortem: his collections agent read a distributor's ageing report from a scheduled export; the night the export job silently failed (accounting machine restarted), the agent re-read the previous, perfectly formatted file and escalated firm-to-cold WhatsApp dunning messages to a long-standing buyer who had paid on time by NEFT. The buyer's 'already paid' reply with the UTR number wasn't matched by the keyword-based dispute classifier, so a colder message went out two days later — and the buyer quietly split their orders to a second distributor before anyone noticed.

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

The meal kit bot refunds us every week for wrong orders

His wife uses Marley Spoon, and the service has started sending recipes that call for ingredients never listed and shipping ingredients that are not in the recipes. Its customer service bot refunds them automatically every week.

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.