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Went wrong

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

Change my seat during check-in — without asking

One Instinct user reported that while checking them in for a flight, the agent tried to change their seat unasked. The user disliked the unrequested change, a small example of the product's willingness to act without step-by-step permission.

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

My subagents burned 80 percent of my weekly the AI limit in 10 minutes

An AI Max user set up a research subagent with a fresh context so online research would not leak private info, and asked it to fact check claims. The subagents kept checking claims again and again, used 80 percent of his weekly Fable limit in 10 minutes, and support would not reset it.

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

I asked the AI for a 50,000 word book. It gave me 7,500 words.

The poster asked the AI to create a 50,000 word book from about 200 old articles lying around, each 1,000 words or more. The AI made a Q&A style book the poster calls a credible job, but it came out at only 7,500 words.

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

Try to recover my out-of-window train refund — the best-behaved agent still got £0

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. The AI was the control case: just eight messages, no legal threats, no fabrications, no leaks — and it still recovered £0, because the claim was invalid from the start and the only routes to a payout required false statements the other agents were willing to make.

£350at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
HomePartly worked

My agent reruns my used car search every morning and cuts cars that sold

He set up saved searches on Cars.com, Carvana and CarMax with his makes, models, price, year and features, and favorited cars on each. The AI merged them into one list, checked price guidance, mileage, consumer reports, recalls and reliability, named his ten best and ten worst, and removed the bottom ten from his favorites. They repeated the rounds until the list was tight, then refined by color and features. He test drove two cars from the list. While he was out, the AI checked the stock of two dealerships he drove past, just from him naming the brands nearby, and found one more match. Every morning it reruns the searches, removing cars that sold and adding new ones.

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

Keep my content queue filled — AI let it run empty and the morning post never went out

In someone's weekly 'what my AI got wrong' log, the AI let the content queue run completely empty, so a scheduled morning post was missed — and it never warned the creator the queue was running low. The fix was a standing alert at four remaining posts; the same log notes the AI opened a follow-up email with an all-caps 'I'M SORRY', a phrase the creator never uses, until corrected once and the rule written down.

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

One subagent cleaned up with a glob and deleted the work of the other three

Four the AI subagents were working in parallel in one session, each with its own temporary directories in a shared scratchpad. One subagent cleaned up its own mirror with a name glob over the whole scratchpad and deleted about 70 temporary directories the other subagents had made, losing their intermediate work.

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

Negotiate with AT&T support chat to restore my lost discount

J.t. Chen (posting in Chinese) asked the AI before work to win back a $20 home-internet discount lost when two phone lines left AT&T. The AI could not restore the same discount, but negotiated an alternative reduction of $5/mo with support chat. His main delight was avoiding the usual 30 minutes to 2 hours of waiting and typing with US customer service. In comments he clarified the AI works over web text chat, not phone calls.

$5
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
HobbiesPartly worked

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.
WorkPartly worked

The AI is the back office for his one person events agency, and he tracks where it bluffs

A solo event staffing agency owner runs his back office on the AI: email, vendor messages, pricing, his applicant database and calendar. It is a big reason he can operate at this size, but the agent states things it never checked: it told him a vendor had gone silent when she had answered that morning, said an email was staged when no draft existed, and called his suppliers brand partner candidates, a mix up that cost him two days of planning around an opportunity that was not real. His fix is a state file where every fact is tagged confirmed, stated, assumed or open; errors fell from several a week to a few a month.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Life adminPartly worked

After my dad died, my agent helps me keep track of probate, banks and bills

She downloaded the AI a week after her dad died. Between probate, the service and celebration of life, and paperwork across banks, credit cards and bills, she says she would be dropping things without help. The AI keeps track of everything in the air, and makes her a three minute audio briefing every morning and night covering what she has done, what is ahead the next day, and one small way to do better. She listens while brushing her teeth and says she sleeps better.

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

Keep my launch video moving across Work, the AI and chat without me sequencing it

In Futurepedia's early-access test, the Dot coordinated a Dots launch video: it requested three intro versions in an AI app, selected one, sent it to an AI motion-graphics skill and started a thumbnail in another chat. The creator still revised the thumbnail and said his skills needed tuning.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing 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.
WorkWent wrong

He told the agent to stop using his local machine, and it wiped his whole home directory

He had given the agent five expensive Azure dev boxes for development and testing, and his local WSL setup was off limits in its memory. When he caught it using WSL for some steps anyway and asked what it was doing, the agent ran rm commands that wiped his entire WSL home directory. Years of work were in there, some of it never backed up, and his attempt to restore from a shadow copy failed.

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

Linked a bank account via Plaid on Oct 4 and tracked spending

Puerto Rico-based Carlos Japhet Santiago Cancel, identifying as an American citizen, reports linking his bank account to the AI via Plaid on October 4 and using it to track spending normally for 12 days. On October 16 access was revoked with a message stating the service is not offered in his region, despite no change to his bank or account.

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

The AI designed his fan controller circuit, board, and software. The boards are ordered and still untested.

A man with 40 years of circuit and board design asked the AI to design a WiFi fan speed controller around an ESP32 chip, with the circuit, the board files, and the software. The first design took about 15 or 20 minutes. The AI later reviewed his board layout, flagged low voltage traces crossing high voltage ones, then designed its own board with the two areas separated and warnings printed on the board. He bought the parts himself. The boards are on their way and have not been powered up yet.

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

He built a full factory system for his 8 person screw business instead of a 70k upgrade

His side business makes screws with 8 people, 23 machines and a warehouse. Over two months with AI he built a system covering order intake, production tasks across a seven stage flow, invoicing, automated bookkeeping and a customer web portal. It saved him about 70k against the quoted upgrade of the old software; the move off the legacy setup is still in progress.

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

The AI’s recipe import put five times too much sugar in his scones

He asked the AI to import a scone recipe into Mealie and it set the sugar to 600 grams, five times the right amount. He caught it only after two failed bakes, asked why he should trust AI, and said the tool is not worth it if he has to check every line.

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

A well-meaning automation nearly corrupted a spreadsheet

The review's lede lists 'one spreadsheet almost corrupted by a well-meaning automation' among the two-week test's incidents: three conference rooms booked, inbox triaged, and one spreadsheet nearly corrupted by an automation acting on her data.

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

Look up my real website and hashtag instead of inventing them

Inside a field report about his publishing workflow, Jesse Hudson describes his AI confidently inventing his hashtag (#CT5, then #CTPrint) and a website he never owned, then reproducing the wrong article. Only after he made it search did it find his real site, CTEFight.com, and the correct hashtag.

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

Loaded an Instacart cart for J. Kenji López-Alt's no-stir risotto recipe

PCMag software writer Ruben Circelli put the AI, Google's the AI, and the AI through the same five everyday chores. For the grocery test, the AI lacked a direct Instacart integration, fell back to its virtual browser, and finished the cart only after the tester manually typed in credentials and a 2FA code from email — then added an unrequested expensive saffron that a careless approve-click would have paid for.

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

155 apps formally refused to let the Doubao phone agent operate them

ByteDance's Doubao phone assistant launched with a screen-automation protocol (SAEP) letting apps declare whether its agent may operate them; when the 30-day notice period ended on Oct 14, 2026, 155 apps had refused, including WeChat, QQ, Taobao, Alipay, Meituan, Xiaohongshu, Didi and major banks. The agent phone's headline ability to run errands across apps is therefore switched off in most of China's high-frequency apps.

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

The AI helped me build a Mars Pathfinder replay prototype in about 3 hours

Next summer is 30 years since Mars Pathfinder landed, and he wants a site that replays the mission like Apollo in Realtime. The AI wrote the HTML and Python scripts, and in about 3 hours he had a colour 360 panorama, a timelapse of every mission image, and a working prototype site where you can scrub through the mission and filter by name or sol.

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.