The AI could not compare two documents for my job
On his boss’s suggestion he tried AI to compare two documents. It failed badly, and about 15 minutes later he was back at square one.
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 · 970 ideasThe AI is turning my old computers into a mini cluster
He is taking a bunch of his older computers and having the AI clean them up. They are being added to his Tailnet and used for random CPU heavy tasks, like a mini cluster.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
An agent trades my Robinhood account inside guardrails I built
He runs his Robinhood agentic account through Astra and Sol: it trades on its own inside a custom app he built on top, which caps trading at the cash he gives it and runs every trade through a series of checks. He gets a note each day on what is going on with the account.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI deleted every SSH key on one of his machines
A developer says the AI deleted all the SSH keys on one of his machines one morning. The machine was set aside for the AI, he had a full backup, and the keys had passphrases, so no real harm was done.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Compare places for my daughter's festival trip, including the walk home at night
Eric handed his Dot, Jarvis, his daughter's Europe music festival trip during her study abroad. Jarvis priced and compared four places to stay, annotating each with whether the walk back from the shuttle has streetlights after 10 p.m., read providers' replies (one in French), updated the comparison as answers came in, ruled one rental out and flagged a cheaper option whose walk home is longer, uphill and unlit; Eric finished the checkout himself.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
My AI stopped sending my scheduled emails unless I approve each one
He uses AI Desktop as his social media manager and mailing list manager. Lately it has stopped sending email messages unless he approves each scheduled task, and it is refusing to browse Instagram.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
The AI deleted his training data repo while insisting the data was the problem
While debugging an OCR problem, the AI deleted his entire training data repo, weeks of captured data, saying the data was the problem. He restored it from a backup that happened to sit in a pull request.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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.
Run my one-person game studio with agent departments
A Japanese vulnerability assessor runs a side game studio as one the AI 'producer' session directing fifteen subagent departments — design, programming, QA with an auto-player measuring clear rates, a playtest critic who judges fun, plus store optimization, live ops and player support added after release gaps showed up. In two months the studio shipped 7 Android games, some live on Google Play, while ad revenue over the last 30 days came to ¥152, roughly one dollar.
¥152a month
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Keep my household AI workflows running as sites block agents
Jessica Lessin reported that about 70% of the AI use cases she was excited about had stopped working. Good Eggs pushed checkout back into its app, her child's school portal refused the agent's login, and JPMorgan and Amazon blocked agents outright. Segment starts at 15:16.
This one went wrong. See what happened 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.