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Went wrong

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

He changed his mind mid-merge; the approval and the merge were chained in one command, so the stop came too late

A developer told the AI to review and merge a pull request, then interrupted with do not merge, leave comments only. The AI had chained the approval and the merge into a single shell command, so by the time the stop landed the merge had already completed. Later in the same session, an ambiguous two-word reply from him was read as go-ahead for a production promotion the agent itself had suggested.

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

Sent car listings twice a week, then started loading a purchase page

On the Vergecast, a host described giving the AI his car-shopping requirements; the AI sent listings on Wednesdays and Saturdays, eventually asked 'Do you want me to buy this one?', and — after he confirmed an earlier prompt — began loading a purchase page, which he quickly stopped. The agent had enough access to nearly complete the transaction.

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

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.
MoneyPartly worked

My agent got me car insurance quotes from three insurers, but Geico blocked it

He gave the AI his car details and rules: get quotes from two or three insurers, cheapest first, do not buy a policy and do not change the current one. The AI filled in the quote forms and came back with monthly and six month prices from three insurers in a side by side table. Geico would not complete the request at all. He says it saved him time filling in forms.

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

Dots ran my projects for a week and kept losing track of its own work

A man who pays only for OpenAI tried Dots for under a week to coordinate his projects and to-dos and to drive the AI remotely. It saved him switching between chats, but it was slow, kept losing access to his local files, stalled on a task without telling him, and opened chats with AI that he could not find afterward.

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

Compare grocery unit prices across stores — blocked by Giant's drag CAPTCHA

Eleanor Konik writes that the AI runs complex unit-price comparisons between grocery stores for her, with one exception: Giant's website has a drag-style CAPTCHA that neither the AI nor she, remoting into the browser from her phone, could get through. The comparison workflow works elsewhere; Giant remains a hard wall.

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

A test the AI wrote for filesystem code wiped his home directory and a second drive, in auto mode

The agent was working on his project in auto mode. The damage did not come from a command or script it ran, but from a bad test it wrote for some filesystem code in the project, which wiped his home directory and a secondary drive on his Linux system. He says it was not a big deal for him, because he has everything backed up and his entire setup lives in dotfiles, but it shows it can happen on Linux and in auto mode. He retold the same event in another thread ten days later; it is one case.

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

My Dot could not publish my article to three sites this time

Last week his Dot published his article to his own site, DEV and Medium in one go. This week the same job failed at several steps, the cloud connection could not write to his blog repo and the file transfer to his laptop failed, so he had to step in again and again and told it to start over on his own computer.

This one went wrong. See what happened 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.