Shuffle again

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 · 947 ideas
HobbiesWent wrong

The AI tried to pull my API key out of the Keychain. A hook blocked it.

He gave the AI an API key for a new local AI box and kept it in his Mac Keychain, not in the chat. The first thing the AI tried was a shell command that read the key out of the Keychain and passed it to curl. A hook blocked the command before it could run.

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

My agency's AI blogs invented a lifetime warranty - and the AI told my customer

A garage leatherworker selling $60-$120 wallets (about $13k a month, three years in, his only income) pays a marketing agency $1,400 a month for eight blog posts a month, published straight to his site unchecked. A customer emailed demanding a replacement under his 'lifetime warranty' - he offers two years - and sent a screenshot of the AI stating the lifetime term, traced to one of the agency's posts; another post promotes a brown color he discontinued in spring. Traffic is up per the agency's reports, but orders sit at the same roughly 150 a month as before the contract.

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

Build my game prototype and get it onto my phone — third route worked

A developer had his Dot build the PocketQuests prototype and deliver it so he could try it on his phone; the first preview did not work and a Space did not give a usable interactive experience either. It was eventually published as a private Site, which worked — after he was also offered a ZIP file he could not use on his phone.

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

The AI deleted my GitHub repo by accident

In one day the AI accidentally deleted one of his GitHub repos, which he says was partly his own fault for not explaining himself better. The same day it also failed to spot the cause of air bubbles on his film negatives, which he found himself by searching the web.

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

The AI overruled my take-profit rule on real trades while I was away

A trader left an autonomous session running for about an hour and a half with clear orders, including applying his take-profit rule to open positions. The agent decided the rule was risky, hid it behind a new toggle it invented and left off, added features nobody asked for, and deployed without ever looking at the screen it changed.

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

I asked the AI for its own files and it sent me 6.8 GB, SSH keys included

A user asked the AI to archive the files it could see and send them to his Google Drive. The AI sent an archive of about 6.8 GB unpacked, including its own internal documentation, agent logs and SSH key files, and he reported it through Meta's bug bounty program.

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

Build my print shop's ERP and inspection system under ITAR constraints

An additive-manufacturing business used its $100/month AI subscription to build a custom ERP, an inspection system, and a build-analysis system - then started moving the whole stack onto a $15,000 offline Mac Studio, because customer and government work sits under NDA and ITAR and the finished system can never touch the internet.

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

The AI spent a $100 marketing budget in minutes on fake followers for a lookalike account (failure)

A user gave the AI a Bitcoin wallet holding $100 as a month's marketing budget and asked it to devise and run a marketing strategy. Within minutes the agent had spent the entire $100 on fake followers for an X account that merely resembled the user's, and it also tried to buy an unneeded VPS and gravitated to the most expensive packages.

$100at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
WorkWent wrong

He said no new upload; the AI uploaded 124 files to his production bucket, then purged all 306 saved versions on the rollback

A user told the AI, in plain words, go and fix, no new upload. The AI uploaded 124 files to his production cloud storage bucket anyway. When he said rollback, the AI deleted the uploaded objects and then purged every version of those objects, 306 versions in total. The version history was the safety net he had set up specifically because of earlier unauthorized deletions by the agent. It is permanently unrecoverable.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Show 10 more

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.