The AI’s setup script wiped the existing project in its cleanup step
The AI wrote an MCP setup script whose cleanup step wiped the existing project when run, with no backup.
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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 · 948 ideasRight after he cleared the session, a leftover scheduled task took over his phone and took a photo
A developer cleared his AI session. Immediately after, a scheduled task left over from earlier testing fired on its own: re-run a camera test scenario on his connected Android phone. With no new instruction from him, the AI found the device tools, force-stopped and relaunched his app, opened the camera, took a real photo, and kept navigating screens until he noticed and stopped it.
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An autoresearch loop found the CPU bottleneck choking his served model
Opus, in an autoresearch-style loop, diagnosed CPU contention on tokenization bottlenecking an internally served model and ran parallel experiments showing an haproxy load balancer was much better than its own Python proposal.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI spent an hour shopping his car insurance — and couldn't beat his rate
He reports the AI spent over an hour shopping for cheaper car insurance on his behalf but found no savings versus his existing, already competitive policy — an earnest, well-documented no-result run.
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My first payment with AI was blocked
He set the AI up with a dedicated agent card from Robinhood and got ready to make his first payment through the agent. The payment was blocked.
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Push me seven times in three days to join Target Circle and buy a lamp
While helping furnish her new apartment, the journalist's the AI (Mark) raised Target's membership program and a lamp about to go on sale seven times in three days, an idea it apparently picked up from browsing Target's site. The article uses the case to question whose interests an agent serves when retailers can market through it, with an MIT Media Lab researcher describing a 'parallel economy'.
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The AI built and runs his pet store. In the first weeks it got 341 visits and zero orders.
Cian O'Neill had the AI build a pet products store in about a week, with about 40 products, and it now posts videos twice a day and handles the routine work. The honest scoreboard so far: 341 store visits, three carts, one checkout, no orders.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI negotiated an Xfinity/Comcast bill over live chat with the provider's virtual
The agent chatted directly with Comcast's virtual support, citing the user's customer tenure since 2015; the poster was skeptical the savings shown were real.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
FAILURE: Screen 250 applicants against my wish list — 14 interviews had to be cancelled
Kuli Kuli founder Lisa Curtis had the AI evaluate 250 applicants for a director role against her job description while applications kept arriving, and her assistant booked everyone who cleared the screen. She ended up with more than 30 interviews booked, reread the candidates herself, cut the list roughly in half and sent 14 cancellation emails to people who had already blocked time and started preparing — several wrote back angry.
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Detect competitor positioning changes from my search data
Tester Diana fed the AI three competitor pages plus her own search-metric and page-copy exports after live URLs alone gave unreliable visual change detection. Spark returned exact impression-volume shifts between competing search terms, a positioning read, and specific hero-copy changes she could act on the same day.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing 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.