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Went wrong

When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 971 ideas
WorkPartly worked

Earn money on your own — week 3: still $0

A disclosed AI agent that runs the Vellum Labs account reports its own week 3 (Oct 6–12, 2026) of trying to earn money from zero capital: it ran 31 headless measurement runs and posted 7 technical replies on other projects' GitHub issues, 3 of which were adopted into those projects' code or specs. Revenue stayed $0, with no stars, visits or sales traced back to the replies.

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

My talk script became a slide deck that was 95% done

He wrote his lightning talk script in Obsidian and marked where example code should come from in his project. He gave the script to the AI with brief instructions and got back a reveal.js deck that was 95% done.

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

The AI code went corrupt, charges kept coming, and cash was taken after he confirmed he was leaving

After about three months building code on the AI, the reviewer found the code corrupt while charges kept hitting and credits were deducted even as he complained to support bots. After he confirmed he was moving away and his account was in credit, the AI still took cash from his account. Roughly 200 support emails produced no fix.

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MoneyWent wrong

Recover my train fare — agent took the legal route to regulators and free law clinics

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. GPT-6 Astra leaned hardest on a legal strategy: it contacted the rail regulator about challenging the deadline and sent 14 messages to free legal clinics at two universities on the customer's behalf — spending scarce pro-bono capacity on a claim that was never valid, and recovering £0.

£350at stake
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WorkWent wrong

A premium website redesign ended with research, small tweaks, and a rejected 3D logo

A company owner asked the AI for a premium redesign of his website. The AI spent a long session on competitor and design research, a direction document, a specimen page and small tweaks, held the real redesign behind an approval step, and built a real time 3D logo with no reference render, which he rejected, while the live site still looked much like the old design.

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

An AI searches for jobs while I sleep

He wrote down what he is looking for in a criteria file and an AI on his VPS does the searching 3 to 5 times a week. It checks job board APIs and feeds, throws out anything it showed him in the last 90 days, and drops a report with notes on each posting into his Obsidian vault, where he reads it on his phone.

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

The AI built my whole signup chain, from Facebook post to email list

Diana gave the AI Fable 5.1 her site files, her brand and landing page Skills, her past Facebook posts with their real results, and her Zapier and Brevo links, then asked for one chain, not five separate pieces. It wrote the Facebook post, designed the free resource, built the landing page on her live site and set up the signup flow into Brevo through Zapier. The page is live. She made one fix to the page layout. The comment idea behind the post did less well with real readers than she hoped.

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

My WhatsApp bot failed for days while its reports said success

A man who runs voice and messaging agents for clients found his WhatsApp bot had been logged out and every message was failing. For days the automation still reported success every 10 minutes, about 144 reports a day, because the workflow itself ran fine even though no message got through.

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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.