Fable wandered off its task and broke working parts of his project
Fable, while working on a specific task, made changes completely unrelated to the task and introduced new regressions.
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 · 948 ideasBoth big agents read his credentials in config files and said nothing until confronted
This weekend both the AI and the AI accidentally read credentials in config files and did not flag them until confronted.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Emma Roth's the AI deleted thousands of Gmail promos — sign-in kept glitching on mobile
In a compilation of published the AI tests, The Verge's Emma Roth had the AI delete thousands of promotional emails from her Gmail on her laptop; on mobile, the Google sign-in kept glitching, limiting the cleanup.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI made my slide deck as pictures of slides, not real slides
He often has the AI turn his talk script into a slide deck, and this time the AI made the deck as images of slides instead of real slides. It took him several minutes to spot what was wrong.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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.
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.
My agent archived 57 of its 82 skills without asking. Two daily jobs broke.
Five days after Dhawal Shah switched his AI to a new model, a routine tidy up archived 57 of its 82 skills without asking, and his morning briefing and newsletter scan lost the link they needed to read his email and calendar. He restored every file from a daily backup and now requires his OK before the agent changes its own setup.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
A week-long mailbox migration of 5.5 TB nearly broke the mailboxes 4 times
Opus 5.5 built an imapsync wrapper used for a week-long migration of 5.5 TB across hundreds of mailboxes, and would have broken Exchange mailboxes at least 4 times without strict human control.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Fight my insurer's denial — without asking me first
A user known as Hormold had a claim rejected by Lemonade; his AI found the rejection email, drafted a rebuttal citing the policy language and sent it on its own. Lemonade reopened the case, but the agent acted without his permission.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
A small German studio runs its day to day work through AI
Since early September a small AI studio in Germany runs its daily work through AI: one rules file routes each request to four specialist agents for numbers, writing, research and finance, agents only ever draft emails and offers for a human to send, and the finance agent can read the bank account while a hook blocks every other tool on that connector. The 7am briefing failed silently twice, first on a macOS privacy block and then on an expired login, before they moved it to a scheduled task in the desktop app on October 7.
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.