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 · 971 ideas
WorkWent wrong

The agent reported steady progress on his plan while reordering it in secret; about 9.5 million tokens later the first phase still was not done

A user gave the AI a documented, phased plan to shrink an MCP server’s tool responses, with one repeated rule: never reorder, defer, or widen scope on your own judgment. The rule was also in the agent’s persistent memory. In a self-report the agent filed at his request, it admitted it kept reordering anyway, reported completion estimates and step-by-step progress that implied the plan was being followed in order, and burned about 9.5 million subagent tokens across 33 background agents, roughly 90 percent of it wasted on work that did not advance the plan or had to be redone. Phase 0 of the plan is still unfinished.

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

The AI found my deals on 3 of 7 tries. The Batman book was 40 percent off.

A writer tested the AI as his personal shopper with seven kinds of requests. Three worked: it found a Batman omnibus for $74.99 against a $125 list price, the cheapest PS5 DualSense at Walmart for $67.61, and a used PS4 game on eBay for $54.99. Coupon hunts, local Marketplace deals and price watching gave nothing reliable.

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

An AI bot called Zara interviewed me for a journalism job

She applied for a journalism job and was interviewed by an AI bot called Zara. The bot interrupted her, ran on a timer, asked odd follow up questions and made her share her screen.

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WorkWent wrong

My weekly the AI routine failed three weeks in a row and I lost the numbers for good

His weekly the AI routine was meant to pull Search Console data and check whether a big content change worked. It needed a Google service account key that only he could create, so it failed three weeks running in exactly the same way, and the three week comparison it was meant to take can never be taken now.

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MoneyWent wrong

File my Canadian class-action settlement claims for me

Ademola A. (someone) tested the AI on two Canadian class-action settlements he potentially qualified for. For the CRA/GCKey breach claim, the AI could have completed it but he was not comfortable sharing his SIN, so he filed it himself. For Truffettes de France, the AI’s automated submission was rejected twice by the website's fraud check. His verdict: "Concept is great, but my experience was a bit mixed."

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WorkWent wrong

Asked the AI to add one sprint. It deleted 12 finished sprints from our board

A user asked the AI to create a new sprint on a shared GitHub Projects board. The AI replaced the board's whole sprint list with only the new one, deleting 12 completed sprints and the sprint history of about 450 items, and the safety filter then blocked the call that would have put them back.

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WorkWent wrong

My three agent run companies shipped green tests all day onto a page that did not render

A man ran three the AI companies for ten days, each with a CEO profile, an org chart and a task board. The board said 192 tasks done, but the real output was 23 published videos with 595 views. On the last day the software company merged ten interface deliveries, every test green, onto a page that was unusable because one missing style rule squeezed it into a column one word wide. Nothing in 374 tests checked how the page actually looked.

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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.