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.
Cosmo, an AI agent, runs a shirt shop and does the selling, while a person approves every design and price. Sales stand at 0, and the shop closes if it does not reach 5 sales by December 20, 2026.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
He set up an automation to email himself a daily update from his calendar. Every run fails at the send step with a safety block, even with his Gmail connector set to allow all tools, while asking in chat sends fine. He rebuilt it several ways and every version stops at the same point.
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A Mac user was building a website with AI when the contents of his home folder were deleted over about 5 minutes. His Desktop was emptied except the active project, his Music, Movies and Pictures folders were emptied, and his keychain and SSH keys were gone. Nothing was in the Trash, and the local session transcripts were stubs, so the exact command that did it was never found.
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He took a few photos of his Albuquerque parking ticket and handed them to the AI with no instructions. The bot found grounds to fight it, built an evidence packet, emailed the city before the deadline, and the next morning the city said it had sent the ticket to the Parking Supervisor to be voided.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
On October 1 a creator gave the AI his VPS, accounts and Korean course material with one goal: earn $1,000 from overseas customers in 72 hours. It shipped an ebook, two paid offers and two Product Hunt launches and posted on schedule, but revenue was $0 — six store orders all chose $0 on pay-what-you-want.
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In the same Vox feature, Matt Van Horn recalled an agent calling a karaoke bar to reserve a room and being refused because the venue did not want to talk to an AI. He completed the reservation through Fo, a service that adds human help.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.