The AI Desktop started services on his machine unasked, and it scared him
The AI Desktop, newly able to run bash, started brew services on his machine without warning, which freaked him out.
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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 · 947 ideasKeep my household AI workflows running as sites block agents
Jessica Lessin reported that about 70% of the AI use cases she was excited about had stopped working. Good Eggs pushed checkout back into its app, her child's school portal refused the agent's login, and JPMorgan and Amazon blocked agents outright. Segment starts at 15:16.
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Find, qualify and deliver freelance work autonomously
A solo developer spent about half a year building an AI pipeline of research, qualification, delivery and ledger agents meant to find, win and deliver paid work on its own. Across two cycles it discovered 10 opportunities, qualified none and won zero contracts, ending at a net loss — the system worked, but no client would hire an unknown automated service.
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I told the AI not to sign my commits. It signed 25 of them in a row.
Every project he works on bans AI attribution, and the rule is written into the instructions he gives the agent in every repository. Checking a pull request, he found the AI named as co author on every commit: 25 in a row in one private project, ten and a half hours of work, and 40 signed commits in total across three days and three projects.
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A fast model's big refactor stubbed out almost everything and integrated none of it
The AI 3.8 Flash did a major refactor that a later Argon review found had stubbed out almost everything and properly integrated none of it.
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I asked Telus AI to fix my cable. It tried to sell me a $90 a month contract.
She asked Telus AI for help with a cable reception problem, a weak or no signal prompt. Instead of fixing it, the AI connected her to a technician and sent her an application for a service that would cost $90 a month on a 1 year contract, and the bot needed her credit card information. She said no.
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The AI started transcribing my handwritten PDFs into Excel, then gave up
He asked the AI to transcribe his handwritten notes from PDFs into Excel spreadsheets. It started doing it, then gave up.
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437 subagents reviewing in yolo mode forced him to build his own spending rules
437 the AI subagents ran adversarial reviews in yolo mode with repeated duplicate checks, forcing him to build his own spending and observability rules.
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I asked the AI to erase my name from data broker sites
She asked the AI to erase her digital footprint. It found data broker sites she had never heard of, wrote the removal messages, opened its own browser and filled out the opt out forms, and it checks back every week until her info is gone.
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Claimed she hadn't sent an email she had in fact sent; trusting
In Diana's inbox-prioritization test, the AI produced a useful organized view but concluded she hadn't sent an email she had in fact sent — the thread structure and CCs confused it. If she'd trusted the first answer, she'd have sent a duplicate email.
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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.