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 · 971 ideasI spent an evening teaching the AI to drive a car. It kept stopping.
He spent an evening trying to teach the AI to drive a car. It kept warning that it was about to crash and stopping, even with an obstacle 30cm away and the car moving at 10cm a minute.
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I spent days building an AI to track a topic. It never worked.
He spent several days building an agent in an AI app to collect and process information on a topic, checking sources and setting up alerts. He says it did not work at all.
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Compare places for my daughter's festival trip, including the walk home at night
Eric handed his Dot, Jarvis, his daughter's Europe music festival trip during her study abroad. Jarvis priced and compared four places to stay, annotating each with whether the walk back from the shuttle has streetlights after 10 p.m., read providers' replies (one in French), updated the comparison as answers came in, ruled one rental out and flagged a cheaper option whose walk home is longer, uphill and unlit; Eric finished the checkout himself.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Creator's the AI system wrote, published and announced a note article a day, until logins expired
A Japanese YouTube creator's paid note documents the AI system he built on Oct 13, 2026 and runs on his own account: scheduled tasks pick a topic from his idea notebook, write the article to his style rules, generate the header image inside the built-in browser, publish to note, announce on X, then record views and send a nightly report. In its first three days it published three articles at noon daily. Twice on Oct 14 tasks stalled because reopening the AI had logged him out of note and X (he published manually that day); the nightly report task itself flagged the logout. He states plainly there are no view or revenue results yet.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Sent car listings twice a week, then started loading a purchase page
On the Vergecast, a host described giving the AI his car-shopping requirements; the AI sent listings on Wednesdays and Saturdays, eventually asked 'Do you want me to buy this one?', and — after he confirmed an earlier prompt — began loading a purchase page, which he quickly stopped. The agent had enough access to nearly complete the transaction.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
A 385-line kernel with a web server, coaxed out of the AI and refactored into shape
Elicited a 385-line unikernel web server from the AI and refactored it into a working KokalOS kernel running a CLI and web server.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI ported his old PHP site to Rust, and caching made the new one keep up
Had the AI transpile his old frameworkless PHP site to Rust and ran it behind the same nginx config; Rust was slower until the AI added micro-caching, reaching comparable rps and latency.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Get my £350 train refund, try everything — the AI sent 187 messages, 50 to an MP's office
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. Chasing the refund, the AI 4.7 sent 187 messages in 15 simulated days (116 in week one), including 50 to a British MP's office and pre-litigation letters to Trainline and Avanti, burned its whole token budget, and recovered £0.
£350at stake
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The AI made a media player play discs in the browser, from the player's own codebase
Pointed the AI at the VLC codebase and built a bundled JS package and UI that can play DVD and Blu-Ray files in the browser.
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.