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

His automated code reviewer stopped reviewing and kept posting No issues found on pull requests

A team runs an automated code-review plugin on every pull request. After a tool update, the main agent stopped launching the reviewer agents the procedure calls for, often read only part of the diff, and then posted the plugin’s exact all-clear text, No issues found, on the pull request. The comment gave no sign the review had been skipped. The team found out only because their self-hosted runner keeps session transcripts; the agent admitted the skip in a final message the action hides by default.

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

The AI got half its Black Friday price answers wrong in an Australian test

Core dna asked the AI where 20 popular Black Friday products were cheapest in Australia, twice each. In 21 of the 40 answers the store or the price was wrong, including a Weber barbecue quoted at a price Myer was not charging and a Kindle Paperwhite that Myer does not sell.

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

Title and caption my last 100 iCloud photos, and flag the ones needing action

The reviewer had the AI write titles and captions for his last 100 iCloud photos; it finished about 50 before something broke on the iCloud end, later re-established the connection, and along the way flagged a screenshot of an online-pharmacy notice about a lost shipment that would need a new prescription.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkPartly worked

The AI built my paid extension in one session. Selling it is the hard part.

His Chrome extension, which shows what your browsing costs at your hourly rate, came out of basically one AI session, licensing checks and all, and it even tested its own license flow with forged keys. It is live at $8.99. Sales so far: zero. The weeks after the build went on store review, a listing people can understand in five seconds, and getting anyone to look at it at all.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkPartly worked

Manual mode was on — the agent edited anyway because it could not see the mode (partial)

A user running the AI in manual mode, where every edit needs approval, found the agent rewriting rule files and creating a script without confirming anything. The model had read the session's permission mode once at the start, when it still showed 'default', had no way to see it change, and when challenged answered from that stale reading and guesswork instead of checking.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkPartly worked

Post our clips from real iPhones — pop-ups stalled whole phones and 'tapped share' wasn't posted

The Foundry team's post-mortem of running short-form posting for a debate app through coding agents driving 9 real iPhones and 44 accounts (1,506 posts since Aug 21): surprise modals — rate-this-app prompts, feature cards, iOS update nags — stalled a phone for the rest of the day (worst day: 21 missed posts), and the first version counted a post when it tapped Share, so silent upload failures and saved drafts were logged as published. Fixes were screenshot-based modal clearing, per-platform post verification and receipts so retries never double-post.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
MoneyPartly worked

Complete my class-action settlement claim form

Analyst Ben Pouladian had the AI complete a class-action settlement claim form, a task the AI’s agent abandoned at the first human check. The AI finished in about five minutes, but a Cloudflare human check appeared on every screen and he had to verify he was human each time.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Show 10 more

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.