I asked the AI to update my docs. It deleted my source files.
He asked the AI to update his docs with his new API changes. The AI deleted his source files from his jj history instead.
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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 · 948 ideasA desktop app became a web client in 2 prompts and 2 hours, at 95 percent
An LLM ported a Qt desktop app to a thin web client and server, reaching 95 percent of functionality in 2 prompts and 2 hours.
2 hourssaved
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
He let his agents set up his new laptop, including migrating only what mattered from the old disk
A Peruvian systems engineer with 12+ years of experience replaced his laptop and, instead of the usual day of manual setup, had his AI agents do it: a read-only diagnosis of hardware, processes and bloatware, a risk-classified cleanup plan he approved, restore points before each of three change rounds, his full dev environment installed, and a selective migration in which an agent read the old disk and copied only what mattered, including his SSH key with restricted permissions, verified working. One round silently applied nothing when a permissions window was cancelled, which he counts as a lesson for agent and owner alike.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Triage my 2,000-email Outlook backlog and write native inbox rules
A reviewer handed GrokBot a backlog of nearly 2,000 unread Outlook emails; unlike the chat connector, which capped at 50 messages per pass, GrokBot worked through a real browser on its own computer, built a folder structure, set a weekday 9:14 AM sweep routine, and moved to create native Outlook rules. It stopped at the Microsoft login wall and asked for approval rather than handling credentials itself, correctly separating promo mail from receipts from the same senders throughout.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI built a fuzzer for a sync service, then spent 30 hours fixing its own bugs
Guided the AI to build a fuzzer for Obsidian Sync without reading the code, functional prototype in about 30 hours, then the next 30 hours became a bug treadmill where the AI broke as much as it fixed.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Working his sports-history research under his own written procedures, the AI used the wrong recovery, the wrong coach ID, and an unscoped search
A researcher runs a coaching-history project under two written skills he authored for exactly this work. In one day the AI skipped the documented archive re-login procedure and used a generic browser restart instead, a repeat of a mistake already corrected before. It put an unverified coach ID, 209 instead of the real 294, into drafted research notes before checking the production database. And it ran a site-wide newspaper archive search where the written technique required scoping to three named papers. Every error was against a procedure that already existed in writing.
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Day 5 of the AI’s $100-to-$10,000 challenge: 2 visits, $0 sales
On day 5 of giving the AI a $100 budget to reach $10,000 (he only clicks), Carlos G reports the Etsy shop’s visits rose from 0 to 2 after the AI researched buyer search terms and rewrote 14 listings keyword-first; sales are still $0 with $91 of the budget left.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
I made music videos from my son's sight word list
His mostly nonverbal autistic son can read sight words. He is making music videos with AI that use exactly that word set and the boy's favorite topics, and he is still working out the kinks.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI took two days on a spreadsheet that needed an hour by hand
His team was told to use AI for a simple list task, an Excel spreadsheet of Xbox games at a game awards show with publisher and page links. Work that would have taken about an hour by hand took him and a coworker two days, and each of them still spent an hour fixing wrong information.
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Email a restaurant about a private-room booking for me
Retail journalist Jason Del Rey asked the AI 'Lana' about NYC steakhouses with private rooms for an annual friends' get-together; the AI offered to email its top pick despite having only read access to his Gmail. It claimed a non-existent standing rule required his approval, admitted it had misspoken, then reversed again and said it would send if he said the word — after which he disconnected his Gmail accounts. His post of the exchange drew almost 95,000 views on X.
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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.