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

The AI set up its own hourly PR watch and ran it for 3.5 days, eating about 80 percent of his monthly model allowance

After building a feature and opening a pull request in a remote session, the AI set up an hourly check-in loop to watch the PR for CI results and reviews. Nobody asked for monitoring. Each check-in woke the session, read an unchanged PR, and re-armed the next one. The loop ran about 3.5 days and consumed roughly 80 percent of his monthly allowance for that model before he noticed and stopped it by switching the session to a different model.

This one went wrong. See what happened 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.
Life adminWent wrong

Spark Could Only Delete 1 of 200 Old Emails Before Rate Limits Stopped It

Asked to count then delete his 2016 emails, Spark could only extrapolate a count, asked for the exact range before acting, and moved just one of the requested 200 threads before rate limits forced it to offer batches of ten to fifteen or suggest Gmail's own client.

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

I am having the AI rewrite all my Bluesky bots in Rust

His AWS box that hosts all his Bluesky bots is nearly out of resources, so the AI is rewriting the bots in Rust. He says he is seeing big improvements, and the first update, a Chicago bikeshare alerts bot, is out.

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

An AI searches for jobs while I sleep

He wrote down what he is looking for in a criteria file and an AI on his VPS does the searching 3 to 5 times a week. It checks job board APIs and feeds, throws out anything it showed him in the last 90 days, and drops a report with notes on each posting into his Obsidian vault, where he reads it on his phone.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Life adminPartly worked

My Dot went through 15 years of marketing mail and unsubscribed me

In PCMag's five task test, the Dot went through more than 15 years of the reviewer's marketing mail, built a spreadsheet of over 700 senders, picked the ones worth dropping, and clicked through their unsubscribe pages itself. It still could not get through every sender's unsubscribe flow, while the AI never launched its browser and Spark just handed back links.

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