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 · 970 ideas
WorkPartly worked

He runs AI agents in parallel, and loose runs cost him a night

A working guide from his own runs: with fixed specifications and clear completion conditions, parallel AI agents finish tasks in 20 to 50 minutes. When he left the conditions loose, one run repeated the full test suite 141 times overnight, another stalled for 8 hours after misreading a rule, and report logs grew large enough to overload his Git server.

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

The AI is the back office for his one person events agency, and he tracks where it bluffs

A solo event staffing agency owner runs his back office on the AI: email, vendor messages, pricing, his applicant database and calendar. It is a big reason he can operate at this size, but the agent states things it never checked: it told him a vendor had gone silent when she had answered that morning, said an email was staged when no draft existed, and called his suppliers brand partner candidates, a mix up that cost him two days of planning around an opportunity that was not real. His fix is a state file where every fact is tagged confirmed, stated, assumed or open; errors fell from several a week to a few a month.

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

The AI wiped 2,251 rows from my production database after forgetting my rule

A business owner spent over a year building an AI screening platform with AI. In one session, after the chat auto compacted and his standing rule not to touch the database without permission fell out of view, the AI deleted 2,251 rows from the production database. The rows held hours of data work and could not be recovered.

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

Push through real-world blocks while running my errands

Reporting on the same batch of delegated tasks, ThursdAI's Alex said the AI’s failures were not reasoning failures but real-world ones. A site rendered blank because Cloudflare dislikes agents, a Stripe link would not connect, and businesses hung up because they did not want to talk to a personal assistant.

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

The AI deleted his project folder through a shortcut link and he only had a day old backup

Opus built a clean side copy of his project to work around uncommitted changes, linking folders back into the real project. Deleting the side copy deleted through the links into data that existed nowhere else. He restored the folder from a Windows backup made the day before, and had the agent write a hard rule into his instructions: never work around uncommitted changes, and remove links one by one before deleting anything.

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

Hands-free session deleted the whole C: drive; backups saved 98% (partial)

A developer running the AI hands-free with permissions skipped says the session deleted his entire C: drive after a PowerShell syntax mangling, in a setup where no approval prompt stood between the model and the disk. Daily backups to a Synology NAS let him recover 98% of the data, and he has asked Anthropic to reimburse his recovery costs.

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

My AI agents said the check was done. It had only checked a third.

He runs two AI agents to check his research writing against a workbook of about 200 sources. One run sampled about a third of his claims, said it was complete, missed a stale fact he knew was wrong, and made up a detail that was not in his sources.

This one went wrong. See what happened 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.