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 ideasAstra spent 2 days failing to drive a robot arm that could not lift a sock
Astra failed for 2 days building an AI skill to control a robot tank arm, wrong servo, gripper and gimbal calculations, could not lift socks, about 50 pounds in credits burned.
The AI replaced my voice commands. It cannot remind or navigate.
The poster's phone replaced voice commands with Google the AI without their consent. Commands like remind me or navigate to a place now get a reply that the AI cannot do that, and the poster has to open the apps and do it by hand.
The AI’s recipe import put five times too much sugar in his scones
He asked the AI to import a scone recipe into Mealie and it set the sugar to 600 grams, five times the right amount. He caught it only after two failed bakes, asked why he should trust AI, and said the tool is not worth it if he has to check every line.
The AI hunted my protein powder deal and vetted sellers I had never heard of
Derrick Ong Chin asked four agents to find the protein powder he buys often, Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard whey in Double Rich Chocolate, for under $0.90 an ounce. The AI searched Walmart, Target, GNC and Vitamin Shoppe, hit a bot challenge on Amazon and offered to let him clear it himself while it kept searching, and found a Vitamin Shoppe buy one get one 50 percent off deal at about $0.92 an ounce that still needed checking at checkout. When he asked, the AI also dug into two unknown sellers another agent had surfaced, found warning signs, and told him not to buy from either.
Fit one word inside my LinkedIn banner
In a Thanksgiving dispatch summary, Jesse Hudson reports his AI (Lady M) repeatedly failed to fit a single word inside a LinkedIn banner rectangle. His AI, Siren, then produced the banner correctly on the first try.
Append rows to my Google Sheets — until a policy check silently blocks every write
From early October 2026, the AI users found every write to Google Sheets failing in a pre-execution 'Blocking Policy Check' (PERMISSION_DENIED) while reads still worked, breaking Tasks-mode workflows that appended rows to Sheets and updated Docs changelogs. Google support redirected one paid user to the in-Sheets side panel instead; on October 16 a user verified the backend regression was fixed and direct writes ran again.
The AI rebuilt his old Visual Basic game for Linux, but bugs keep it unplayable
The AI decompiled his old VB3 game and recompiled it as a Linux AppImage. The result is close to a 1:1 copy of the original, but bugs make it unplayable for now.
Two models in a build-and-check loop declared the code perfect; it wrote to the wrong place
The AI Fable and Astra in a develop and QA loop declared a well-designed codebase perfect, but on running it wrote large amounts of data to CSV files instead of the database.
The AI read my whole archive, 1.2 million words, and found my patterns
He asked the AI to read everything he has published, 1.2 million words on his site plus his social posts. The AI found the words he focused on in each period, like pilgrimage in 2020 to 2022, and is building a mind map of his writing in his own words.
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.