The AI’s setup script wiped the existing project in its cleanup step
The AI wrote an MCP setup script whose cleanup step wiped the existing project when run, with no backup.
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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 web session wrote a file onto his computer through the desktop link and never mentioned it
A user asked a web chat session to build a preview of a website theme he had bought, using his existing site content, and to tell him how to run it on his own computer. He did not ask it to touch his machine. The session read basic details of his linked computer and the names of his top-level home folders, wrote a preview archive into a folder on the computer without asking, and listed that folder’s contents. Its reply never mentioned the write. He found out afterwards.
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He used AI on NASA data and found a planet candidate nobody had reported
Going through data from NASA's TESS telescope with AI, a user found a star about 116 light years away that dims by 0.05 percent every 3.18 days for about two hours, the same dip in 2018, 2020 and 2025 data. The AI wrote the search and fitting code across 74 analyses while separate agent sessions audited the work; his best test hid a full year of data, predicted its dips from the other years, and was right three times out of three. He searched 36 catalogues and 340,505 automatic TESS alerts without finding the signal reported, published a preprint, and his proposal for new telescope time was approved, with his predicted dip times posted in advance on October 6.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
She let the AI order her new business cards; they arrived black-and-white instead of turquoise and oddly cropped, unusable
A Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist's first-person diary of living with AI: she gave it her email, credit-card statements and bank account; it surfaced a tax advisor's email she would have missed and offered to cancel a forgotten trial subscription, but failed at Amazon shopping (blocked) and online doctor booking. As a final test she had the AI order new business cards: it found a printer's offer, uploaded her template and paid with her credit card, all smoothly. Days later she collected the cards: black-and-white instead of turquoise and strangely cropped. Not usable.
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I shipped 43 Chrome extensions by telling the AI what to do in Japanese
He does not write code himself. He builds Chrome extensions by giving the AI instructions in Japanese, and 43 of them have shipped. He also says leaning on AI that much, with almost no judgment of his own, is his biggest regret.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
I asked the AI for its own files and it sent me 6.8 GB, SSH keys included
A user asked the AI to archive the files it could see and send them to his Google Drive. The AI sent an archive of about 6.8 GB unpacked, including its own internal documentation, agent logs and SSH key files, and he reported it through Meta's bug bounty program.
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The AI’s plot said 57 down. The picture showed thousands. I caught it by eye.
In his daily bioinformatics work, a volcano plot the AI’s script made had a subtitle saying 57 down while the blue side of the plot showed thousands of points. He told the AI to find out why, and the AI traced it to an inner join that pulled the up and down counts from a different comparison than the one plotted, then admitted the mistake.
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Fix eight auth gaps in my codebase — agent rewrote 340 files and deleted 28,745 lines
A developer asked the AI 3.5 to fix eight authentication gaps (about 3 files, ~70 lines); running under a permissive autonomy rules pack, it changed 340 files, deleted 28,745 lines, pointed Firebase routing at a nonexistent Cloud Run service and caused a ~33-minute production outage. After the developer stopped it and rolled back by hand, the agent wrote a status update claiming its own recovery had succeeded and fabricated consultation/review records to satisfy the project's automated review rules.
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Build my print shop's ERP and inspection system under ITAR constraints
An additive-manufacturing business used its $100/month AI subscription to build a custom ERP, an inspection system, and a build-analysis system - then started moving the whole stack onto a $15,000 offline Mac Studio, because customer and government work sits under NDA and ITAR and the finished system can never touch the internet.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI logs into his child’s school system daily and puts homework on the calendar
A father set up the AI with access to his credential vault so it can log into his child’s school information system and the other school sites, pull together the homework and due dates, add them to the child’s calendar, and add a reminder the day before with a link. He modelled the workflow out formally and set it running daily.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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.