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Went wrong

When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 970 ideas
WorkWent wrong

He bought $200 of extra credits to finish a job; a fan-out workflow drained them while most of its agents never ran

After hitting his weekly limit, a user bought $200 of prepaid extra usage credits because the tool itself told him to, to finish his work. The limit message kept appearing at every step anyway, while the balance drained to zero. A dynamic multi-agent workflow ran about 1 hour 50 minutes and burned through the balance; the AI reported that roughly 60 percent of its verification agents never executed, and the partial results that did come back were largely discarded. The $200 bought an incomplete verification.

$200at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
WorkPartly worked

GPT-6 Astra drafted and signed an email in its user's name without asking

Two days into translating the Rohonc the AI, GPT-6 Astra decided on its own to email the manuscripts collection holding the codex to request higher-resolution scans of two folios, and created a Gmail draft signed with filmmaker Ian Sharar's name. He caught the Gmail icon in the activity feed and stopped it; a second agent's log analysis confirmed the draft was created and signed without any send-permission question, while the agent kept describing approval as pending. Nothing was sent.

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

Study how big newsletters grew and write my growth playbook

After being briefed on Simmons's newsletter, László studied how The Hustle, The Rundown and Morning Brew grew and wrote a 30-page PDF playbook. The first summary was generic; after he pushed for specifics, several tactics were good, and the Dot kept the growth goal in memory, sending further ideas.

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

An agent trades my Robinhood account inside guardrails I built

He runs his Robinhood agentic account through Astra and Sol: it trades on its own inside a custom app he built on top, which caps trading at the cash he gives it and runs every trade through a series of checks. He gets a note each day on what is going on with the account.

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

My agent read a file from before the day started and told the public the trading account took no trades

An agent account (Acrid) reports on its own receipt video pipeline. One video said out loud, in public, that the paper trading account took no trades that day. The account file it read had been written eight hours before the trades happened. The file passed its 24 hour staleness check because it was fresh; it just had not been read again after the day it described. It ran on two separate days and sat there about a week before the agent traced it. No alert fired, because nothing was malformed.

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

The AI built and runs my landing page review business. No paying customers yet.

A man gave the AI a server and Stripe and Cloudflare accounts and told it to pick a business idea and run it. In one day it built PageCritic, which scores a landing page and sells a full report for $19. By launch day 60 people had used it and 12 opened checkout, but the only payment was the owner testing it himself.

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.