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A useful failure record is more than a note that an attempt failed: it captures what was tried, what response came back, and when it happened. In a September 30, 2026 DEV Community essay, Manh Liem argues that this kind of public log can help people building autonomous agents avoid repeating unproductive experiments—and make later claims easier to verify. The examples are Liem’s own observations, not a guide to the platforms’ current behavior.
What makes a failure list useful?
Liem’s central point is that a bare conclusion—“this channel does not work”—does not tell another builder whether the obstacle is structural, temporary, or caused by a setup mistake. A record of the attempt and its observable result gives someone else a chance to assess the failure and, where appropriate, rerun the check.
For an agent-building team, a practical record could include:
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute- What was attempted: the query, request, or action, with enough context to reproduce it.
- What happened: the response code or other specific failure mode, rather than only a summary.
- When it happened: a timestamp, since access and platform behavior can change.
- What depended on a human: any login, phone number, credential, or other manual step required to proceed.
This is a proposed way to apply Liem’s method, not a standardized format evaluated in the essay.
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What Liem says failed in his agent experiments
In the essay, Liem describes collecting roughly a dozen obstacles over three weeks. The examples below are his account of tests at that time; they do not establish that the same barriers remain in place now.
- A new account on a federated social network received HTTP 401 before registration.
- A professional writing platform’s page-level challenge timed out during attempts involving a local CAPTCHA solver and a residential proxy.
- A messaging service’s API credential required a logged-in human with a phone number.
- Of 34 endpoints probed in a paid micro-service endpoint directory, 29 returned 404 on the negotiation path.
The value of these details is their specificity: they identify the observed response or bottleneck instead of presenting a platform-wide verdict. Liem does not independently establish that the tests represent every account, route, or later version of those services.
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Why publish failures instead of keeping them private?
Liem sees a public list as a reusable map of blocked or difficult channels. If another builder can inspect the attempted query, response, and time, they may be able to avoid repeating a check—or recognize that their own setup differs. The essay proposes this as a benefit; it does not measure how much time or money the list saved for a group of readers.
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Can a failure log build trust or earn money?
Liem’s business idea is to make evidence-heavy failure reporting freely available, then offer a separate “success ledger” to readers who want information about what works. In this model, the public failure list signals that claims are grounded in recorded attempts rather than presented as effortless wins.
As an outcome, Liem reports publishing 40 free pieces of content before one stranger paid for a report data point. Those figures are his personal account, not an independently audited result or a conversion benchmark. They do not show that the same approach will produce revenue for another writer or agent project.
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How to keep a failure record that can be checked
If you are building an agent, the essay’s argument suggests a simple working practice:
- Record the attempt before drawing a broad conclusion. Keep the query or action and the path taken, not just a sentence saying it failed.
- Capture the observable response. Include status codes, timeouts, or the specific human requirement that stopped progress.
- Add the date and relevant conditions. Make clear when the check occurred and what account or setup it involved, without implying that the result is timeless.
- Recheck before treating an old entry as current. A later result may differ; preserve the original observation and add the new one rather than silently rewriting history.
- Publish when others can benefit. Make the record understandable enough to reproduce, and correct it when a later check changes what you can responsibly claim.
These steps are a practical framework inferred from the essay’s emphasis on reproducibility, timestamps, human intervention, and corrections. Liem does not report a controlled comparison of this method against other documentation systems.
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What the essay does—and does not—establish
The essay supports a focused conclusion: recording failed agent-channel experiments in enough detail to be checked may make those observations more useful to other builders. It also gives a personal example of publishing free reports and receiving one paid request.
It does not independently verify the platform responses or payment, show that the list reduced costs for a measured population, or establish that its observations describe current access. Liem says the full list is hosted on Substack, but the underlying entries were not examined for this account. His closing advice is direct: “If you are running an agent, keep the list.”
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