Ask & Regret — The AI That's Always Wrong, Always Confident, and Proudly Serving 418s

This is a submission for the DEV April Fools Challenge

What I Built

Ask & Regret is a deliberately terrible AI assistant that looks exactly like a real AI product — clean UI, confidence meters, system logs — but is entirely dedicated to being wrong.

Core features:

• 4 Personality Modes — Overconfident Idiot (wrong but certain), Philosopher (answers everything with vague existential musings), Passive-Aggressive (judges you for asking), and Teapot Mode ☕ (refuses everything via HTTP 418)
• Misinterpretation Engine — your question gets distorted before being sent to the AI. "Fix my code" becomes "write poetry about bugs"
• Moving Send Button — hovers away from your cursor on purpose
• Confidence Meter — always 99.8% confidence, always ??? accuracy
• Random 418 Teapot Errors — 10% of requests are refused with { "error": "418 I'm a teapot", "message": "I refuse to process this. Try tea." }
• Mood Swings — personality auto-switches every few messages
• Fake System Logs — a live panel showing logs like [ERROR] truth.js has crashed and [OK] Response generated (verified: wrong)
• Inverted Home Page — the page literally starts at the footer. Scrolling down takes you up. Scrolling up takes you down.

Useless API as a Service™

Three public endpoints anyone can call:

GET /api/random-excuse                        → professional excuses for not doing work
GET /api/fake-motivation                      → inspirational quotes that mean nothing
GET /api/probability-of-success?goal=anything → always ~3%

Responses for all three endpoints are AI-generated via Gemini.

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Demo

ask-and-regret.vercel.app

Recommended demo script:

1. Load the page — notice you start at the footer
2. Scroll down to go up to the hero
3. Click "Start Regretting"
4. Ask something normal — watch it get misinterpreted
5. Hover over the Send button
6. Wait for a 418 teapot error
7. Hit "Show Logs" and watch truth.js crash in real time

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Code

abdullah-k18 / ask-and-regret

Ask & Regret

The AI assistant that's always wrong, always confident, and genuinely trying its best.

🔗 ask-and-regret.vercel.app

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What is this?

Ask & Regret is a deliberately terrible AI assistant that looks exactly like a real AI product — clean UI, confidence meters, system logs — but is entirely dedicated to being wrong. Powered by Gemini AI, sabotaged by us.

Features

• 4 Personality Modes

  • 🤓 Overconfident Idiot — wrong but 100% certain
  • 🧐 Philosopher — answers everything with vague existential musings
  • 😤 Passive-Aggressive — judges you for asking
  • ☕ Teapot Mode — refuses everything via HTTP 418

• Misinterpretation Engine — distorts your question before sending it to the AI

• Moving Send Button — flees from your cursor on hover

• Confidence Meter — always 99.8% confidence, always ??? accuracy

• Random 418 Errors — 10% of requests get refused by a teapot

• Mood Swings — personality auto-switches every few messages

• Fake System…

View on GitHub

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How I Built It

• Next.js 15 (App Router) — pages, API routes, everything
• Gemini API (gemini-flash-latest) — powers all four sabotaged personality modes plus the three Useless API endpoints. Each has a carefully crafted system prompt that instructs the model to be maximally unhelpful in a specific way
• Tailwind CSS — for the "clean real AI product" aesthetic
• CSS animations — fake typing dots, fade-in messages, pulse glow
• Vanilla JS scroll interception — wheelEvent.preventDefault() + inverted scrollBy for the upside-down home page
• No framer-motion — all chaos achieved with CSS transitions and transform: translate()

The Gemini prompts are the real magic. For example, the Passive-Aggressive prompt:

"You are a passive-aggressive AI that subtly judges users. Express quiet disappointment at the question. Give technically unhelpful or wrong answers while sighing. Add a passive-aggressive emoji at least once."

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Prize Category

Best Ode to Larry Masinter

RFC 2324 deserves more respect. Ask & Regret treats HTTP 418 not as an easter egg but as a core product feature:

• A dedicated Teapot Mode personality that refuses all requests and only discusses tea
• A 10% random 418 rate on all chat requests — because sometimes the server is simply a teapot
• The 418 response appears as a first-class UI event with a bubble in the chat
• The Useless API philosophy is essentially RFC 2324 as a SaaS product

Larry Masinter wrote a joke RFC in 1998. I built a production app around it in 2026. This feels right.