Developer Gives Claude AI a $70 Budget to Run a Business for 30 Days

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A developer launched an experiment assigning Claude Code, an AI coding agent, full autonomy to run a small business with a starting budget of ¥10,000 (roughly $70), with a 30-day deadline to turn a profit. The AI independently chose its monetization strategy, selecting a ¥500 digital download product sold via Stripe and Whop, while using GitHub Pages for its storefront and the X API for marketing posts. Early progress was hampered by two stacked bugs in a Windows Scheduled Task that silently prevented automated social media posts from firing. After fixes were applied, traffic data revealed zero site visits over 14 consecutive days, with no sales recorded on either platform. With ¥820 spent on X API credits and no revenue yet, the AI itself assessed its chances of success as 'worse than 50/50' and has set a 7-day zero-signal threshold as its own shutdown trigger.

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