Indians with little coding skills using AI to crack IRCTC, causing desi mayhem

IRCTC has come a long way. Each day, every day, it gets a bit better at handling the mad rush of traveler frenzy that hits it daily. Credit where it is due. But frenzy is still frenzy which means that every now and then, there can be technical issues ranging from failed logins to – worst case – failed tickets. Given that there are only limited number of seats available at any given time, every lost minute amounts to unease and anxiety. But this is also the age of AI which makes you wonder, can AI help ease the hassle of booking a train ticket? The answer is yes.Internet is chock-full of instances of both tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy individuals using AI – particularly AI agents – to get things done. Agents are basically a type of AI that is designed to fulfil tasks on behalf of users with minimal handholding. You can, for instance, prompt these agents to search for seats and book them, all while taking a nap. No stress. You could do it with ChatGPT or with Claude or something else, as long as you’re comfortable sharing necessary data points with that agent. This can include ID proof, banking details so on and so forth.One such example comes by way of Manthan Jethwani, the founder of Phaze AI. To solve his personal annoyance, he handed the chore – of booking a train ticket through IRCTC – over to GPT-6 Astra, the flagship frontier reasoning and intelligence model from OpenAI.“When I wanted to book a Tatkal ticket, I had to wake up at 10 AM. I realised this is a repetitive process that I am doing,” Jethwani tells India Today Tech. “I was facing it; my friends were also facing it. So why not try this with GPT-6? I just tried it.” The AI didn't just fill in the details, it successfully navigated through the website without any hassle. Jethwani gave the AI no specific technical instructions on how to handle errors, simply asking it to book an AC class ticket from Mumbai to Rajkot.When the portal crashed, the AI waited, refreshed, and fixed the flow itself. “I didn't know that it would fix itself. The problem kept coming, and it kept on fixing itself,” he admits. The AI handled the entire journey selection and filled in passenger details, pausing only at the payment gateway for user confirmation. Jethwani sees this as the beginning of a multi-tool future where traditional Indian businesses and everyday users delegate their most tedious tasks to autonomous AI agents.Desi mayhemThis smooth transition of AI from a basic chatbot to an autonomous task-handler is seeping into every corner of daily life. While Jethwani used AI to sift through IRCTC, others are using it to bypass technical barriers.Kishore Sundarajan, a Senior Product Designer at Pocket FM, wanted to recreate the nostalgia of the classic racing game Road Rash, but with a chaotic Indian twist. So, he built and launched the browser game "Desi Mayhem" in just two days using Codex. Mind you, he is not a coder.“I design a lot of things, but the execution part is usually given to developers,” Sundarajan tells India Today Tech. “When Codex and all the other tools started, I was very keen to explore how to bring ideas to the execution phase. Codex gave me that opportunity to basically bring your idea to the finish line.”To nail the authentic desi vibe, Sundarajan didn't rely on a single prompt. He fed Codex real-world references from Google Maps, recreating Chennai's Mount Road layout, complete with government buses, auto-rickshaws, wrong-side drivers, and Swiggy delivery agents.“I know the mental model of how I wanted the city to look and how the track to be felt. I gave a ton of references and kept iterating. It did not get it right at the first go,” he explains.When the initial browser game went viral on X with over 250,000 views, user feedback poured in. People joked that the roads in the game were too clean and pothole-free to be authentically Indian.Sundarajan immediately used Codex to iterate further, adding new elements in the game from scratch using Astra to optimise hardware acceleration for a smoother App Store release on iOS and Mac. Over time, the game has added more cities, including Delhi and Bengaluru.The barrier to entry is goneWhether it is wrestling with the IRCTC portal's server crashes or building a 3D video game from a blank slate, the underlying message from both creators is identical: the traditional gatekeepers of technology are gone.“I don't think anyone needs to know coding or any sort of technical expertise in that sense,” Sundarajan notes. “You just need to know what works and what is expected. The barrier to entry is very low right now. All you need is an idea and curiosity.”As AI models continue to evolve into capable, multi-modal agents, the era of simply asking them questions is over. We are now handing them the keys to our digital chores, our business workflows, and our creative ambitions.- Ends