One of my gifts/curses is an endless fixation with how processes can be optimized.
For a brief moment early in my career, that was focused on improving how humans collaborate,
but that quickly switched to figuring out how we can minimize human involvement, and eliminate
human-to-human handoffs as much as possible.
Lately, every time I perform a recurring task–or see someone else perform one–I think about
how we might eliminate the human’s involvement entirely by introducing agents.
This both has worked well, but also worked poorly, and I wanted to highlight the pattern
I’ve found useful.

Lethain, authored by Will Larson, offers a unique perspective on engineering management, leadership, and organizational dynamics. Developers and engineering leaders can explore topics such as team building, career growth, and organizational design, gaining insights into building high-impact engineering organizations. With thoughtful reflections and actionable advice, Lethain serves as a resource for those navigating the complexities of engineering leadership.

Irrational Exuberance

A practical pattern for building reliable agent-based automation: start with a fully agent-driven prototype to understand the problem, then refactor to a hybrid where deterministic code handles flow control and filtering, while agents are narrowly scoped to tasks requiring judgment (like identifying code owners). Illustrated with a real Dependabot security alert workflow that failed when agents were used as drop-in software replacements but succeeded once code handled severity filtering and agents only resolved ownership ambiguity. The result is faster, cheaper, and more maintainable automation.

Agents as scaffolding for recurring tasks.