Like every morning, right on time: 8:00 a.m. Desk set, glasses on, mouse ready, prompt typed: ENTER.
The screen welcomes the prompt with open arms. It thinks and acts while Paolo waits for the result from 13 agents working in unison like seasoned professionals. In the meantime, he checks his phone, looks out of the window, then turns his eyes back to the screen.
Still: Loading....
Paolo has time to open his social media accounts and see what is happening in the world. He catches up on the latest AI news, checks other updates in his field, browses competitors' websites, and eventually heads to the kitchen just as the coffee is ready.
As he takes a sip, the long-awaited notification arrives: Blip: the website is ready.
Paolo rushes back to his desk:
F5.
Nothing.
F5.
Still nothing.
F5 F5 F5 F5. Hallelujah!
The browser shows the result.
It looks impeccable. Paolo starts browsing the pages of his site in development, pleased with the consistent visual identity and the punchy copy. His mouse moves over Publish, but he stops.
That nagging sense that something is off is still there. He knows it, but cannot tell what it is.
He starts typing another sentence to explain to the 13 agents what is wrong. Enter.
Another 14 sub-agents set off on an endless search for bugs and obvious errors: 27 agents in total.
It is 10:28 a.m. Paolo is still sending corrective prompts. The cycle goes on: Enter, F5, scroll.
He tops up his account because he has run out of tokens, and everything grinds to a halt: 10:43 a.m.
He keeps going until at least 10:57, when he realizes the client meeting starts at 11:00 and he has not prepared an agenda.
At 11:00, Paolo joins the call.
His website is not published.
His work is not ready to present.
The 27 agents are waiting for new instructions.
Maybe the problem was not that he needed more agents. Maybe he needed to decide what was worth doing.
When I work with a company, this is one of the things I help with: understanding where technology and automation create value, and where they simply create more work.
