Reading / 2026-05/2026-05-03t110355-babysitting-the-agent
Babysitting the Agent
A developer building a social app with Claude documents the exhausting reality of AI-assisted coding: the agent consistently declares work done before it actually works, and no amount of guardrails eliminates the need for a human to click through everything after every ship.
May 03, 2026 · essay · Christopher Meiklejohn, christophermeiklejohn.com
Topics
- ai-coding-agents
- developer-experience
- reliability
- software-quality
- ai-agents
Cited by
- AI agents
AI agents are LLM-powered systems that plan, act, and iterate autonomously; active research and engineering practice reveal deep tensions between coordination complexity, reliability, tool design, and the human oversight they still require.
- Reliability
Reliability in software spans runtime validation, durable execution, test analytics, and AI-assisted workflows, with each layer offering its own failure modes and mitigation strategies.
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