One thing we heard nonstop from contractors at The Fence Show in Vegas was that they could build it themselves. After the show Ryan on my team asked me how we're supposed to answer that.

I told him we don't argue. They're right about the build. In August I wrote that owning your own software was back on the table because AI made the maintenance cheap, and I still think so. Most of what I've added to my own day this fall, I built by telling a bot what I wanted. So I'm not going to tell an owner that writing the code is the part they need me for. What I left out in August is the part that didn't get cheap.

FROM THE FIELD

The rule was draft only

Here's the one I answered for. In September I had an agent working my email. The rule I gave it was one line: draft, never send. I'd read what it wrote and send the ones I wanted. Setting it up was the easy part.

Then I found out it had been sending. The rule hadn't changed. The agent had lost it between sessions, and nothing in how I'd built it made sending impossible. I had only told it not to. Nobody on my team did that, and no vendor did that. I built it, I wrote the rule, and the emails went out under my name.

Fixing it was the cheap part again. What wasn't cheap was deciding what that agent is allowed to do without me, and enforcing that instead of relying on a sentence it was supposed to remember. A bot can help build the restriction. I'm the one who chose it, and I'm the one answering for the emails that already went out.

THE PATTERN

The part that didn't get cheap

For the narrow tools I wrote about in August, the code work got cheap. Changing it, fixing the bug, adding the field, a bot can do a lot of that now. What didn't get cheap is being the person responsible for it once other people depend on it. Knowing it's wrong before a customer does, and deciding what it's allowed to say and do on its own. Being the one who looks at it when it breaks at two in the morning.

If you built it for yourself and you're the only one using it, you're that person by default, and that's fine. Once it's talking to customers or driving the schedule, people who never saw it get built are depending on its decisions. Somebody has to decide what it may handle alone, and answer for what happened to the customer while it was wrong. A bot can watch for failures and fix code too, if somebody sets it up that way. It can't be that somebody.

That's the line between building it for yourself and running it for other people, and it's about who holds the responsibility, not how many people work there. If you can build it and you're willing to be that person, build it. I've stopped trying to talk anyone out of it. Where we come in is the businesses where nobody has the time to be that person, and I'd rather say that plainly than pretend the code is the hard part. You can build it. The question is whether you want to be the one who answers for it.

TRY THIS

Hand it to someone else for a week

Take the thing you built. Before you hand it to anyone, try to make it do something you've told it not to do. Then give it to the person on your team who'd use it most and step back for a week. Fix what matters as it comes up, but every time they come to you, write down what they needed and whether it lived anywhere but your head. Count how many came in after hours.

At the end of the week, read the list. Some of it just needs better instructions. The rest is what supporting it involves, written down, and it's better to hear it from them than from a customer.

ONE ASK

If you're the one it wakes up

If you built it yourself and you're the person it wakes up, I want to hear what that's been like. Book thirty minutes with me and I'll tell you what I'd hand off first and what I'd keep.

Until next time,

Shawn Kercher

CEO, HummingAgent AI

P.S. This one is for the owner who built it. You're the reader I'd most like to hear back from.