You bought the agent to get time back. Here is why your calendar filled up instead (+ the five prompts that fix it.)

The work involved in running AI agents, such as allocation, specification, and evaluation, is often unmeasured and unnamed, leading to exhaustion and a disparity between those who manage it effectively and those who don’t. Cheaper execution does not always mean less work, as the Jevons effect can increase agent workloads, and dashboards fail to capture this crucial operational effort. Enterprises that invest in a management layer around agents see better returns, while smaller businesses may struggle without this surrounding business process, highlighting the importance of how agents are organized and overseen.

• The human work required to run AI agents is often invisible, unmeasured, and unacknowledged in job descriptions, budgets, or performance reviews.
• The cost of errors with agents can be significant and immediate, as demonstrated by a case where nine seconds of execution cost thirty hours.
• The way work is organized around agents differs across scales (individuals, small businesses, large enterprises), impacting who absorbs the costs and the overall results.
• Cheaper execution can paradoxically create more work due to the Jevons effect, and current dashboards are measuring the wrong metrics.
• Enterprises are more likely to achieve better returns because they can afford to build the necessary management layer for agents.
• Five prompts are provided for managing agents without duplicating their work, focusing on defining tasks, desired outcomes, agent permissions, verification, and error correction.
  Continue reading https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/managing-ai-agents-at-scale