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A trend of the times

In fact, this seems to be hap­pen­ing more and more often — not because I del­e­gat­ed to a human, but because I set up some automa­tion that is now run­ning. More and more often, I get a push noti­fi­ca­tion on my phone where some kind of ​“robot” proud­ly reports that it has done some­thing I asked it to do, and I real­ize with sur­prise that I had for­got­ten about it, yet some­how still expect­ed it to just happen.

I believe this will become increas­ing­ly com­mon, not just for me but for peo­ple in gen­er­al. In recent weeks, I’ve felt that AI devel­op­ment has tru­ly entered the ​“agent era.” Many of us are cre­at­ing agents in Claude Cowork, Microsoft Copi­lot, OpenAI’s Codex, and oth­er ser­vices that more or less auto­mat­i­cal­ly per­form tasks that were pre­vi­ous­ly done man­u­al­ly (albeit on a computer).

Agent Smith in hordes

Before long, there will like­ly be large num­bers of quick­ly devel­oped agents run­ning through­out our orga­ni­za­tions. It’s a per­fect recipe for things to become messy. I under­stand if IT depart­ments are very busy right now, because this could become a night­mare for them and oth­ers respon­si­ble for security.

That’s why I think it’s high time to gain an overview and take con­trol of all the automa­tions you’ve cre­at­ed, before things turn chaotic.

Do this

This is a new sit­u­a­tion, and as far as I know, there is not yet any estab­lished best prac­tice for how all automa­tions should be doc­u­ment­ed. Don’t let that stop you. Cre­ate an overview that seems suf­fi­cient for now, know­ing that it will evolve and look dif­fer­ent in the future.

Here’s what I did:

1. List the dif­fer­ent apps or ser­vices where you cur­rent­ly have automa­tions, so you make sure you include everything.
2. Cre­ate a table where you list every­thing that is done more or less auto­mat­i­cal­ly for you. My table includes rough­ly the fol­low­ing columns:
   • Plat­form (ser­vice or app)
   • Name of the automa­tion (what I call it)
   • Descrip­tion (what it does)
   • How it starts (on my ini­tia­tive via a prompt, sched­uled, or trig­gered when some­thing spe­cif­ic happens)
   • What the end result is
3. Go through the var­i­ous apps and ser­vices you use and fill in the table so you cap­ture every­thing in your overview.
4. Save the overview some­where eas­i­ly acces­si­ble when you need it most. That could be where you ​“are” when you need to be remind­ed that you’ve built an automa­tion so you no longer have to per­form a task man­u­al­ly, or when you need to check that what you’re build­ing won’t con­flict with some­thing else already running.

This overview is, for me, a first attempt, and I’m sure it will look dif­fer­ent before long. But we need to start somewhere.

Few­er disasters

If you take con­trol of the automa­tions you have run­ning, you gain bet­ter con­trol over what’s hap­pen­ing in the back­ground with­in your area of respon­si­bil­i­ty. The risk is low­er that you’ll run into unwant­ed mishaps because you for­got that you asked an AI or some­thing sim­i­lar to do some­thing for you.

Instead of let­ting spon­ta­neous agent-build­ing run wild, you devel­op your work steadi­ly in delib­er­ate steps. That way, you ben­e­fit from the new pos­si­bil­i­ties with­out every­thing turn­ing into a mess.

How do you do it?

How have you cre­at­ed a good overview of all the agents, automa­tions, and auto­mat­ed flows you have run­ning in your work? Write to me and tell me, because I’m very curi­ous about how you and oth­ers are doing it. The need to take con­trol of this is grow­ing rapidly.

(If you auto­mate some­thing new that you have so far done man­u­al­ly, you gain both time and ener­gy. Here are 10 automa­tions that might also help you!)