Hacker News
'The Human Is the Loop': An Agent-Heavy Builder Reports His Own Automation Made Nothing Better
Brent Fitzgerald wrote on 2026-08-11 that after running agents on a pile of half-baked tool ideas, 'none of it helps anyone, and none of it makes me happier' — the output was an illusion of productivity. His diagnosis is that he was using agents as a buffer between himself and the tasks that caused him stress, turning the model into a sycophantic mirror rather than a thought partner, and that real dependency and habituation effects set in fast. His resolution keeps one narrowly-scoped agent on the pattern-matching work he dislikes while he retains the writing and reflection. 145 points and 69 comments — the counter-narrative thread of the day.
↳ Follow the thread