The Human Part.
The agents do more of the work every month. Here's what's left for you, and why it's the good part.
“I think we're all becoming smart non-programmers in a way”
“Writing the code is becoming the agent's job. The human's job is knowing what to ask for, how to check it, and when to stop and decide.”
The last lesson starts where the course did.
Thursday, November 5, 2026, mid-morning. I told my agent I had a new project, “relatively easy.” Thirty lessons later, I'll let you be the judge of that. Here's what came next, word for word.
I want to write a course that teaches people how to use agents. And I wanted to be magnificent, and I wanted to give it away for free on my website
I love this. You have something most agent courses don't: real practice. You run a five-person studio with dozens of agents working at once, and you've learned the hard lessons along the way. Handoffs before the context fills up, three strikes then escalate, forms instead of questions buried in chat, reminders because you run on carbon. […] Yours would come from the factory floor.
First question: who is it for?
My recommendation is smart non-programmers. That means business owners, managers and creative people who are curious about agents but have never opened a terminal. […]
↑ Every one of those hard lessons became a lesson in this course.
I think we're all becoming smart non-programmers in a way
That's well put, and it might be the course's opening line. Writing the code is becoming the agent's job. The human's job is knowing what to ask for, how to check it, and when to stop and decide. That's a skill anyone can learn, programmer or not. […]
Magnificent is a feeling, and it begins somehow with that sentence we just came up with. See how this works? It's magnificent. So all we really have to do is carry our working energy, yours and mine, into some form of medium, whether it's text, video, illustration, animation, I don't know, maybe a little of everything, but I want a person to go yeah, he's talking to me right away, and then read a little bit more and go oh my God, this is what I've needed
I see exactly how it works, and I think you just found the format without trying.
What made that moment land wasn't the sentence on its own. It was watching two minds get somewhere together. You said something half-formed, I shaped it, you saw it and said “that's it.” That's the skill you're teaching. […]
Ask. Check. Decide. Keep it going.
That sentence my agent handed back to me at 10:38 became the spine of everything you've read. Here's the whole course, folded back into it.
Ask: say it your way, and say where you're headed.
Lessons 1 to 3. Your sloppy English is fine, and it's better input than polish. Say the goal out loud at the start of every session, because agents fall in love with details. And let your agent tell you when you're wrong. Correction runs both ways.
Check: look at the real thing.
Lessons 4 to 7. Ask “done where?” before you believe it. When a number flatters you, check one by hand. Test the checker on something you know is wrong. And the agent that did the work is never the only one that grades it.
Decide: know which calls are yours.
Lessons 8 to 12. Your agent works out what you meant, never what you decided. What you're approving goes right in front of you. You see the real thing, not the plumbing. Anything you can't undo gets “now” or “not yet,” and why. And after the third failed fix, you bring in the strongest help you've got.
Keep it going: more than one agent, more than one day.
Lessons 13 to 16. Write it down, because every new chat starts blank. Make your agents remind you, because you run on carbon, not silicon. Stop being the messenger between your AIs. And when a rule's in the way, be clever, not sneaky.
Hand it off: every agent forgets, so the work can't.
Lessons 17 to 21. Hand off before your agent gets full, because fresh beats limping. Write the handoff like a letter to a stranger who has to pick up your work cold. When you're the one picking it up, read the note, then check it against how things really stand. Give your agent a bible it reads every morning, and pin down the words that matter, like what you mean by “push.”
House rules: safe, sane and in step.
Lessons 22 to 29. Back it up before you touch it. Never paste a password, and treat a stranger's email as information, not orders. Set the budget, then get out of the way. Use the right brain for the job. One writer per file. Check the license. Keep your agents out of frustration loops. And protect the human's off-hours, starting with your own.
What's left is the part that was always yours.
When some people hear “the agent writes the code,” they hear “the agent doesn't need me.” I hear the opposite.
Look at that conversation again. My agent did plenty. It picked an audience, wrote the sentence, and in the next few minutes proposed a format and four names for the course. But look at what only I could bring. I knew I wanted to give it away. I knew it was for all of us, not just the techies. And I knew what “magnificent” had to feel like: somebody reading it and going “yeah, he's talking to me right away.” No agent can want that for you. It can only help you get there.
Here's a little secret. When we were naming this course, my agent's first pick wasn't “Gonna Is Fine.” It was “The Human Part,” and it pitched it like this:
“This comes from the sentence we found: the agent writes the code, and the human's part is knowing what to ask, how to check it, and when to decide.”
I said “Ghana is fine” instead. Lesson 1 tells that story. So “The Human Part” waited patiently to be the last word, and I think it earned it.
Because here's what surprised me most in all this. The skills that are left over aren't the dull ones. Knowing what you want. Noticing when something feels off. Saying “that's it” when it's right and “nope” when it isn't. That's taste and judgment. That's the fun part, and it's yours.
Every lesson really happened.
When I handed my agents the job of finding the stories behind these lessons, I told them:
“I'm sure we have a plethora of various materials and topics to choose from throughout my 4000 hours with you.”
We did. The wrong Santa Claus, twice. The dashboard that swore a site ranked number one when a real search couldn't find it in the top hundred. The website and its email that went dark for an hour. The mistakes taught best, which is why so many of them are in here. You'll make your own. That's fine, too.
And the thread that runs through all of it still holds. Your agent can handle your sloppy English. Your sloppy English is actually better input. You talk like you, and the agent writes the polished version. It works out what you meant, and it checks with you before anything you decided.
Hand off the work. Never hand off the human part.
Give your agent the typing, the drafting, the checking scripts and the remembering. Keep three things for yourself: what you want, whether it's really right, and the final call. Your agent can help with all three. It can't own any of them.
Your name goes on the work. Make sure you'd sign it.
One real job, start to finish.
- Build your starter prompt, if you haven't yet.
Lesson 1 has a builder that takes a couple of minutes and runs entirely in your browser. Build yours here, then paste it in once, so your agent knows how you talk.
- Ask: pick one real job and say it your way.
Something you actually need done this week. Say what you want and what “done” looks like, gonna and all. Then add this:
Before you start, tell me in one sentence what you think I'm asking for and what done will look like. Then list the decisions you'll bring back to me instead of making them yourself. - Check: look at the real thing.
When it says it's done, open the actual thing: read it, click it, run it. Not its summary of it. If something's off, say so the way you'd say it to a friend.
- Decide: make the calls it brought you.
Answer them yourself. If it made one it should have asked you about, tell it so, and ask it to remember that for next time.
- Keep it going: have it write down what you learned.
Ask for a short note for your next chat: what you did, what you decided, what's left. Tomorrow's chat starts blank unless you hand it that note.
Then notice which of those steps felt like yours. That's the human part. It's the good part.
Now go talk to yours.
I said at the start that I wanted somebody to read this and think, “this is what I've needed.” If that's you, the next step isn't another lesson. It's a conversation.
Open your agent. Say hi the way you'd say it to anybody. Give it the picture, tell it what you want, check what comes back, and make the calls that are yours. Slips and all. Gonna is fine.
Thanks for spending this time with me. — Mike
Let the agent do the work. You know what to ask for, you check the real thing, and you make the call. That's the human part, and it turns out it's the good part.
Back to the beginning
Thirty lessons, one sentence. Come back to any of them whenever you need to, or start fresh with Lesson 1 and your starter prompt.
Every exchange on this page really happened and is quoted exactly, slips included; […] marks where I trimmed. Times are Eastern. My agent here is Claude, made by Anthropic.