---
title: "Babysit your AI, even if it can do it itself"
description: "You can give an agent a goal and let it go, or watch along step by step. Why I teach the second, and what you do not have to do in the process."
language: en
source: https://coachsteff.live/en/babysit-je-ai
---

# Babysit your AI, even if it can do it itself

There are two ways to build something with AI, and they look the same at the start. In the first, you write a good, detailed description of what you want, you give your agent a goal, and you let it go. In the second, you work step by step. After each step, you look at what it has done, you understand it, and you adjust.

I teach the second in my workshops. Not because the models cannot handle it. They get better every month. But because I have seen what happens when no one watches along anymore.

## Solve it yourself

In a previous edition, there was someone who tackled it completely differently. He gave his agent the assignment, and every time it came back with a question, he answered the same thing: solve it yourself. He did not understand the questions, so he let the agent decide. Time and time again.

Something did come out. But what exactly it was and how it worked, he did not know himself. The project had completely gone its own way, far away from what he had in mind. You can call it an accident with a happy ending, but it was no longer steering.