Mr. Meeseeks (Metaphor for AI)

I'm not a big Rick & Morty enthusiast, but a colleague pointed me to this episode as a metaphor for working with coding agents, and boy, does it fit.

The key takeaway is that the longer an agent stays alive, the more and more pain you're putting it in—don't treat it like a friend you'll be sad to see go. Give it a task, let it execute, and then let it go.

The more comfortable you are with /clear and starting anew, the easier it will be to develop repeatable habits and practices that you can put to work via a repeatable process—and the easier it will be to slowly give agents more and more autonomy.

Your important context should live in your support and steering documents, not in your session transcript, where it will be lost to history at the next compaction.

More Metaphors for AI