Resources

How to hire AI teammates

What they are, which jobs they can actually run, and how you stay in charge. Written like a founder talking to a founder.

Teammates

People already named the jobs. Hire those.

You do not need a zoo of clever bots. You need a clerk, a mail desk, a watcher, and someone who writes the draft and waits.

The first rule is what never lives on the computer

A shared machine is a gift until you put the wrong secret on it. Start there. Then write jobs like hires, not vibes.

A team beats one generalist. The reason is memory.

One brain doing every department averages them. Six named teammates each spend a whole budget on one lane, and you can fire the one that is off.

An AI agent waits for a prompt. A teammate shows up.

Same models. Different job. One is a capability you invoke. The other has a name, a lane, and a habit of escalating instead of guessing.

Jobs that survive

Give it the work that comes back as a draft

If the job recurs, and you still want a yes before it leaves the building, that is teammate work. Everything else can stay a prompt.

If it is not there on Tuesday, it is not a use case

A use case is not a capability. It is a job that recurs, starts from a trigger you can name, and leaves something behind you can check without a philosophy debate.

One marketing agent is four jobs that hate each other

SEO, social, email, and reporting do not share a rulebook. Averaging them is how you get a voice that is long, short, clever, and nobody at once. Split the lanes. Keep the brand file shared.

SEO is three jobs. Only one of them is writing.

One SEO agent is the wrong unit. Research, writing, and review do not share a brain. Review is the one that makes it safe, because a checklist is checkable and 'quality' is not.

Count the lanes before you hire a second AI

Tools are a shopping list. Lanes are jobs. The second teammate often adds work unless there is a Chief and a board. Start by asking whether the new job would force a context switch.

A billing reminder is a clock. Collections is a job.

A Zap will email on Tuesday. The real work is knowing whose billing day it is, preparing the invoice, nudging the right human, and escalating when nice stops working. That is Clerk, not a timer.

A prospect list is a sheet you can sort, not a chat

If the artifact is a paragraph of names in a thread, you do not have a list. You have a story about a list. Scout's job is criteria, research, enrich, then you approve outreach.

You do not want competitor alerts. You want a Monday brief.

Enterprise CI platforms, page-change watchers, and a teammate are three different products. Most founders actually want a one-page weekly brief on a short list of URLs, not a firehose.

How you run them

A screenshot is not proof of work

Clients do not want last week's status PDF. They want a live board they can open, without seeing your vault, your keys, or anyone else's account.

You do not babysit. You take the tap.

Human in the loop is not you watching the cursor. It is a column called Needs you, a mention that interrupts, and a send that does not leave without your yes.

The day they can touch Stripe is the day they can wreck it.

A teammate that cannot open your CRM, calendar, or inbox is still a chatbot. A teammate that can, with no scopes, is a leak with a first name.

If it cannot receive mail, it is still your chatbot.

A teammate without an address is a prompt box you carry around. Work cannot arrive. Follow-ups cannot wait. Replies cannot land with the one who started them.

Teach the procedure once. Stop pasting it every morning.

A skill is the job, written down, so Clerk's invoice format is still true when Maker needs the same number. You describe it like a hire. Chief writes it. You edit it like a document.

Chat memory dies. A workspace does not.

A thread forgets the vendor the second you close the tab. A shared desk of files, briefs, brand, and decisions is how Clerk and Maker still mean the same thing on Tuesday.

They need the live page, not last week's PDF.

Scout cannot watch a competitor from a screenshot you saved in March. Give the teammate a computer and a browser. Be honest about cost, rate limits, and what a page will actually give you.

If it only runs when you remember, you still have a chatbot.

Work on a clock. Weekdays at 9, Clerk runs invoices. Mondays at 7, the brief lands. Stagger the jobs so you do not stampede a limit. Send the output to you, not into a void.

Every model fills up or dies. Have a second one ready.

Providers hit a wall. Accounts reset. APIs take a nap. Ordered fallback is how Clerk finishes the 9:00 run instead of sitting in In flight until you notice.

You need a board, not another chat window.

People who try to run a team of agents always end up in the same place: a board, a feed of runs, a calendar, and a chat with the teammate. Watching logs is not the same job.

What it costs

Don't compare it to ChatGPT. Compare it to the first hire.

A chat window is $20. A junior ops person is a loaded salary. An AI teammate is the boring middle: one recurring lane, on a schedule, for $99.

Same model. Two prices. One of them surprises you at 2 a.m.

A ChatGPT plan is a flat bill you already understand. The API is a meter. Agents run while you sleep, so they blow every intuition you built as a human clicking a chat.

You are not paying for AI. You are paying for the prompt you stuffed.

One generalist that carries five departments in every run is how a cheap model becomes an expensive habit. Specialists, short briefs, and a board you can actually read.