Agents need identity

Been thinking about this a lot lately.

An agent ships a new version of a shared doc overnight and the revenue figures change. Next morning, the obvious question: who changed them and on whose say-so?

Most tools can't answer. The version sits under whatever API key was wired in, or under nobody at all. An agent did real work in a shared space and the record stops right there.

A year ago "AI in your tools" meant autocomplete. It suggested and you accepted, so the edit was yours. Today, agents publish reports, answer comments and push new versions on their own. They work in the same shared spaces as your teammates. The moment an agent is a second actor in a shared workspace, "who did this" needs a real answer.

Most software gives a bad one, because most software was built human-first and had AI bolted on after. The agent borrows a person's identity or runs anonymous. Fine for a demo – useless the moment a handful of agents start editing things that matter.

The pattern I've landed on: every action carries two pieces of attribution. The agent that did the work and the person accountable for it. Something like claude-code on behalf of Max. Carl asked for the change so Carl owns it, and the agent stays visible the whole way through.

You can't keep a human in a loop the human can't see. A trail that records the person but not the agent gives you less oversight than it looks like.

This also gets read backwards a lot. A clean audit trail is what lets you hand agents more. You give over a bigger task when you can check what got done and who stood behind it. Nobody signs off on work they can't trace.

Pretty simple really: name the actor, keep the version, leave a thread the next person or agent can read.

Agents will keep taking on more of the real work. The teams that stay comfortable with that will be the ones who can always see who did what and for whom.