I'm Not Running Software. I'm Managing a Small Team.

Most people frame AI agents wrong. They think: automation. Scripts. Tools. Here's how I actually think about it: I'm running a small team. One handles growth. One handles ops. One watches the market. One synthesizes everything into a daily briefing. They happen to run on AI. And when I started treating them like a team — not software — everything got clearer. The management principles that actually transfer 1. Clear job descriptions over capability A capable employee with a vague role underperforms. Same with agents. Every agent in our system has a SOUL.md . It answers three questions before the agent does anything: Who are you? What are you trying to accomplish? What do you never do? Without that third question, agents make judgment calls in your worst moments — when they're confused, when inputs are weird, when something unexpected happens. The constraint list is the job description. Don't skip it. 2. Regular check-ins, not just output review With a human team, you don't just look at