Agents expose friction we’ve learned to tolerate

Many developer workflows were designed around humans. We navigate portals, copy values between screens, interpret error messages, and wait patiently for operations to complete. Over time, we learn the quirks of our tools and develop workarounds. Agents usually don’t have that experience. They need to discover how to accomplish a task, reach the functionality it requires, coordinate the operations, and determine whether they’ve succeeded. A workflow that requires manual interaction or undocumented knowledge can stop an agent entirely. And even when every operation is technically accessible, coordinating dozens of steps adds complexity and more opportunities to fail.