The Red Queen and AI agents

Imagine it's Tuesday at 10am and you're on the back 9.

Your agents are writing code. Claude is shipping features, answering emails, maybe closing deals. You're not working. You're just living.

This is the dream being sold to us right now. And honestly? It sounds incredible.

Here's the truth: I think it might also be a trap.

Not because the technology is wrong. The technology is extraordinary. But because of what biologists call the Red Queen effect. The idea that you have to run faster just to stay in the same place.

Your competitors aren't sitting this out.

The founders you're competing with are also running agents 24/7. Their Claude instances are also shipping at 3am. The baseline isn't the world before AI agents. The baseline is everyone using AI agents, simultaneously, all the time.

You come back from golf and the first thing you do is check the logs.

Not because you're bad at disconnecting. Because the system never stopped, and you know it. The work didn't wait for you. It just happened without you, which is a different thing than freedom.

The agents aren't working for you. You're working for them.

That's not a willpower problem. It's a structural one.

The utopia is still available. A well-designed system can do things for a small team that would have taken a full department five years ago. Agents can be liberators. But only for the people who name this trap before it closes around them.

The Red Queen keeps running. She just has agents now.

Have you thought about whether this technology will liberate you or trap you?