Do this within a day of the session, while the two rounds are still distinguishable in your memory. Your workbook has space for all of it.

What you noticed

  • When did your team have genuine shared understanding — and how could you tell?
  • When did one person, or the AI, run ahead of the group?
  • Which AI role created the most value?

Going a little deeper

  • What changed when AI knew the why and not just the what?
  • Which protocol step prevented drift?
  • What evidence did the team actually trust?
  • What did AI need from you that you failed to provide in the first round?

What we named

Four human roles, each protecting something different:

  • Navigator — protects intent. What are we trying to make true?
  • Shepherd — manages AI context. What does AI need to know now?
  • Verifier — protects evidence. What proves this works?
  • Driver — makes the next small change. What is the smallest useful next step?

And AI rotating too — driver, verifier, critic, questioner, summarizer, proposer, shepherd. The rotation is not about fairness. It is about keeping understanding distributed.

A note on working with AI

Worth carrying out of this Studio, whatever tool you use:

  • Confidence is not evidence. AI has no reliable internal sense of when it is wrong, and it sounds identical either way. Assume plausibility and accuracy are separate things, and verify accordingly. Asking it whether it is sure does not help — it will say yes.
  • Context matters more than phrasing. Giving AI the real file, the real error, the real constraint changes its output far more than rewording your request.
  • It answers what you asked. If you ask for code that passes the test, that is what you get. Whether it is good is a separate question it will not raise unless you make it part of the ask.
  • It will not stop you. AI carries momentum and has no instinct to back up. Recognizing that a whole approach is wrong stays a human job.

None of this makes AI less useful. It makes the human role clearer: intent, judgment, evidence, and the decision to change direction.

Share one thing

Add a comment on this lesson:

Name one moment your team drifted — and the move that brought you back.

Working out loud in a mob is harder than working alone, and most people find the first round genuinely uncomfortable. If you stayed in it, that is the part worth noticing.

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