"A fool with a tool is still a fool." — often attributed to Grady Booch
I keep coming back to this quote when I watch teams adopt AI.
In my last post (https://schrottner.at/2026/06/18/The-Wrong-End-of-the-Problem.html) I wrote about shifting the engineering process left — spec sessions, autonomous agents, humans reviewing output rather than writing it. A few people asked the obvious follow-up: if an agent implements and an AI reviews, why do I need a team at all?
It's a fair question. And I think the answer is in that quote.
The agent validates against your prompt. That's it. If your thinking is muddled, the output will be muddled — just faster and at greater cost. An agent doesn't tell you that you're solving the wrong problem. It solves whatever problem you gave it, thoroughly and without complaint.
