The phrase suggests two peers. It is nothing like that, and the method that works comes from taking the difference seriously rather than pretending it away.
The roles are inverted
In human pairing the driver has the keyboard and the context; the navigator has the perspective. Here the driver is fast, tireless, extremely well read, and has no stake in the outcome, no memory of last week, and no knowledge of anything you did not put in front of it. You hold all the context and none of the typing.
That inversion sets the division of labour. You own the goal, the acceptance criterion, the constraints and the judgement about when to stop. It owns transcription, recall of API surface, enumeration of cases, and the first draft. A session goes wrong when you delegate upward — asking it to decide what “done” means — or hoard downward, typing things it could have typed while you supervise character by character.
The loop, six steps
