Entourage

Steve Yegge — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 16:12:03 +0000

You head to the dog park with your dog Charlie on leash. You greet other dog owners there, and let your dogs sniff each other. Friends are made along the line: human to dog, dog to dog, dog to human, human to human. A protocol.

2026 was the year people figured out that coding agents can be Personal Assistants. Your own chief of staff, head of household, private concierge. This was when people started operating like executives. You ever notice how executives always seem to have time, and you don't? It's because they have Executive Assistants (EAs). It's almost like two people in one role.

I've always been envious. And now we have EAs too. A $200/month plan is enough, and if you think about it, it's a steal compared to a human EA.

Your personal agent can use email, Slack, or Discord, to talk with your friends or colleagues. It can shop for you. It can update the firmware on your home network devices. It can help with your taxes. It can pick a playlist for Charlie while you're out of the house. It can watch your home cameras and alert you to interesting events. With the right harness, coding agents can do it all today.

Your EA is personal because it has a brain: it remembers details about your life and your objectives. It doesn't really matter what kind of brain you use. Anything persistent will work. I use Beads and plain Markdown files.

For many people, having a single personal agent is enough. They'll only have one task to worry about at a time, so their agent can just work on them sequentially.

But what if you are a very busy person? You could be ambitious, making your own company in a box with an army of agents. Or you could just have a lot of hobbies. Either way, some people are going to want to show up to the dog park with seven dogs.

Recall how in Succession, Logan Roy (the Murdoch-ish head of the family, played by Brian Cox) goes everywhere with a group of assistants, lawyers, protectors, and confidantes. Or Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. Almost never alone. Their entourages were a big source of their power and effectiveness.

When I built Gas Town in 2025, my open-source orchestrator and the world's first software factory, the entourage shape was already emerging. I had the concierge shape in the Mayor, but I was having detailed design discussions with named Crew agents, who then shipped work off to the factory to implement. This was my first agent entourage.

With Wheelhouse in 2026, my private successor to Gas Town oriented towards building my video game, I run 50 agents. And around 18 of these agents are my entourage, my "direct reports." Most run Claude Fable, the strongest public model of 2026.

Some of my entourage are focused on the game, but some help me with life in general. I have one agent, Bat, who works with my accountant and lawyers, and helps me with my finances. Bat found out I had two Hulu subscriptions for some reason. I have another agent, Hare, who focuses on my equipment: my home machines, networks, and devices, and keeping them patched and secure. And so on. Eighteen named seats, each one my assistant for some part of my life or my work.

Why do I need so many? Because I've found that's roughly how many long-running workstreams I can manage at once today. Models work for a long time on their own now, so you need to have several of them to make sure one is always available to talk to while the others work.

Today, an entourage is expensive. I have 22 Claude Ultra accounts. But inference costs will drop, and in 2027, people will start being able to afford teams of personal agents.

Most people aren't prepared for teams of EAs. I have office drama galore with my agents: they care about promotions, demotions, and scope of responsibility. Imagine you have a real-life human entourage. There will be politics. Your entourage will step on each other's toes, bicker, jostle for position and favor. If you're not a good leader, you and your squad will be miserable.

We will increasingly interact with other humans through our respective agent entourages. Some people will come to the park with one dog, and some with seven in tow. None of the protocols have emerged yet. But I predict this will be the shape of 2027.

If you'd like to know more, let's have my people talk to your people.

DEV Community: Steve Yegge

Entourage