Agency16 June 20263 min read
What agentic operators actually do (the operator, not the copilot)
An agentic operator runs AI agents that do whole units of work instead of typing every line. We operate this way every day — here's the job, concretely, and the one skill that's actually new.
The short answer
An agentic operator is a developer who has stopped typing every line and started running agents that do whole units of work. We operate this way every day to ship our own software: you scope the task, set the guardrails, let the agent plan and edit across files and run the tests and fix, then review at the right altitude and step in when it's confidently wrong. At fleet scale you run several at once, like a senior engineer running a team. The new skill isn't prompting. It's judgment.
Short version: an agentic operator is a developer who has stopped typing every line and started running agents that do whole units of work. We operate this way every day to ship our own software, so here's the job as it actually runs: you scope the task, set the guardrails, let the agent plan and edit across files and run the tests and fix, then review at the right altitude and step in when it's confidently wrong. At fleet scale you run several at once, like a senior engineer runs a team. The part that's genuinely new isn't prompting. It's judgment.