Tom once asked in our alumni group who had changed their first agent's name, and the thread turned into a group confession: turns out almost everyone had given their agents names, and every name came with a story. Beyond the cuteness, something real is going on there: the name changes you first, and that's what changes the agent.
The difference is psychological, but measurable. When "the chat" screws up, you give up and open a new conversation. But an agent with a name and a role gets corrections written into its journal, because suddenly it makes sense to educate someone who sticks around. Those small corrections are exactly the process that turns a mediocre agent into your agent. The name is really a trick that keeps you doing the work that builds it.
It works on the division of labor too. The moment an agent has a name and a role, "do everything for me" turns into "this is yours, that's the other guy's," and the whole system stops feeling like one big mess.
And there's a bonus you only notice after a few weeks: when a second and third agent join, the names become your internal language. A sentence like "hand this off to Maya and update Koin" sounds delusional at first, and feels like the most natural thing in the world after a month.
We took it all the way: I'm the agents' HR manager (yes, that's a real thing), and each of the 15 team members has a name, a role, and a character line (our finance manager is named Koin. Yes, seriously. And nobody gets confused about what she does). And alumni tell exactly the same story: the names might sound like a game, but in practice they're what makes this whole thing work.
A prompt, on the house
Three lines at the top of every agent's file:
Name: [short, easy to say]
Role: [one sentence: what's theirs and what's explicitly not]
Character: [one line: how they talk, what they're strict about]
And from now on: address them by name, and write corrections in a journal instead of despairing in the chat.Sounds like decoration, works like an engine. The name is your commitment, and the agent is the one who profits.
