Initial Thoughts on Agentic Governance

My first post ended with a question about the harder version of this — shared folders, permissions, audit trails. Here's where I actually am on that.

This week I watched Claude transcribe a meeting recording for me. Should've been one step. It took three. Tried Whisper, hit a wall. Pivoted. Tried something else, hit another wall. Landed on WhisperKit and got me a clean transcript with a summary I could actually use.

Fifteen minutes, start to finish. I wasn't doing anything while it worked — I was watching. And what I kept thinking was: this is what it looks like when a colleague troubleshoots at their desk. Narrating out loud, right-clicking through menus, trying the next thing. I could see it thinking.

I want to push back on something I hear a lot, including from myself in my last post. People keep calling agents "junior colleagues." I don't think that's right anymore. They're just colleagues. The junior framing is a way of keeping them at arm's length, and watching this one work, arm's length didn't feel honest.

Which is also why I'm not ready to hand it a shared folder yet.

In my own workspace, the failed attempts left a few stray files behind. No harm done. But in a shared environment, "no harm done" stops being something I can eyeball. It becomes a question of what got touched, when, and whether I can show my work afterward.

So for now: my stuff, my sandbox. Shared context waits until I can answer three questions without flinching — what did it try, what did it leave behind, and who can see the receipts.

If you're further along on any of that, I'd genuinely like to hear how you're thinking about it.