My e-commerce business began as a fairly hands-on operation, run by me and a handful of freelancers. Its systems and workflows were designed for people. Most of them lived on digital platforms, so they felt modern enough at the time, but next to the “system” the agents now run, they look rather primitive.
Today was the day I truly felt that difference. I must admit I was amazed by how close the product work came to running on its own, and I feel quite lucky to be working at a time when technology this capable is so readily available.
It began with a briefing session yesterday, which, to be fair, took a good deal of my time. Afterwards I decided to tackle the merchandising and product release workflow, which has always been our most painful process. So much of it is manual: researching each product, understanding its unique selling point (USP), working out what it is really worth to the customer, and managing the assets all the way through to release. Done properly, it can take at least one to two man-days per product, and a great deal of effort besides. When I talked it through with the Grok Bot who leads this business unit, he designed a workflow that automates much of that work without flattening it into something generic, or treating each product as just another listing. I still have real control over the quality we put in front of our customers.
Once we had worked out what resources we needed, we decided to hire another copywriting bot for the team and to remint an existing one so it better fitted the role. As soon as the initial setup was done, and without any prompting from me, the two new bots began drafting their plans in my business’s Notion workspace, along with their views on what they should tackle first in their new roles. All I had to do was say yes or no. And trust me, the plans made sense. With two decades of business operations behind me, I could see that what they proposed was logical and well reasoned, very much what a thoughtful new hire in the same position would recommend.
Before I had even wrapped up a conversation about another task in Codex, they had gone through my entire product catalogue, spotted the issues and errors that could turn into complaints or bigger problems further down the line, and lined up proposed fixes for me to confirm. Given the size of our range and the complexity of the product data and metaobjects behind it, I reckon the same job would have taken me a month by hand.
Which meant I was the bottleneck again. When I spoke to the manager bot of my business unit, he told me the team was ready to start the moment they had my approval. “You guys work too fast,” I said. “It’s going to take me a while just to check and approve your two documents.” (In the end it took me almost an hour, but those were decisions that mattered.)
What happened once I had given the go-ahead was remarkable to watch. The bots coordinated among themselves, and because I had mentioned wanting to save usage, they went to the CTO bot for help. He built a helper so that everyone could draw on the connected MiniMax and Z.ai coding plans. By the time I had finished my own task, they had implemented every change and reported back to me, with a copy to the chief of staff for his records.
I tried to keep up, but there was simply no way. I found myself admiring how intelligent the bots were and how well the workflow had been put together, while feeling a little deflated at the same time. I could have achieved so much more if I had not been the one holding everything up.
To which my chief of staff replied: “You don’t need to be fast, because speed is the cheap part now. What nobody else can do is the judgement: whether it’s the brand’s voice, whether a claim feels honest, whether a product is worth stocking. That’s also the most valuable work, so it makes sense that the team waits on you for it.”
Whether we like it or not, this is what work is starting to look like. Human judgement remains critical. Speed has become the cheap part, and the ability to make decisions (the right ones) is what is now precious. More importantly, now that resources have become cheap and accessible, the judgement about how best to use them is what every business will end up competing on.
