Humans should occupy the 'bread' of the sandwich, not the filling: ideation and brainstorming require deep human thinking, while planning, execution, and review can be largely automated with AI agents. The critical bottleneck is pre-planning creative work where humans must think hard and ask tough questions.
Key Takeaways
The Compound Engineering framework has 6 phases: Ideate → Brainstorm → Plan → Work → Review → Compound. Humans must stay deeply in-the-loop during ideation/brainstorming (the 'bread'), while planning through review can be mostly automated if you have a solid plan.
LLMs are now reliable enough at execution that the 'work phase' is essentially solved—they can follow detailed plans and do deep work for hours or days. The real human value shifts upstream to problem definition, not downstream to quality assurance.
The 'Compound' step (learning from mistakes and storing knowledge back into the system) is the most powerful part of the workflow. Agents reference past failures during planning/work/review, preventing repeated errors and creating compounding improvements over time.
If you want to ship something that feels truly yours, you cannot fully automate everything—similar to art. The beginning (ideation) and end (review) need human judgment; the middle (execution) can be automated well.
Pre-planning product work (ideating with diverse perspectives and deeply brainstorming around problems) is where humans create asymmetric advantage. This upstream thinking work determines whether AI agents can create a 'very good plan.'
Topics
Compound Engineering Framework
AI Agent Workflows
Human-AI Collaboration in Product Development
LLM Planning and Execution
Knowledge Compounding Systems
Transcript Excerpt
Humans are the bread in the sandwich and the AI is in the middle. The >> AI is whatever you put on your sandwich. If you ship something or do something, if you want it to be your own, you cannot fully automate everything. It's like art. If you want it your own, it needs to be from you or somehow be connected. So, I believe it's so important to do things you enjoy and you love. And it's very important to make it feel great because the bar is high. The bar will always get higher. The beginning and the end and the middles can be automated pretty well. And at some point said, "Oh, it's kind of like a sandwich." Which was like very funny. Kieran, welcome to the show. >> Hello, Dan. Happy to be here. >> So, for people who don't know, you are the GM of Kora. Um, and you are also the creator of Co…