Delegation is Automation

I spent several evenings explaining to Claude Code how I expect Eidan to help me with coding, market research, business admin and more. We worked in turns, carefully talking from the big picture down to smaller epics, which we split into projects, and eventually into GitHub issues. We spent those evenings shaping the system architecture, learning from previous agent mistakes, and validating assumptions — long before any results. Each time, Claude took notes (as instructed). Even though we flush context regularly (a good practice that improves accuracy), we kept continuity.

At each stage, I understood what Claude would deliver. But I didn’t have to know what each line of code would look like. We established standards and policed them, but my attention stayed on the product.

And yet none of this was new. What I’d been doing with Eidan was the same thing I do with Claude: clear definition of difficult tasks, executed with good practice and a predictable result. The difference was that for Eidan, delegation would be more async and touch other domains. With Eidan, I want to discuss my projects and goals, delegate tasks, and talk through homework. Claude Code is an engineer I pair program with. Eidan (in the PRO version) is a company of assistants, middle managers, rank-and-file, and autonomous workers — and in the AGPL version, it is still a very capable PA. All on my infrastructure, with my models, storing data in my database.

It’s a cool and ambitious project, worth building in public.

And the process of building it already shows the simple truth: I can do it because I know how to articulate what I expect. When I work with Claude Code, DILO (a developer assistant I built at work), Potem (Eidan’s non-public predecessor), or Eidan, I explain my needs the same way I would during a handover to a team member. In the same way I delegate coding tasks, I explain product requirements and testing scenarios. It’s the same way I instruct my accountant. It’s the same way I write a statement of work for a digital agency that runs my marketing. The more I understand the topic, and the more first-hand experience I have, the better the outcome.

Delegating to people or agents is a relationship between knowledge and communication. Sometimes you can buy the knowledge (hire a developer, contract an agency, use a third-party MCP or API). Sometimes you have to instruct it using your own (train an intern, build skills for agents, pair with Claude to build a deterministic tool).

By delegating, you automate. You cannot automate what you don’t understand.

Checkout Eidan on Github