Most developers name their AI sub-agents things like stripe-agent or security-checker. I named mine George, Agatha, Ray, and Helen. This isn’t whimsy; it’s how I remember who the work is actually for.
When I need to focus on payment integrations, I don’t invoke stripe-agent or payment-flow-optimizer . I invoke George.
George Washington Carver spent his life transforming overlooked resources into sustainable value. He found hundreds of uses for the peanut, the sweet potato, the soybean (crops that others dismissed). He turned simple inputs into systems that supported entire communities.
That’s what a good payment system does. It takes the simple act of exchanging money for goods and turns it into something that sustains the people who depend on it. When I invoke George while designing webhook handlers and subscription flows, I’m thinking about Carver’s legacy: patient, resourceful, turning small things into something that lasts.
This is how I’ve come to work with AI-assisted development tools. I name my sub-agents after the people who inspire me, not because the tools have personalities, but because I need to stay intentional about who I’m serving. These aren’t chatbots with personalities; they’re specialized configurations I invoke by name to focus my intent.
The Problem With Abstraction
The tech industry loves to abstract away the human. Users become “MAUs.” Problems become “pain points.” Customers become “conversions.” I’ve spent over forty years writing software, and I can’t afford to think that way.
Almost all of my work has served real humans with names and lives. Biologists creating DNA from scratch who needed to manage their labs. Astronomers who needed searchable sky atlases built from radio telescope data. Legal professionals who needed portals into dense law journals. Rural electric engineers who were ready to leave the paper and pencil era behind. Regular people who just wanted to file their taxes without drowning in forms.
And for over twenty years, farmers. Market managers. Neighbors trying to feed their families something better than what the grocery store offers. That’s the work I’ve written about most recently, but it’s one thread in a much longer career of building tools for people I’d never meet but whose problems I came to understand.
Naming my tools after people who inspire me is a small ritual that keeps me from forgetting who I’m building for.
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