Behind the Craft
Behind the Craft
Peter Yang
How to Build AI Agents That Check Their Own Work | Jared Zoneraich
47 minutes Posted Jul 12, 2026 at 1:00 pm.
Jared is a Builder in Residence at Cognition, the team behind Devin. He showed me why teams often overbuild their first agents, and how simple prompts, better tools, and self-testing work together instead. Then he demoed one manager agent breaking down a task, directing 10 cloud agents, and deciding what a human needs to review.Jared and I talked about:
Why teams overbuild their first AI agent
Let the model cook before adding rules
Why tools matter more than better prompts
Why you should build evals after shipping
What cloud agents can do that local agents can’t
How to get one agent to manage other agents
Demo: One agent launches a team of 10
How agents prove their work before you review it
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Jared is a Builder in Residence at Cognition, the team behind Devin. He showed me why teams often overbuild their first agents, and how simple prompts, better tools, and self-testing work together instead. Then he demoed one manager agent breaking down a task, directing 10 cloud agents, and deciding what a human needs to review.Jared and I talked about:(00:00) Why teams overbuild their first AI agent(02:50) Let the model cook before adding rules(03:16) Why tools matter more than better prompts(10:51) Why you should build evals after shipping(16:06) What cloud agents can do that local agents can’t(20:30) How to get one agent to manage other agents(25:39) Demo: One agent launches a team of 10(28:03) How agents prove their work before you review it(33:18) The best tasks for agent teams to work onThanks to our sponsors:Riverside: All-in-one AI studio for podcasts and video https://creators.riverside.com/PeterYangLinear: The AI agent platform for modern teams https://linear.app/behind-the-craftWispr Flow: 4x faster than typing with your voice https://ref.wisprflow.ai/peteryang📌 Get the takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/how-to-build-ai-agents-that-check-their-own-work-jared-cognition-devin📌 Get my personal AI OS with useful AI skills, $270 in AI tool credits, live monthly workshops, and courses on Hermes and Codex agents: https://www.behindthecraft.com/Where to find Jared:X: https://x.com/imjaredzDevin: https://devin.aiSubscribe to this channel - more interviews coming soon!