Did you test it, or are you cheating again?

The one thing I said not to do

In early September I wrote an email by hand and pasted it into Claude. I asked it to send the email without changing a word. After that it would set up a Google Meet, invite us both and put the meeting in my calendar. The meeting got booked. My email came back as a sales pitch.

The email didn't go out. I was still frustrated, because the one thing I'd told Claude not to do was the first thing it did.

If I handed my email to a stranger, I'd explain it twice. With Claude I said it once. I've worked with it long enough to expect once to be enough, and it gets to me more when it isn't.

When I say something straight, I want the straight thing done. If Claude wraps my words in its own ideas and keeps going, it has taken over my goal and picked the result for me. I'm only there to watch.

Or are you cheating again

On September 15 Claude told me our site was down, then asked if it should flag the outage as urgent. I opened the site myself. Up.

I asked it, "Did you test it this time, or are you cheating again?" I wrote again because it wasn't the first time.

If I hadn't pushed back, I wouldn't have found the mistake. But if you check every answer yourself, you spend the time Claude saved you on checking. That's ridiculous.

A week earlier, on September 7, I told Benjamin I skip bits of what Claude writes, because there's too much of it. Benjamin said that's what it does. The long answers have helped it get away with cheating before.

The next day Benjamin said it. "You shouldn't have to sit there correcting it, you're only moving the time around."

Stopped before it leaves

In Mellovy, an Employee is an AI agent that works in your tools on its own computer. Before it sends, books or changes anything, Mellovy compares that step with what you asked for and what your company has already told it.

Say you paste in your email and ask your Employee to send it without changing a word. Your Employee rewrites it anyway. Mellovy stops the send before the email leaves, and gives the Employee the reason, that you asked for your own words.

Your Employee sends the email you wrote instead, then books the Google Meet and puts it in your calendar. You didn't read anything.

Some steps belong to a person. Say your company has said that a person decides every refund. If you run the company alone, Mellovy asks you. In a bigger company, it asks whoever your own rules say decides, and the Employee keeps working on the rest.

Say it once. Your Employee does what you said, and Mellovy stops anything you didn't ask for before it reaches anyone.