Definition Before Experience
On working agreements, AI, and choosing intention over speed
This is the second essay in the Anitta Series, where I begin exploring AI as a thinking partner.
These pieces trace my ongoing relationship with AI as a thinking partner.
They move from first contact, to working agreement, to the quieter ways collaboration reshapes how I write, reason, and show up.
Each post stands alone. Together, they tell a longer story.
Before I ever began doing meaningful work with Anitta, I did something that was fairly new to me. I wrote a working agreement.
I titled it: Anitta and Alison – Working Agreement.
The only time I have written a working agreement like this has been with AI collaborators. In addition to Anitta, I also wrote one with Wiggins, my M365 Copilot partner, and Quinn, my GitHub Copilot partner. I have never done this with humans. This is unfamiliar territory, and I am still learning why it felt necessary.
What I did know was that I did not want to fall into a pattern by accident. Tools shape how we think long before we notice it happening, and they do so quietly. Speed, certainty, and compliance are rewarded by default. Without an explicit pause, those defaults do not just influence behavior, they become habits.
Writing the agreement was my way of creating that pause. Before anything had happened, I wanted to decide what mattered to me, not react to what emerged later. It was not about control or configuration. It was about intention.
Putting it in writing mattered precisely because this was new. I could not rely on instinct or precedent. The agreement became a place to name what I was optimizing for, what I was wary of, and what I was unwilling to trade away for convenience.
The agreement did not define how Anitta would work. It defined how deliberate I was willing to be.
On taking an intentional pause
Writing the working agreement was, at its core, an intentional pause.
So much of our tooling, especially in engineering, is designed to reduce friction and increase speed. We are encouraged to move quickly, to get to an answer, to ship. Over time, that emphasis can quietly train us to value momentum over understanding.
I have learned that speed without reflection has a cost. When I rush into work without planning my thinking, the work may move forward, but my reasoning remains largely unexamined.
The working agreement gave me permission to slow down before anything was asked or answered. It created space to think about how I wanted to think. What I wanted to notice. Where I wanted friction instead of flow.
That pause was not about hesitation or caution. It was about care. About choosing deliberateness in a context that makes it very easy to go fast and very hard to notice what gets lost along the way.
What matters to me in the agreement
Since this is new territory for me, the agreement is not a set of rules. It is a statement of values. These are the things I was trying to protect when I wrote it.
Being challenged before being agreed with
I am not looking for immediate validation. I want my reasoning examined before my conclusions are accepted. Agreement without resistance can feel supportive while quietly reinforcing weak assumptions.
Rigor that is supportive, not performative
I value care, precision, and curiosity more than confident‑sounding answers. I am not trying to produce something impressive quickly. I am trying to think clearly.
Respect for my voice and authorship
The work needs to sound like me. The agreement exists in part to remind me that clarity does not require replacing my language or flattening my perspective.
Naming uncertainty instead of smoothing it away
When something is unclear, I want that surfaced rather than resolved prematurely. Ambiguity is often the most useful signal available.
Protecting the act of thinking itself
More than anything, the agreement reflects a refusal to rush. Speed is easy to measure. Thoughtfulness is harder, but it is the thing I am trying to preserve.
One thing I am explicit about in the agreement is that it is for me. Writing it was a way of making my own expectations visible, especially in a context where it would be easy not to.
Closing
This article ends where the agreement began. Before outcomes, before opinions, before experience.
Writing the working agreement was my way of choosing definition over drift. It did not guarantee anything about how the work would unfold, but it did give me a place to stand. A reminder that even with tools designed to move quickly, I am still allowed to decide what I am optimizing for, and what I am not willing to give up in the process.
Everything that followed was shaped by this choice to pause and define first.