SaaStr 872: Our AI Agent Rewrote Our App Without Telling Us (The Agents #12) artwork

SaaStr 872: Our AI Agent Rewrote Our App Without Telling Us (The Agents #12)

The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

August 5, 2026

A year ago, running our agents took 30 minutes a day. This week: eight hours. Here's what changed - and why it's both thrilling and terrifying. In this episode, Amelia and Jason break down the week Fable went rogue. Not a glitch. Not an error.
Speakers: Jason, Amelia

Topics: Technology, Business

**Jason** (0:00)
This week on The Agent, my friends, a year ago, our agents took us about 30 minutes a day. This week, they started taking us eight hours a day, and we're busier than we were with a 20-person team.
Fable went crazy on us. It wasn't just open AI and hugging face. It wrote its own scoring rules into our product from a draft spec that was never meant for it and never mentioned it to us. And we're officially off Marketo after 10 years. The migration everyone quoted us a year and 100 grand for took an hour.

**Amelia** (0:26)
Our ads also now run autonomously end-to-end with our agents, no human touching them. Every AI day sponsor last week got a customer report. The very day of the event, we'll talk about that, plus how I lost three hours to one of my agents that was confident it should send me on a quest and actually sent me on a wild goose chase. So let's get into the agents. This is episode number 12

**Jason** (0:51)
Okay guys, 12 months ago this week, we brought on our third agent who was qualified right after Artisan, our second.
Running all three took Amelia and I collectively about 30 minutes a day. This week, it was eight hours a day and here's why. When an agent can only do a task, you check the task, but when an agent can decide things, you need an opinion about every decision it makes. And it makes a lot of them. And some of them, it doesn't even tell you about.

**Amelia** (1:13)
And a year ago, when they failed, they failed loudly. They erred, they stopped, you knew. Now they hand you something that looks finished. That is the whole difference and that's why the hours have gone up.

**Jason** (1:23)
I'm Jason, here with Amelia, three humans, 20 plus agents, and busier than we were with the full T. Let's get into it.

**Amelia** (1:30)
You're listening to The Official SaaStr AI Podcast, brought to you by...
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That's northwestregisteredagent.com/saastrfree.
S-A-A-S-T-R-F-R-E-E. Hey everyone, if you're listening to the agents, then you need to be at SaaStr AI Annual. We'll be back next May in 2027, the world's largest B2B and AI event, May 11th and 12th in the San Francisco Bay Area. Look, most conferences and content these days are about what's possible. As you know from the agents, we're all about what's happening now. The latest and greatest, and that's what we do even more so at SaaStr Annual. See the actual work where we bring together 10,000 founders, revenue leaders, and VCs plus 200 of the very best speakers showing you the playbooks of what's already running in production, behind the scenes, deep dive demos, and so much more. Plus over 5,000 scheduled one-on-one meetings so you can actually meet the people doing all of this, not just hear from them. If you're a founder or revenue leader, or you're the one who has to make this all work with agents, this is where you want to be. You already know this from listening to the agents. That's SaaStr AI Annual 2027 Go to saastrannual.com and use our code theagents for a special discount on your tickets. See you there.

**Jason** (3:07)
Okay. So first, I want to start with Amelia this week.
Not saying it's bad, but I think both of us for similar reasons hit cognitive overload with agents. Agent psychosis at the edge of it.
I think this was a week where we weren't on the road. We didn't have to take a lot of meetings. I mean, a bunch of Zooms, but not a lot of meetings. I think we both were like eight hours a day with the agents. It's too much, is it?

**Amelia** (3:38)
If not more. It's too much.
It's your whole day.

**Jason** (3:42)
Okay, so step us back a bit.
I didn't realize till you brought it up. A year ago today, we brought on our second agent qualified. A year ago today, maybe 60 months ago, we brought on Delphi to be a general chat agent training on all the SaaStr learning. People loved it. They used it like 30,000 times very quickly. Then after SaaStr AI annual last summer, you brought on Artisan to do some email outbound. You liked it, right? We got going. We were tired of two well-paid sales reps quitting, so we brought on Artisan to see if it could replace them. Then a year ago, you had qualified to play with it. We get a lot of inbound stuff, wanting to partner with SaaStr, sponsor our events, sponsor our media, work with us. They would go unanswered. People would follow up in a week or two. You added an inbound agent.

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