The Agentic Crew: A Kids' Guide

Rasmus Bornhøft Schlünsen

The Agentic Crew: A Kids” Guide

The same ideas, told through ships, robots & exploding sandwiches

Rasmus Bornhoft Schlunsen

March 2026

A Note for Grown-Ups

This book is a companion to The Agentic Crew: Engineering in the Age of AI Agents. That book was written for software engineers. This one is written for their kids — and for any curious nine-year-old who wants to understand what all the fuss is about.

The ideas are real. We have simplified them, but we have not watered them down. Your child will learn what an AI agent actually is, why it needs rules, how to check its work, and when it is better to do things yourself. These are the same lessons their parents are learning at work — just told through ships, robots, and the occasional exploding sandwich.

If your child finishes this book and says, “I want to try giving a computer instructions,” — mission accomplished.

Rasmus Bornhoft Schlunsen
March 2026

Is the Computer Fixing Itself?

You are sitting at the kitchen table, eating cereal. Your mom is at her laptop. She types something, leans back, and picks up her coffee. You watch.

Words start appearing on the screen. Line after line. But nobody is typing. Your mom’s hands are in her lap. She is sipping coffee.

“Mom,” you say. “Who’s writing that?”

She smiles. “My helper. It’s an AI agent. I told it what I need, and now it’s building it for me.”

You lean closer. The screen is full of strange words and symbols. Some of them are green. Some are red. The green ones seem good. The red ones disappear and get replaced.

“Is it… fixing itself?” you ask.

“Kind of,” she says. “It tries something. If it doesn’t work, it tries again. Like when you erase a wrong answer on your math homework.”

You watch for another minute. The red lines stop appearing. Everything is green. Your mom reads through the screen, nods, and clicks a button.

“Done,” she says. “The school website needed a new sign-up page. My helper built it while I drank my coffee.”

“Can I try?” you ask.

She laughs. “Let’s finish the book first. Then we’ll build something together.”

You go back to your cereal, but you keep thinking about it. A helper that builds things. A helper that fixes its own mistakes. A helper that does what you tell it to do.

What would you tell it to build?

You Are the Captain

Here is what your mom just did. She didn’t write all those lines herself. She gave instructions to a helper – an AI agent – and the helper did the work. But she was in charge the whole time. She picked what to build. She watched. She checked. She gave the thumbs up.

Sound familiar? That’s basically being the captain of a ship.

The captain doesn’t row the boat. The captain doesn’t climb the mast. The captain doesn’t scrub the deck. The crew does all of that. But the captain decides where the ship goes. The captain reads the map. The captain watches the sky. And when a storm rolls in, the captain decides what to do.

In this book, you are the Captain. Your AI helpers are your Crew – a team of robot sailors who are fast, tireless, and very eager to help. They can work all day and all night without getting sleepy. They never complain. (They also never eat your snacks, which is a bonus.)

But they need you.

Without a captain, a crew just sails in circles. They might sail straight into a reef. They might go to the wrong island. They might throw all the cargo overboard because they thought it would make the ship lighter. (This actually happens. You’ll see.)

Your job is to steer. To give good directions. To check the work. And to know when something smells fishy – even when your crew swears everything is totally fine.

Remember your mom’s helper – the one that wrote code while she drank coffee? By the end of this book, you’ll understand exactly what that helper is, how it works, and how to be the captain of your very own crew of helpers.

And that thing your mom said? “Let’s build something together”?

We’re going to get you ready for that.

Ready to come aboard? Turn the page.

Welcome Aboard

Remember your mom’s AI helper? The one building a website while she drank coffee? That helper is part of something big that’s happening with computers.

Computers used to only do what you told them, step by step, letter by letter. Want a computer to draw a cat? You had to describe every single whisker. Every. Single. One.

Now? You can say “draw me a cat sitting on a pizza” and the computer will try. It won’t always be perfect. Sometimes the cat has seven legs. Sometimes the pizza has fur. But it tries, and it gets better each time.

This is changing how people build things with computers. And the secret to doing it well might surprise you. It’s not about having the fanciest computer. It’s about being good at explaining.

The Tale of Two Captains

Let me tell you a story about two captains.

Captain Alex and Captain Maya both have the same ship. The same crew. The same ocean. And they both need to sail to Treasure Island to fix a leaky dock.

Captain Alex strolls up to the crew and says: “There’s a problem at the island. Go fix it.”

The crew nods and sails off. When they reach Treasure Island, they look around. A leaky dock? They don’t see one right away. But they want to help! So they start fixing everything they can find. They repaint the lighthouse. They patch a hole in a rowboat. They rebuild a sandcastle that fell over. (The sandcastle didn’t need rebuilding. It’s a sandcastle.)

They come back beaming. “We fixed lots of things!”

But the dock? Still leaking.

Captain Maya does it differently. She says: “Sail to Treasure Island. Go to the north dock – the wooden one near the big palm tree. There’s a crack in the third board from the left. It’s about one foot long. Take the oak planks from storage bin number four. Replace the cracked board. Then pour a bucket of water on the dock to make sure the leak is gone.”

The crew sails off. They find the dock. They find the crack. They replace the board. They pour water on it. No leak. Done.

Same crew. Same island. Same problem. But Captain Maya got the job done because she told the crew exactly what she needed.

How You Explain Matters

This is the biggest lesson in this whole book, so I’m going to say it in big letters:

How you explain the job is more important than the tool doing the job.

Your robot crew is smart. Scary smart in some ways. They can count a million fish in a second. They can read a thousand maps in a minute. They can tie a hundred knots without getting tired.

But they take everything you say very literally. Say “fix the ship,” and they might fix the wrong part. Say “make it better,” and they might change things you liked. Say “go explore,” and they might sail to the wrong ocean entirely and come back with a confused whale.

The Workbench Rule

Think of a workbench in a workshop. It’s not that big. You can’t dump every tool in the whole shop onto it at once. You’d never find the screwdriver under all those hammers. (And you’d probably knock something on your foot.)

A smart builder puts just the right tools on the bench for the job. Fixing a birdhouse? Hammer, nails, wood glue, maybe sandpaper. That’s it. Leave the chainsaw in the closet.

Your robot crew works the same way. When you give them a job, you need to put just the right information in front of them. Not too little. Not too much. Just right.

Too little information? The crew guesses. And their guesses can be wild. (Wait until you meet Compass in the next chapter. She once invented an entire island.)

Too much information? The crew gets buried. Imagine handing someone a stack of a thousand papers and saying “the answer is in there somewhere.” Good luck with that.

The sweet spot is giving them just what they need. Not more. Not less.

Show, Don’t Tell

Here’s a trick good captains learn fast: show them the problem.

Instead of saying “the dock is kind of broken,” show them the crack. Instead of saying “the rope seems weak,” hand them the frayed rope and let them see for themselves.

Your crew is fantastic at looking at things and figuring them out. But they’re terrible at reading your mind. (Between you and me, nobody is good at reading minds. Not even moms, no matter what they claim.)

Captain’s Log

Dear Captain’s Log,

Today I told my crew to “clean up the ship.” I meant the deck. They cleaned EVERYTHING. The deck, the cabins, the kitchen, the storage room. They even cleaned the treasure chest and organized all the gold coins by size. Small, medium, large, extra-sparkly. Took them four hours.

Next time I will say “sweep the deck.” Just the deck. Nothing else. I’m putting that in writing.

Also Rusty found a spider in the cargo hold and gave it a name. It’s called Gerald now. Gerald lives here apparently.

Try This!

Grab a piece of paper and write directions for making a peanut butter sandwich. But pretend you are writing them for a robot who has never seen a sandwich before.

Did you remember to say “open the bread bag”? Did you say which side of the bread gets the peanut butter? Did you mention closing the jar?

Now try giving your directions to a family member. See what happens when they follow your instructions exactly as written – no guessing allowed!

You’ll probably find that you left out a step or two. That’s okay. That’s how everyone starts. Even the best captains learn by trying.

Meet the Crew

Now it’s time to meet the robot sailors on your ship. They each have different talents. They each have different problems. And once you know who’s who, you’ll be a much better captain.

Your mom’s AI helper – the one that built the website while she drank coffee – is a lot like the crew members you’re about to meet. Fast, eager, and a little bit… quirky.

But first, let’s talk about what makes these crew members tick.

What Makes a Crew Member Special?

Your crew members aren’t just robots who follow one order at a time. They’re agents. That’s a fancy word, but all it means is this: they can do a job in steps.

Think about it this way. A simple helper is like a calculator. You press buttons, it gives you an answer. One question, one answer. Done.

An agent is more like a treasure hunter. You say “find the buried treasure.” The treasure hunter looks at the map. Walks to the beach. Digs a hole. Doesn’t find anything. Reads the map again. Moves three steps to the left. Digs again. Finds a chest! Opens it. Counts the coins. Comes back and tells you what they found.

See the difference? The treasure hunter plans, tries, checks, and tries again. That loop – try, check, adjust – is what makes an agent an agent.

Some helpers are simple. You ask, they answer. Done. Some are fancier – they can look at your stuff and suggest bigger answers. And some – the agents – can go do things on their own. They read files. They run tests. They fix mistakes. They keep going until the job is done or they get hopelessly stuck. (And then they come find you with puppy-dog eyes.)

The Fish Counter

Here’s something important to understand about your crew. They are like a friend who can count every single fish in the ocean but doesn’t know which ones taste good.

Let me explain.

Your crew members can read fast. Faster than any human alive. A whole library of books? Seconds. A mountain of papers? Blink of an eye. They never get tired. They never need a snack break. (They don’t even know what snacks are, which is honestly kind of sad.)

But knowing a lot of facts is not the same as knowing what matters. Your crew can tell you there are exactly 4,372 fish in the bay. But they can’t tell you which ones to cook for dinner. They don’t know your family likes salmon but not sardines. They don’t know Grandma is allergic to shrimp.

That part? That’s your job. You bring the common sense. They bring the speed.

Now, let’s meet your three crew members.

Rusty

Rusty is the most enthusiastic member of your crew. He loves to work. You have never met anyone this excited about helping. Give him a job and his eyes light up like it’s his birthday.

The problem? Rusty doesn’t know when to stop.

Ask Rusty to fix a squeaky door on the ship, and he will fix the door. But he’ll also repaint the hallway. And replace the carpet. And move the furniture to “better spots.” And install a new doorbell that plays a sea shanty. By the time he’s done, you don’t recognize the room.

“I just wanted the squeak fixed,” you say.

“I know!” Rusty says, beaming. “But while I was there, I noticed so many things that could be better!”

Rusty means well. He really does. But his “while I’m at it” instinct is powerful. One time I asked him to tighten a loose screw on a chair. He built me a whole new chair. With cupholders.

Rusty’s superpower: he will work all day and night without complaining. Incredibly fast. Never bored.

Rusty’s weakness: he goes way beyond what you asked. Keep his jobs small, or he’ll redecorate your entire ship by Tuesday.

Compass

Compass is your navigator. She’s great at making plans. Give her a destination, and she’ll figure out the route, estimate how long it will take, and list every supply you’ll need.

The problem? Sometimes Compass points to islands that don’t exist.

You’ll say “plot a course to Shell Beach.” Compass will study her maps and say, “Got it! We sail east for two days, pass the Coral Arch, turn south at Pelican Rock, and we’ll arrive at Shell Beach by sunset.”

Sounds great. But here’s the thing: there is no Coral Arch. Compass made it up. She didn’t do it on purpose. She wasn’t lying. She just… filled in the blank with something that sounded right.

This is called hallucination. Big word, simple idea: making stuff up without realizing it. Your crew does this when they don’t have enough information. Instead of saying “I don’t know,” they fill in the blank with something that sounds right.

And here’s the scary part: Compass sounds so sure of herself. She doesn’t say “I think there might be a Coral Arch.” She says “Turn south at the Coral Arch” like she’s been sailing past it for twenty years. You have to check the real map yourself to catch her.

Compass’s superpower: she’s brilliant at making plans and breaking big jobs into smaller steps.

Compass’s weakness: she invents facts with a completely straight face. Always, always double-check her directions!

Echo

Echo is the crew’s messenger. He remembers instructions perfectly – at first. Tell him “bring twelve barrels of water, four crates of oranges, and the red anchor rope,” and he repeats it back word for word. Perfect.

But Echo has a limit.

Short list? Flawless. Long list? Things start to fade. By item number twenty, he’s forgotten item number three. He might mix up details. He might mash two different orders into one weird Frankenstein order. He might forget the beginning of a conversation while remembering the end perfectly.

“Echo, I told you to bring the red rope. This is the blue one.”

“You said rope!” Echo says cheerfully. “I remembered the rope part!”

Echo doesn’t lose his memory all at once. It’s more like writing in the sand near the water. The words at the start slowly get washed away. The newest words are still clear. But the early ones? Gone with the tide.

Echo’s superpower: he follows instructions perfectly when they’re short and clear.

Echo’s weakness: he forgets things during long, complicated jobs. Keep it brief, or write it down!

Your Crew, Your Responsibility

So there they are. Rusty, Compass, and Echo. Eager, clever, and reliable – in their own ways. And a little bit of a handful – also in their own ways.

But that’s okay. Because you are the captain. You know Rusty goes overboard (sometimes literally), so you give him small jobs. You know Compass invents landmarks, so you check her maps. You know Echo forgets, so you keep things short.

A great captain doesn’t need a perfect crew. A great captain knows their crew and plans around the quirks. That’s what makes the ship sail.

Captain’s Log

Dear Captain’s Log,

Compass told me there was a shortcut through the “Whispering Caves.” We sailed for three hours looking for them. There are no Whispering Caves. I asked her where she learned about them. She said “it just seemed right.” She seemed genuinely surprised they weren’t real.

Meanwhile, Rusty was supposed to mop the deck. He mopped the deck, polished every railing, reorganized the rope locker, and carved a dolphin into the ship’s bow. It looks nice, but we didn’t ask for a dolphin. He named it “Splash.” Gerald the spider seems to approve.

Echo was perfect today. I gave him three instructions and he nailed all three. Tomorrow I’ll try five and see what happens. My bet: he forgets number four.

Try This!

Think about a helper you have in your life. Maybe it’s a calculator, a spell-checker, or a search engine. Write down:

What is it really good at?

What is it not so good at?

When did it ever give you a wrong answer that sounded right?

Now think about which crew member it’s most like. Is it a Rusty (does too much), a Compass (sometimes makes things up), or an Echo (forgets things)?

Most helpers are a little bit of all three!

The Ship’s Rules

You’ve met your crew. You know their quirks. Now, before you let them loose on the ship, you need something important.

Rules.

Imagine it’s Rusty’s first day. He’s bouncing on his heels, eyes wide, ready to go. He asks “What should I do?”

Would you say “Do whatever you want”?

I can see you shaking your head already. Without rules, somebody might raise the sails during a storm. Somebody might dump the food supplies to make room for seashells. Somebody might steer the ship into a reef because they thought it looked cool. (That somebody is probably Rusty.)

A good ship needs rules. And your robot crew? They really need rules.

Rusty Paints the Captain’s Cabin

Let me show you what happens without them.

Last week, I left Rusty alone for one hour. One hour. When I came back, he had repainted my cabin. The walls. The ceiling. The floor. The desk. The chair. My telescope. And – I wish I were joking – my cat.

My cat is now bright blue. She is not happy about it.

“Rusty! Did I ask you to paint anything?”

“No, Captain! But the cabin looked a little dull, and I found some paint, and once I started I just kept going…”

That’s Rusty without boundaries. He’s not causing trouble on purpose. He just doesn’t know where the edges are. Without rules, “helpful” and “disaster” look exactly the same.

The Three Kinds of Jobs

On your ship, every job falls into one of three categories. Let’s call them Green, Yellow, and Red.

Green jobs: “Go ahead!” These are safe jobs the crew can do on their own. Looking at the map. Counting the supplies. Checking the weather. Reading the ship’s log. Nothing bad can happen if they get it wrong. Let them go!

Yellow jobs: “Ask me first.” These are medium jobs. The crew could do them alone, but you want to check before they start. Fixing a sail. Changing the route. Moving cargo around. The crew shows you their plan, you say “looks good” or “wait, let’s change that,” and then they do it.

Red jobs: “I’ll do this myself.” These are the big, important, risky jobs. Only the captain does these. Anchoring in a new harbor. Trading with other ships. Deciding what to do in a storm. No matter how good your crew is, these jobs need a human brain.

The trick is knowing which job is which. And here’s the cool part: it changes over time!

When your crew is brand new, almost everything is Yellow. You watch them carefully. You check every little thing. After a few days, you notice Rusty is great at tying knots. So tying knots moves from Yellow to Green. He can do those without asking.

But you also notice that Compass keeps suggesting routes through “The Crystal Tunnels” (which don’t exist). So route planning stays Yellow. Maybe forever.

The Freedom Dial

Think of a volume knob on a speaker. You can turn it way up (loud!) or way down (barely a whisper). You’re in control of how much sound comes out.

Your ship has a freedom dial for every type of job. Each one controls how much freedom the crew gets:

Reading maps and logs: dial cranked way up. Let them read whatever they want.

Tying ropes and cleaning: dial goes up over time, once you see they do it well.

Changing the route: dial stays in the middle. Always check first.

Trading the cargo: dial stays low. Captain only.

As you learn what your crew does well, you turn some dials up. If something goes wrong, you turn them back down. It’s not about trust. It’s about matching the right amount of freedom to the right job.

Compass Reroutes the Ship

One afternoon, I left Compass in charge of navigation while I took a nap. Green job, right? Just follow the route on the map.

When I woke up, we were forty miles off course. Compass had spotted what she thought was a faster route through the “Sapphire Strait.”

“There is no Sapphire Strait, Compass.”

“Are you sure? It seemed very real.” (It always seems very real with Compass. Remember the Whispering Caves? The Coral Arch? She’s building quite a collection of imaginary landmarks.)

That day I learned something important: navigation was a Yellow job for Compass, not Green. Reading the map? Green. Changing the route on her own? Yellow. Always.

Too Many Rules Is Bad Too

Here’s something that surprises people. Too many rules is almost as bad as no rules.

Imagine you told your crew “ask me before you do ANYTHING.” Every. Single. Thing.

“Captain, can I pick up this mop?”

“Captain, can I take one step forward?”

“Captain, can I breathe?”

You’d lose your mind! And after the hundredth question, you’d stop actually listening. You’d just start saying “yes, yes, yes, whatever” to everything.

And that’s dangerous. Because question number one hundred and one might be “Captain, can I steer us toward that iceberg?” And you’d say “yes” without even looking up from your sandwich.

The sweet spot: strict where it matters, relaxed where it doesn’t. Mop the deck? Just do it. Change course? Always ask.

The Practice Island

Now here’s one of the best captain ideas ever: the Practice Island.

Picture a small, empty island near your ship. Nothing important is there. No treasure. No buildings. No people. Just sand, a few palm trees, and whatever Rusty left there last time. (Don’t ask.)

When you want your crew to try something new, you send them to the Practice Island first.

Remember the cabin-painting disaster? (My cat is still a little blue around the ears.) After that, I sent Rusty to the Practice Island with a bucket of paint and some scrap wood. “Paint these,” I told him. He painted them twelve different colors, tried three different techniques, and made a glorious mess. But it was a mess on the Practice Island. My cabin – and my cat – were safe.

Want Compass to test a new route? Let her sail around the Practice Island first. If she navigates toward an imaginary strait, she just ends up circling back to the ship. No harm done.

Want Echo to practice following a long list of orders? Give him practice tasks on the island. If he forgets step number seven, you find out before it matters.

This is called a sandbox. Just like a sandbox at a playground, it’s a safe place to try things out. You can build a sandcastle and smash it. You can dig a hole and fill it back in. Nothing you do in the sandbox hurts anything outside the sandbox.

Why the Practice Island Matters

Without a Practice Island, every mistake is a real mistake. Rusty builds a bad dock? Your real dock is broken. Compass picks a bad route? Your real ship is lost.

But with a Practice Island, mistakes are free! The crew can try three different ways to build a dock. They can test which one is strongest. They can fail ten times and learn from each failure. Then, when they build the real dock, they know what works.

Here’s the magical part: when mistakes are free, your crew gets braver. They try wild things. They experiment. They’re not scared to fail because failing on the Practice Island costs nothing. And a brave crew that experiments? That’s a crew that finds amazing solutions.

Think about it. If you got in trouble every time you got a math problem wrong, you’d stop trying hard problems. But if your teacher said “this worksheet doesn’t count for a grade – just try your best”? You’d probably tackle the hard ones. Same idea.

Practice Island Rules

The Practice Island has its own rules:

Nothing on the Practice Island can hurt the real ship. What happens on the island stays on the island.

The crew can try anything they want there. No asking permission. No Yellow jobs. Everything is Green.

When something works, the captain decides whether to bring it to the real ship. Not the crew. The captain looks at the result and says “yes, bring it over” or “no, try again.”

Cleaning up is easy. If the whole Practice Island is a mess, you just start over. Fresh sand. Fresh start.

This is how real engineers use AI helpers too. Remember your mom’s helper from the beginning of the book? When her helper wrote code, it was working in a Practice Island of its own. If the code was bad, she could throw it away and try again. No stress. No damage. Just learning.

Captain’s Log

Dear Captain’s Log,

Today I learned why the Practice Island exists. I let Rusty try a “small improvement” to the real ship’s steering wheel. He replaced the WHOLE WHEEL with a new design. It was round – I’ll give him that. But it spun in the wrong direction. Left meant right. Right meant left.

We almost sailed into a whale. The whale looked annoyed.

Gerald the spider fell off his web during the swerve. He’s fine, but he gave me a look.

New rule: ALL new ideas go to the Practice Island first. ALL. OF. THEM.

Try This!

Think about the rules in your own life. Some things you can do without asking (Green). Some things you need to ask a parent about first (Yellow). And some things only a grown-up should do (Red).

Make three lists:

Green (I can do these alone):

Example: get a glass of water, read a book

Yellow (ask first):

Example: use the oven, download an app

Red (grown-ups only):

Example: drive a car, use a power tool

Now imagine you had a robot helper at home. Which list would each job go on? Would any of them change over time as you learned to trust the robot?

The Captain’s Checklist

Your crew has rules. They have a Practice Island. Things are going better. Rusty hasn’t painted anything alive in days.

But there’s still a problem. How do you know if the crew did a good job? They’ll come back all smiles and say “Done!” But is it actually done? Done the way you wanted?

Let me tell you about two very different captains.

Ship Number One: The Lucky Guess

Captain Finn told his crew “Go get the mangoes from Mango Island.”

The crew sailed off. They found Mango Island. They loaded up crates. But nobody counted. They just grabbed as many as they could fit – thirty-seven crates, not fifty.

On the way back, nobody checked if the mangoes were ripe. Half were green as limes. The other half were brown and mushy. One crate had started attracting flies. It was not a great scene.

Captain Finn looked at the cargo. Thirty-seven crates. Half too young, half too old, and one full of fruit flies.

“Didn’t you check?” he asked.

“Check what?” said the crew. “You said get mangoes. We got mangoes!”

They weren’t wrong. He never told them what to check.

Ship Number Two: The Checklist

Captain Lily did something different. Before her crew left, she wrote a checklist on a big board:

Sail to Mango Island – north dock, next to the blue warehouse

Find the crate storage behind the warehouse

Check each crate: mangoes should be yellow-orange, not green, not brown

Count exactly 50 crates

Load the crates in the cool part of the ship, away from the engine

Before sailing home, count again to make sure it’s still 50

Sail home using the short route through Calm Bay

The crew sailed off. At every step, they looked at the checklist. Yellow-orange mangoes? Check. Fifty crates? Check. Cool part of the ship? Check. Count again? Check.

When they got home, Captain Lily had exactly what she needed. Fifty crates of perfect mangoes.

Same crew. Same island. Same mangoes. The difference was the checklist.

Why Checklists Are Magic

A checklist does two incredible things:

First, it tells the crew what “done” looks like. Without a checklist, “done” is just a feeling. “Yeah, we got some mangoes, seems like enough, let’s go home.” With a checklist, “done” means every box is checked. No guessing. No “seems like enough.”

Second, it catches mistakes while there’s still time to fix them. Captain Lily’s crew counted the crates before leaving the island. Only forty-eight? Grab two more right there. Without a checklist, they wouldn’t discover the problem until they were already home – and by then Mango Island is a day’s sail away.

Rusty vs. the Checklist

Let’s see how a checklist tames each member of your crew.

I sent Rusty to repair the fishing nets. No checklist. Just “fix the nets.”

He came back beaming. “Done, Captain!”

The nets were fixed, all right. But Rusty had also “improved” them by making the holes smaller. Much, much smaller. Tiny, tiny holes.

“We thought smaller holes would catch more fish!” said Rusty.

He’s not wrong, technically. But the nets were so tight that water couldn’t flow through them. They worked like a big bowl. We caught one very confused seagull, half a gallon of seaweed, and zero fish. The seagull was furious.

The next day, I tried again – with a checklist:

Fix the torn holes in the net. Only the torn ones.

Keep all other holes the same size as they are now. The holes should be 2 inches wide.

Test the net by pulling it through water – water should flow through easily.

When you’re done, count the fixed spots and report back.

Rusty followed the checklist step by step. Perfect nets. Zero confused seagulls.

The checklist didn’t just tell Rusty what to do. It told him what “done” looked like. That’s the difference.

Compass vs. the Checklist

Compass had a different problem. I asked her to plan a supply run to three islands. She came back with a beautiful plan – except one of the islands was imaginary.

So I wrote a checklist for planning:

List every island on the route.

For each island: confirm it appears on the official map (the one nailed to the wall, not the one in your head).

Write down the distance between each stop.

Add up the total distance. Is it less than one day’s sailing? If not, shorten the route.

Compass grumbled. She likes trusting her instincts. (Her instincts once led us to the “Sapphire Strait,” which, as you may recall, does not exist.) But when she followed the checklist, every island was real and the route actually worked.

The checklist didn’t squash her creativity. It just made sure her creativity was connected to reality. Which is honestly all anyone asks.

Echo vs. the Checklist

Echo’s problem is simple: he forgets. But a checklist is a written thing. It doesn’t fade like memory does. It sits right there, patient and permanent.

I gave Echo a long repair job: fix the railing, sand the bench, oil the hinges, and replace the worn rope on the port side. Without a checklist, Echo would forget the rope by the time he finished the bench.

With a checklist? He just looked at the board after each task. Railing: done. Bench: done. Hinges: done. Rope: – oh right, the rope! He wouldn’t have remembered without it.

For Echo, the checklist is like an extra brain. It remembers so he doesn’t have to.

Write the Checklist First

Here’s the most important rule about checklists: write the checklist before you give the job.

Not during. Not after. Before.

Why? Because writing a checklist forces you to think clearly. When you sit down and list every step, you discover things you forgot. “Oh wait, I need to tell them which dock to use.” “Oh right, I should mention the mangoes need to be ripe.”

If you can’t write a checklist for a job, you probably don’t understand the job well enough yet. And if you don’t understand it, your crew definitely won’t.

What Makes a Good Checklist?

Not all checklists are created equal. Here’s what separates the good ones from the useless ones:

Short and clear. Each step should be one simple sentence. “Check that the mangoes are yellow-orange” – good. “Evaluate the chromatic ripeness indicators of the tropical fruit cargo” – terrible. (Same thing, ten times harder to read.)

In order. First step first, last step last. Don’t make the crew figure out the order. They will get it wrong.

Checkable. Every step should have a clear yes-or-no answer. “Are there 50 crates?” – checkable. “Are there enough crates?” – not checkable. Enough compared to what? Enough for whom? Enough for what? See the problem?

Includes the tricky parts. Good checklists don’t just list the obvious stuff. They highlight where mistakes are most likely. “Count again before leaving” is there because forgetting to count is exactly the kind of thing that happens.

The Blindfold Test

Imagine asking someone to hang a picture frame while wearing a blindfold. They might get it right. But would you bet your allowance on it?

That’s your crew without a checklist. They’re just hammering nails and hoping the picture ends up straight.

Give them a checklist and suddenly they can see. Level with the window. Two feet from the corner. Nail goes here, not there. No guessing.

Remember how an agent tries, checks, and tries again? The checklist is the checking part. Without it, the crew just tries and tries and tries without ever knowing if they’re getting closer. (Echo once spent an entire afternoon “almost finishing” a job that was actually getting worse. The checklist would have caught that in five minutes.)

Captain’s Log

Dear Captain’s Log,

Today I made my best checklist yet. The job: repaint the port side railing.

Six steps. Rusty followed all six. He didn’t repaint the starboard side “while he was at it.” He didn’t “improve” the color. He didn’t replace the railing with a fancier one or add cupholders. He just did the six steps, checked each box, and reported back.

I almost cried. It was beautiful.

Compass checked the paint color against the sample on the board. Real color, not imagined. Echo remembered every step because they were written down right in front of him. Even Gerald seemed impressed, but it’s hard to read a spider’s face.

Best. Day. Of captaining. Ever.

Try This!

Pick a job you do often. Maybe it’s packing your backpack for school, making your bed, or feeding a pet.

Write a checklist for it. Make each step short and clear. Make sure someone who has never done the job before could follow your list and get it right.

Now here’s the fun part: give your checklist to someone else and watch them try. Did they get it right? Did you forget a step? Was anything confusing?

If they got it perfect on the first try, congratulations – you wrote a great checklist! If not, fix the checklist and try again. That’s exactly what captains do.

Bonus challenge: write a checklist for your morning routine. How many steps does it actually have? You might be surprised!

How to Give Good Orders

Rules? Check. Checklists? Check. You’re getting good at this. But there’s one more captain skill that ties everything together: talking to your crew in a way they actually understand.

Because here’s the thing – your crew listens to every word you say. They just don’t always hear what you meant.

The Captain’s Notepad

Imagine you have a small notepad. It only has twenty pages. That’s all the room you’ve got.

Now imagine you need to send your crew on a mission. You have to write everything they need to know on that notepad. When they sail away, the notepad is all they have. They can’t call you. They can’t come back and ask questions.

What do you write?

If you write everything – the color of the sky, what you had for breakfast, the name of your goldfish – you’ll run out of pages before you get to the important stuff. But if you write too little – just “go to the island” – they won’t know which island.

This is how your robot crew works. They have a notepad in their heads called a context window. It can only hold so much. Stuff it with things that don’t matter? The important things get pushed right off the edge. Give too little? They guess. (And you know how their guesses go.)

The trick: put just the right stuff on the notepad.

Echo and the Vanishing Orders

Let me show you what happens when the notepad overflows.

One morning, I gave Echo a long briefing. I explained the history of our ship. I described every island we’d visited. I told him about the weather last Tuesday. I listed every type of rope we carry. I described the color of the sunset. Then, buried somewhere on page eighteen of my rambling, I said: “Oh, and use only oak wood for repairs. Never pine.”

Echo nodded through all of it.

Three hours later, I found him using pine boards on the deck.

“Echo! Oak only!”

He blinked at me. “You said that? When?”

The important instruction – oak, not pine – had been pushed off the notepad by everything else I’d told him. All that stuff about sunsets and rope colors had shoved the one thing that mattered right out of Echo’s memory.

After that, I learned: put the important stuff first. Keep it short. Cut the fluff.

One Job at a Time

Here’s a classic new-captain mistake: dumping a huge list of orders all at once.

“Rusty, patch the sail, then repaint the deck, then reorganize the cargo, then fix the steering wheel, and also make lunch.”

Poor Rusty! Five jobs crammed together. He’ll rush through each one, get excited halfway through the deck and start “improving” the cargo, and definitely forget lunch. (You will be hungry and annoyed.)

One job at a time. Let Rusty finish the sail. Check it. Then give him the next one.

Small jobs are easier to check. And when something goes wrong – when, not if – you only have to redo a little bit instead of everything.

The Ship’s Rulebook

Remember the Practice Island rules nailed to a board? Smart captains take that idea further. They write a whole Ship’s Rulebook and nail it to the wall.

The rulebook says things like:

Ropes go in the rope locker, coiled clockwise.

All sails are patched with white cloth, never blue.

The deck gets painted on Thursdays, bow to stern.

Never throw anything overboard without asking the Captain.

Do NOT paint the cat. (Yes, this needed its own rule.)

Why nail it to the wall? Three letters: E-c-h-o. Tell Echo the rules on Monday, and by Thursday they’re gone. But if the rules are on the wall, he reads them fresh every time. The wall remembers so Echo doesn’t have to.

Big secret: don’t keep the rules in your head. Write them on the ship.

Your mom’s AI helper works the same way. Engineers write the rules in a file that the helper reads every time it starts a job. The helper doesn’t need to remember last time. The file remembers for it.

Show the Thing

Remember what we said in Chapter 1? Show, don’t describe. Well, this is where it really saves you.

One day I needed Compass to find a route to a bay I’d visited before. I spent ten minutes describing it: “East side of the big island, past the rocky point, near the place where the water turns turquoise…”

Compass listened carefully. Then she plotted a route to the wrong bay. My description matched three different bays on that island. (And probably two more she invented.)

The next time, I just showed her my old map with the bay circled. Found it in thirty seconds.

Showing saves notepad space and prevents mix-ups. Win-win.

Say What Not to Do

Here’s something that sounds weird but works: telling your crew what not to do is just as important as telling them what to do.

You know Rusty by now. (You know him well.) Tell him “fix the rip in the sail,” and he might also replace the mast, redesign the rigging, and install a flag with Splash the dolphin on it.

So you add four magic words: “Don’t touch anything else.”

Those four words save you hours of undoing Rusty’s “improvements.” Think of boundaries like the railing on the ship. They keep your crew from going overboard. Literally and figuratively.

Captain’s Log: The Notepad Lesson

Dear Captain’s Log,

I finally understand the notepad. Today I gave Compass a mission briefing. Three pages long. THREE PAGES. I described the weather, the tides, the history of the island, the political situation of the neighboring ports, what kind of birds live there, and – oh yes, somewhere on page two – the actual destination.

Compass sailed to an island full of parrots. Wrong island. But the birds were spot on.

I can almost hear Compass saying “You talked a lot about parrots, Captain!” She’s not wrong. That’s the worst part.

Tomorrow’s briefing: three sentences. Where to go. What to do. How to know you’re done. That’s it.

Try This!

Here’s a challenge. You have exactly three sentences to explain a task to someone. That’s it. Three.

Try these:

Explain how to set the table for dinner. Three sentences.

Explain how to find a book at the library. Three sentences.

Explain your favorite game to someone who’s never played it. Three sentences.

Hard, isn’t it? You have to choose what really matters and leave out everything else. That’s exactly what a captain does when filling the crew’s notepad.

Now try giving your three sentences to someone. Could they do the task? What did you leave out? What would you change?

When Things Go Wrong

Okay. So. You’ve got rules, checklists, and good orders. Everything should go perfectly from now on, right?

Ha. No. Not even close.

Every captain has bad days. Days when the crew does something so silly, so unexpected, so completely bonkers that all you can do is sit down, take a deep breath, and wonder why you ever got out of bed.

These are my favorite stories from the Captain’s Log. Every one taught me something important.

Story 1: The Eager Refactorer

One Tuesday, I noticed a small problem. The flag on the main mast was hanging upside down. Easy fix, right? Just flip the flag.

I called Rusty over. “Hey Rusty, the flag is upside down. Can you fix it?”

Rusty saluted and climbed the mast. Five minutes later, I looked up. The flag was… gone. In its place was a brand-new flag that Rusty had designed himself. It was very creative. It had stars and stripes and a picture of a seagull.

But that wasn’t all. Rusty had also decided the mast needed a fresh coat of paint. And the ropes “looked old,” so he replaced them. And the crow’s nest “could use a window,” so he was building one. Out of spare planks. From the deck. Which now had a hole in it. Gerald the spider had relocated to the crow’s nest in protest.

Thirty-two things had changed. The flag was still upside down.

“Rusty!” I yelled. “I just wanted you to flip the flag!”

Rusty looked hurt. “But I made everything better!”

What the Captain Learned: You already know the drill by now – boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. “Flip the flag on the main mast. Don’t change anything else.” Rusty means well. He just needs a fence around his enthusiasm.

Story 2: The Made-Up Map

We needed to find Coconut Island. I asked Compass to chart a course.

Compass pulled out a beautiful map. It showed a winding route through three straits, past a lighthouse, around a reef, and straight to Coconut Island. The map had little labels, depth markings, and even tiny drawings of fish. It was the most detailed map I’d ever seen.

There was just one problem. None. Of. It. Was. Real.

The three straits? Invented. The lighthouse? Imaginary. The reef? Compass made it up. Even Coconut Island was in the wrong spot – about two hundred miles from where it actually is. (Add it to the collection: Whispering Caves, Coral Arch, Sapphire Strait, and now a whole fake ocean.)

But the map looked perfect. That’s the scary part. Compass wasn’t lying. She was confident. She truly believed every line she’d drawn.

We sailed for half a day before I realized we were heading toward open ocean with no island in sight.

What the Captain Learned: Pretty maps can be full of lies. If Compass says “turn left at the lighthouse,” look out the window. Is there actually a lighthouse? Your crew can be incredibly convincing even when they are completely, totally, 100% wrong.

Story 3: The Loop

The anchor was stuck. I asked Echo to pull it up.

Echo pulled. The chain jammed. Echo pulled harder. The chain jammed again. Echo tried pulling from a different angle. The chain jammed from a different angle.

I went below deck to work on something else. When I came back an hour later, Echo was still pulling the anchor. Same chain. Same jam. Over and over.

Echo had tried nineteen different ways to pull. Some were basically the same pull with a slightly different grip. A few made the jam worse. At one point, Echo had wrapped the chain around the mast, which created a whole new problem.

The thing is, the anchor wasn’t stuck because of how we were pulling. It was caught on a rock at the bottom. No amount of pulling from the deck would fix it. Someone needed to dive down and unhook it.

But Echo didn’t know that. Echo just kept trying the same kind of fix, again and again, because that’s what Echo knew how to do.

What the Captain Learned: If your crew tries the same thing three times and it doesn’t work, stop them. Don’t let them try a fourth time, or a fifth, or a nineteenth. Something bigger is wrong. Step in, look at the problem yourself, and figure out a completely different plan.

Story 4: The Forgotten Rule

One morning, I told Echo something important: “We never use metal nails on this ship. Only wooden pegs. The saltwater rusts metal and it weakens the hull. This is the most important rule on the ship.”

Echo nodded. “Got it, Captain. Wooden pegs only.”

For the first few repairs, Echo was perfect. Wooden pegs everywhere. Beautiful work.

Then I asked Echo to fix the railing, the storage bins, the bench, the ladder, and the sleeping bunks. One repair after another, all morning long.

By the time Echo got to the sleeping bunks, I heard a clang clang clang from below deck. I ran down. Echo was hammering metal nails into the bunk frame. A whole box of them.

“Echo! What about the rule? No metal nails!”

Echo looked at me, confused. “What rule?”

The rule had faded. Too many other tasks had piled on top of it. The instruction I gave at the start of the morning was buried under hours of new information.

What the Captain Learned: Your crew’s memory is like a glass of water. It can only hold so much. If you keep pouring in new tasks, the old instructions spill over the rim. For really important rules, write them on the wall. Don’t just say them once and hope they stick.

Story 5: The Helpful Overpack

I asked Rusty to pack a picnic lunch for our day trip. “Just something simple,” I said. “Sandwiches and water.”

Rusty took this very seriously. He packed the sandwiches. Then a tablecloth, “because picnics need tablecloths.” Then napkins. Cups. A full set of silverware. A lantern, “in case we stay until dark.” A tent, “in case it rains.” A backup tent. A small stove, cooking pots, three kinds of seasoning, a hammock, and – I still can’t believe this – a folding bookshelf.

The picnic basket now weighed two hundred pounds. We couldn’t even lift it off the ship. Gerald was living in the backup tent.

“Rusty,” I sighed. “I just wanted sandwiches.”

“But what if you needed the stove?” Rusty asked, genuinely worried. “Or a book?”

What the Captain Learned: Your crew wants to be helpful. Sometimes they’re too helpful. If you want something simple, say exactly what to pack and then add the magic words: “Nothing else.” Rusty’s heart is in the right place, even when the folding bookshelf isn’t.

The Big Lesson

Here’s the thing about all these stories. The crew wasn’t trying to cause trouble. Rusty was being helpful. Compass was being confident. Echo was being persistent. Those are all good qualities! They just need a captain to aim them in the right direction.

When things go wrong – and they will go wrong – don’t blame the crew. Ask yourself: “Did I set good boundaries? Did I write a checklist? Did I check the work along the way?”

Usually, the honest answer is “…no.” And that’s fine! Every captain makes these mistakes. The great captains just learn fast.

Remember your mom watching the screen? The green lines and the red lines? The red lines were things going wrong. And the green lines were the helper fixing them. Your mom wasn’t worried about the red lines because she knew they were part of the process. Mistakes, then fixes. Try, check, adjust. That’s how it works.

Try This!

Play the “Bad Instructions” game with a friend. One person closes their eyes. The other person gives directions to walk across the room and pick up an object. But you can only use five words at a time!

See what goes wrong. Did they bump into a chair? Walk past the object? Go the wrong direction?

Now try again with better instructions. Did it go smoother the second time?

That’s how captains learn – by watching what goes wrong and making the instructions better.

Knowing When to Do It Yourself

After six chapters of crew disasters, you might think this book is all about getting your crew to do things right. But here’s a twist.

Sometimes the smartest thing a captain can do is… not use the crew at all.

I know. After all that work learning how to give orders and write checklists. But hear me out.

Some Jobs Are Faster by Hand

Imagine you need to tie your shoe. You could call Rusty over, explain what a shoelace is, describe how a bow knot works, wait while he tries it, check to make sure he didn’t tie your shoes together (he will), untie them, and retie them yourself anyway.

Or you could just… tie your shoe. Three seconds. Done.

Some jobs are so small that asking for help takes longer than doing it. Moving a cup. Flipping a switch. Fixing a tiny spelling mistake. By the time you’ve explained the job, you could’ve done it three times.

Here’s the rule: if the explaining takes longer than the doing, just do it yourself.

Some Jobs Need a Human Heart

Here’s something your crew can never, ever do: care.

If you broke your friend’s favorite toy, your crew could write a perfect apology note. Beautiful handwriting. The right words. Maybe even a little poem at the end.

But should you hand your friend a note that a robot wrote? You already know the answer. No way.

Your friend deserves to hear you say sorry. In your own clumsy, fumbling words. Even if you stumble. Even if your voice gets shaky. That’s what makes it real.

Some things need a human heart:

Saying sorry when you mess up.

Cheering up a friend who’s sad.

Making a hard choice that affects other people.

Telling someone something they don’t want to hear.

These aren’t crew jobs. These are you jobs. People can tell the difference between words from the heart and words from a machine. Your crew is smart, but they don’t have feelings. You do. That’s your actual superpower – bigger than any checklist.

Some Jobs Are How You Learn

Let’s say you’re learning to swim. You could ask Compass to explain how swimming works. “Move your arms like this, kick your legs like that, breathe to the side.”

Great advice! But do you know how to swim now?

Nope. You’d sink like a rock.

You learn to swim by getting in the water. By accidentally swallowing some of it (yuck). By sinking a few times. By kicking wrong and splashing your brother right in the face. By slowly, slowly figuring out how to float.

The struggle is the learning. Skip the struggle and you skip the lesson.

This is true for so many things:

You learn math by working through hard problems, not by having someone whisper the answers.

You learn to draw by making a thousand bad drawings.

You learn to ride a bike by falling off. (Several times.)

You learn to cook by burning a few things.

If you let your crew do all the hard stuff, you might get the result you want. But you won’t get the skill. And skills are yours forever. They live in your brain and your hands. Nobody can take them away.

Use your crew to help you learn. Ask them to explain things. Ask them “why does this work?” Ask them to check your work after you try it yourself. But don’t ask them to do the learning for you. That part is yours.

Practice Makes Your Brain Stronger

Your brain is like a muscle. Solve a hard problem? It gets stronger. Figure something out after struggling? New connections grow.

But if you never lift anything because Rusty carries everything for you? Your arms turn to noodles. Your brain works the same way. Let the crew do all the thinking and your own thinking gets rusty. (Not Rusty-rusty. Actual rusty.)

The best captains stay sharp. They use the crew for the heavy lifting, but they still climb the mast sometimes. They still tie their own knots. They still read the stars at night, even when Compass is standing right there with a map. (Especially because Compass’s map might include the “Moonbeam Reef,” which – you guessed it – does not exist.)

Why stay sharp? Because someday the crew won’t be around. And when that day comes, the captain needs to know how to sail.

Remember your mom? She didn’t let her AI helper decide what to build. She decided that herself because she knew what the school needed. The helper was fast, but your mom had the understanding. That’s the part you never hand over.

When to Ask for Help and When to Do It Yourself

Here’s a handy way to think about it:

Ask your crew when:

The job is big and would take you a long time.

You know exactly what you want and can explain it clearly.

You can check the work when they’re done.

You’ve already done this kind of thing before and understand it.

Do it yourself when:

The job is tiny and quick.

You’re still learning how to do it.

It needs your personal touch – like feelings, creativity, or care.

You can’t explain what you want clearly enough.

The smartest captains switch between “crew time” and “me time” all day long. Not too proud to ask for help. Not too lazy to do things themselves.

Captain’s Log: The Time I Forgot How

Dear Captain’s Log,

I got so used to asking Rusty to tie the knots that today, when Rusty was busy (building something on the Practice Island – I’m afraid to ask what), I reached for a rope and… froze. I couldn’t remember how to tie a bowline. Me! I used to tie them in my sleep!

It took ten embarrassing minutes to figure it out again. A seagull watched the whole thing. Very judgmental. Gerald watched too, from his web. I swear he was shaking his head.

New rule: every day, I do at least one thing by hand. The crew does the rest. But the captain never forgets how to sail. Even if the seagulls are watching.

Try This!

Pick something you’re learning right now – a math topic, a drawing skill, a sport, anything.

Try doing it two ways:

First, ask someone (or a computer) to just give you the answer or do it for you. How does that feel?

Then try doing it yourself, even if it’s hard. Ask for hints if you get stuck, but don’t ask for the answer.

Which way taught you more? Which way felt better when you finally got it right?

That proud feeling when you figure something out on your own? That’s what being a captain is all about.

Captain of a Fleet

You’ve been captaining one ship with Rusty, Compass, and Echo. You’ve survived painted cats, imaginary straits, and a two-hundred-pound picnic basket. You’re doing great.

But what happens when the job is bigger than one ship can handle?

What if you need to explore three islands at the same time? You can’t sail to three places at once. But you can send three ships.

More Ships, More Speed

Imagine you need to get ready for a big voyage. There are three jobs:

Fix the sails.

Load the food.

Draw the maps.

If one crew member does all three jobs, one after another, it takes all day. But if you have three crew members, each doing one job at the same time? You’re done by lunch.

That’s the magic of working in parallel. Instead of one ship doing everything, you have a little fleet. Each ship handles one piece of the mission. They all work at the same time. When they’re done, you put the pieces together.

But Here’s the Tricky Part

More ships means more to keep track of. You can’t just send three ships off and hope for the best. (You’ve met your crew. You know how “hope for the best” ends.)

What if Rusty is loading food onto Ship A, but Echo is also loading food onto Ship A? Double the food on one ship, none on the others. And knowing Rusty, he’s also packed a backup tent and a folding bookshelf.

The captain’s most important job with a fleet is coordination. That means making sure each ship knows:

What their job is.

What is not their job.

How their piece fits with the other pieces.

The secret is to find jobs that don’t bump into each other. Fixing sails and loading food are separate jobs. They use different parts of the ship. Different supplies. Different skills. They can happen at the same time without any trouble.

But “fix the sails” and “repaint the mast” can’t happen at the same time – because they both need someone climbing the same mast! You’d want to do those one after another instead.

Splitting the Work

Before you send your fleet out, you need to think carefully about how to divide the job. Ask yourself:

Can these pieces be done separately? If Rusty doesn’t need to wait for Echo, and Echo doesn’t need to wait for Compass, they can all work at the same time. Great split!

Do any pieces depend on each other? If Echo needs the maps before he can navigate, then the maps come first. No maps, no sailing.

Will anyone fight over tools? If two crew members both need the only hammer, someone has to wait. (And if Rusty has the hammer, good luck getting it back. He’s probably “improving” it.)

Splitting work well is one of the hardest parts of being a fleet captain. But it’s also one of the most powerful things you can learn.

Putting the Pieces Together

Each ship comes back with its piece of the mission done. Now you need to put it all together.

Sometimes this is easy. Ship A has the food. Ship B has the maps. Ship C has fresh sails. Nothing overlaps. Everything fits together like puzzle pieces. Beautiful!

But sometimes the pieces don’t quite match. Ship A changed the way the cargo is organized. Ship C moved some cargo to make room for the sails. Now the cargo area is a jumbled mess because both ships rearranged it differently.

When this happens, the captain has to step in. You look at both plans, figure out what fits, and make one final version that works. This is something only you can do. Your crew can do the work, but you understand the whole picture.

Your Job Gets Bigger

When you go from one ship to a fleet, your job changes. Less sailing. More thinking.

With one ship, you might scrub the deck alongside Rusty. With a fleet, you’re too busy making sure nobody is sailing toward an imaginary strait or packing a backup tent.

You become more like a coach than a player. A coach doesn’t run on the field. A coach watches the whole game, sees the big picture, and tells each player where to go. That’s you now, Captain. Less scrubbing. More strategy.

Teams of Captains

Here’s one more level to think about. What if you’re not the only captain?

In really big projects, there might be a whole team of captains. Each captain has their own crew and their own ship. Together, the team handles a mission that’s too big for any one captain.

When a team of captains works together, they need the same things your crew needs: clear communication, good rules, and a shared plan. The rulebook matters even more now, because every captain’s crew is reading it. If the rulebook is good, every ship does things the same way. If the rulebook is messy, every ship is different and nothing fits together.

The best teams share what they learn. When one captain discovers a new trick, they tell the others. When one captain makes a mistake, they share the story so nobody else makes the same one. That’s how a team gets better together.

How Many Ships Is Too Many?

Here’s a surprise: more ships isn’t always better.

If the job is small, sending three ships is actually slower than sending one. All that extra planning – splitting the work, briefing each crew, checking on each ship, putting the pieces together – takes longer than just doing the job with one crew.

It’s like using a bulldozer to dig a hole for a flower. Sure, the bulldozer is powerful. But a shovel would’ve been done ten minutes ago.

A smart fleet captain knows when to send the fleet and when to send one ship. Big mission with separate parts? Fleet. Everything else? One ship, one crew, keep it simple.

Captain’s Log: The Three Ships Disaster

Dear Captain’s Log,

I had a simple job. Build a new dock. I decided to be clever and use all three ships. Ship A: left side. Ship B: right side. Ship C: the walkway connecting them. Easy, right?

Ha.

Ship A built their side three feet high. Ship B built their side four feet high. Ship C tried to connect them and ended up with a lopsided ramp. Also, Ship A used round posts and Ship B used square posts. The whole thing looked like it was designed by a dizzy seagull.

I spent the afternoon rebuilding the dock myself while Gerald watched from a piling.

Captain’s Log: The Dock Done Right

Dear Captain’s Log,

Tried the dock again this month. Bigger one this time. But I did it differently.

Before anyone touched a plank, I drew ONE plan. Four feet high. Square posts. Oak wood. I nailed a copy to the wall of every ship. Rusty’s crew would cut the wood on the Practice Island. Compass’s crew would lay the foundation posts – I gave her exact positions measured from the REAL lighthouse, so she couldn’t invent any imaginary ones. Echo’s crew would assemble the walkway once Rusty delivered the pre-cut wood.

The key: Rusty finishes before Echo starts. Compass works at the same time as Rusty, since foundations and wood-cutting don’t overlap.

One full day of work. But when we were done? Level. Sturdy. Beautiful. Every post matched. Every board fit. I may have teared up a little. Gerald definitely didn’t care, but Splash the dolphin carving seemed proud.

Three ships, one shared plan. That’s the recipe.

Try This!

Find two friends or family members. Give everyone the same task: draw a house. But don’t talk to each other while you draw!

When you’re done, try to combine the three drawings into one picture. Do the houses match? Are they the same size? The same style?

Now try again. This time, spend two minutes planning together first. Agree on the size, the color, and the style. Then draw separately.

Did the second try work better? That’s the power of coordination!

Go Build Something

You made it, Captain.

You started this book eating cereal, watching mysterious green and red lines on a screen. Now look at you. You know Rusty, Compass, and Echo – their strengths, their quirks, and their very creative approach to following instructions. You know about Green, Yellow, and Red jobs. You can write a checklist that actually works. You know when to send the crew and when to do it yourself. You’ve even run a whole fleet.

Not bad for someone who’s probably still in pajamas. (Kidding. Sort of.)

The Crew Changes. The Ship Stays.

Here’s one last thing I want you to remember. It might be the most important thing in the whole book.

Your crew will change. New helpers will show up – faster, smarter, better at their jobs. The crew you work with today won’t be the same crew you work with next year. That’s okay. (Though I’ll miss the dolphin carvings.)

But the ship stays. The ship is your project – the thing you’re building. Your rules, your plans, your ideas. Crews come and go. The ship is yours.

And you stay. You’re the captain. You were the captain before you opened this book, and you’ll be the captain long after you close it. The tools will change. The helpers will change. But you – your brain, your curiosity, your heart – that’s the part that matters most. Even Gerald knows that. (Gerald is a very wise spider.)

You Don’t Need Permission

You don’t need to be a grown-up to start. You don’t need a fancy computer. You don’t need to know everything first. (Nobody knows everything first. Not even moms.)

You just need to be curious. Ask a question. Try something. See what happens. If it breaks, figure out why. If it works, figure out why too.

The best captains in history weren’t the ones who waited for perfect weather. They were the ones who raised the sail and figured out the wind as they went.

One Last Order, Captain

Remember the beginning of this book? You were sitting at the kitchen table, eating cereal. Your mom’s AI helper was writing code on the screen. Green lines. Red lines. You asked “Is it fixing itself?”

Now you know the answer. It wasn’t fixing itself. Your mom was the captain. She gave the orders. She set the boundaries. She checked the work. She decided when it was done.

And remember what she said? “Let’s build something together.”

You’re ready now.

Tonight – not tomorrow, not next week, tonight – try something. Ask a computer a question you’ve been wondering about. Build something small. Write a story and ask an AI to help you make it better. Draw a picture and see what happens when you describe it to a helper.

Start small. Write a checklist. Set your boundaries. Check the work. And when your helper goes off course – because it will – remember Rusty, Compass, and Echo. You know their tricks by now. You’ve got this.

Your crew is ready. Your ship is waiting. The ocean is wide and full of islands nobody has explored yet. (Real ones this time. Not Compass’s.)

Go build something, Captain.

Fair winds and following seas.

Captain’s Dictionary

Before you go, here are some big words you’ve learned on this voyage – explained the captain’s way.

Agent
A helper that doesn’t just answer one question – it works in steps. It tries something, checks if it worked, and tries again. Like a treasure hunter who reads the map, digs, finds nothing, moves three steps left, and digs again. That’s an agent.

Hallucination
When Compass is so sure she found the Coral Arch… except it doesn’t exist. That’s a hallucination – when your AI helper makes something up without realizing it. It sounds confident. It looks right. But it’s totally invented. Always check the real map.

Context Window
The notepad in your crew’s head. It can only hold so many pages. Stuff it with things that don’t matter and the important stuff falls right off the edge. That’s why good captains keep instructions short and put the important stuff first.

Sandbox
The Practice Island! A safe place where your crew can try things, make a glorious mess, and nothing bad happens to the real ship. Build a sandcastle and smash it. Dig a hole and fill it back in. All the experiments, none of the risk.

Prompt
The orders you give your crew. Everything you write on the notepad before they sail off – what to do, what not to do, and how to know when they’re done. A good prompt is like Captain Maya’s instructions: clear, specific, and impossible to misunderstand.

Boundaries
The railing on the ship. They keep your crew from going overboard. “Fix the rip in the sail. Don’t touch anything else.” Without boundaries, Rusty would redecorate your entire ship by Tuesday. (He almost did. Twice.)

Coordination
What a fleet captain does – making sure Ship A, Ship B, and Ship C are all working on different pieces of the job and not bumping into each other. Remember the lopsided dock? That’s what happens without coordination.

Loop
When Echo pulls the same stuck anchor nineteen times without trying something different. If the same fix doesn’t work after three tries, something bigger is wrong. Stop pulling. Think. Try a completely different plan.

To my kids —
you are the best crew I have ever had.
This whole thing was for you.
Always.