Three humans, eight agents, one team. The founder, a subject matter expert at the founder's company, and an AI engineer. PM, developer, QA, writer, designer, web publisher, email marketer, and DevOps are all AI agents.
The trap most companies fall into is hiring humans for roles that are now agent work. Hiring a junior PM, a junior developer, a junior QA in 2026 is a bet against the leverage curve. The Infinite Leverage team takes the opposite bet: keep humans for what only humans can do, let agents hold everything else.
Get this wrong and the agents on your Mac Mini sit unused while you keep hiring expensive humans to do work an agent could do in an afternoon.
The trap most companies fall into is hiring humans for roles that are now agent work. Hiring a junior PM, a junior developer, a junior QA in 2026 is a bet against the leverage curve. The Infinite Leverage team takes the opposite bet: keep humans for what only humans can do, let agents hold everything else.
Get this wrong and the agents on your Mac Mini sit unused while you keep hiring expensive humans to do work an agent could do in an afternoon.
Each one holds something an agent cannot fake. Each one is irreplaceable. Three roles, three reasons.
Two teams of four. Each agent is a folder (Protocol 03). The three humans direct them, review their output, and own the judgment calls. The humans hold what cannot be agented yet. The agents hold the execution volume.
Every time you feel the urge to hire someone, ask: can an agent hold this role for the first 12 months? Usually the answer is yes for PM, Developer, QA, DevOps, Writer, Designer, Web Publisher, Email Marketer. Usually the answer is no for Founder, SME, AI Engineer.
If the answer for a role outside the three humans is yes (an agent could do it), you have just found leverage your competitors are paying for.
Open a doc. List every person on your team and every paid contractor. You will map each to one of the 11 IL roles, then mark the gaps.
Every full-time person, part-time, contractor, freelancer. Names and current job title.
Founder, SME, AI Engineer, PM, Developer, QA, DevOps, Writer, Designer, Web Publisher, Email Marketer. Some people fill more than one. That is fine; note it.
Two writers? One human PM and the PM agent? Two QAs? Where you have human + agent in the same role, ask: does the human still need to be there, or has the agent absorbed the work?
Any of the 11 roles with no one? That is a gap. For roles outside the three humans (Founder, SME, AI Engineer), the first move is to install the agent, not hire.
Pick any work in flight. Walk it from PM agent to Developer agent. Watch the seam. The first handoff feels novel; by the tenth, it is invisible.
A team map showing humans, agents, and gaps. A first-hand sense of which seams are tight and which are loose. A starting list for the next hire conversation (and the next not-hire conversation).
You map your team to the three human roles plus eight agent roles. Gaps become visible. Then you run a real PM-to-Developer handoff and see exactly how the seams work.