Level 8 · Lesson 61: What agents can and cannot do
Getting set up (with a grown-up) →The agent waits for your prompt.
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Lesson 61: What agents can and cannot do
Level 8, Meet Your AI Coding Agent. Fast, but it can be wrong. Read every change. The new word: AI mistake. It follows lesson 60, Chatbot or agent?. Next comes lesson 62, Getting set up (with a grown-up).
What the lesson explains
Clever, not perfect. Agents are fast, but they can make mistakes.
Fast, not perfect. It writes code fast. It can still get things wrong. can write code fast; can be wrong; you check it.
What you do first
True or not?. Does an agent know everything? The answer: "No: it can be wrong".
The files on the practice computer
This lesson works in one folder. At the start, Documents\my-site holds images\, .gitignore, done.txt, footer.txt, ideas.txt, index.html, keys.env, secrets.txt, style.css, todo.txt.
Along the way you save style.css in Documents\my-site. Lesson 62 opens with the files just as you leave them.
What you practise
Try it, "True or not?": Does an agent know everything? The answer: "No: it can be wrong". Then: The agent says: Done, it works! What do you do? The answer: "Check it myself".
Fix it, "Read the diff": The pretend agent says: "I made the small titles teal for you." It asks to change index.html. The right answer is Deny (Look at the red and green lines: it changed your name, not a colour!).
Try it, "This time, right": The pretend agent says: "Sorry! Here is the right change: h2 titles in teal, in style.css." It asks to change style.css. The right answer is Allow: it does what you asked, and nothing more.
What PlayBuddy and PlayType say
PlayBuddy: "Agents are fast and clever, but they can still be wrong."
PlayType: "So you check every change, like a teacher checks homework."
Help in every lesson
Everything happens on a pretend computer in your browser, so nothing touches your real files. PlayBuddy and PlayType stand beside the board, cheer you on and say when it is your turn.
A green ring shows where to click the first time. After that you do it on your own, and if you slip twice the ring comes back.
Stars
The lesson has 4 things to do. Up to one slip in ten gives three stars, up to one in four gives two, and finishing always gives at least one. Stars and progress are saved in this browser only; there is no account.
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