Time to stop worrying and start building your hive of AI agents
When I first started thinking seriously about AI agents, I felt the same way I did when I first encountered AI.
Too technical. Too complex. A little too much time upfront.
I’m fortunate to be surrounded by brilliant people who challenge my thinking on the regular. I interviewed one of them for the first episode of our new podcast, Slideshow with Dave Hayward.
Introducing Nadia from Curiosity.
In the episode, Nadia, founder of Curiosity, casually dropped into conversation that she’d built an entire ecosystem of AI helpers: her own little “curiosity hive”. They’ve got names like Potty Problemo and Raggedy Ann. No coding. No computer science degree. Just a lot of curiosity and a willingness to play.
“I wanted to show people what’s possible without needing to know how to code,” Nadia told me.
“I built a simple automation that links together a few different AI agents — and it’s turned into this ecosystem that genuinely helps me think better, work better, and live better. And honestly, it’s fun. Like, it’s actually joyful.”
Why AI feels harder than it really is
One of the most significant barriers to getting started with AI isn’t the technology itself. It’s the idea we have of it.
We imagine you need perfect data, a considerable budget, and a Phd even to get started with AI agents.
And if you’re a business leader or marketer, the pressure is even worse: every day there’s another breathless headline about how AI (especially AI agents) will replace your job, or save your job, or reinvent your career — depending on the vibe that week.
No wonder so many people freeze.
But as Nadia put it:
“People think you have to have everything perfect to get started. You don’t. You can take what you have, even if it’s messy and half-formed, and build from there. That’s the magic of it — you’re creating something that’s actually designed around you and your life.”
Progress doesn’t start with perfection. It begins with curiosity.
Building a hive, not a fortress
Nadia’s Curiosity Hive are not big scary systems. They’re friends — each with a personality, a job to do, and a silly little name. (Seriously: Potty, Raggedy Ann, Cypher, Ursula. It’s like a superhero team.)
In Slideshow, we get a demo from Nadia on how they work together, passing information from one to the next:
- One AI agent pulls out key points from a podcast she listens to on a run.
- Another AI agent structures that information into something useful.
- Another identifies the really good stuff — the “secret sauce” moments.
- Another drafts a LinkedIn post to share it with the world.
It’s a simple chain of action. And because Nadia made it personal, playful, and low-stakes, it feels inviting, not intimidating.
Watching her describe her team of AI agents, it didn’t feel like setting up a fortress of automation. It felt like tending a garden or, more aptly, a hive.
You can start today
The truth is, anyone can start building their own curiosity hive of AI agents.
You don’t need to build ten agents. Start with one.
You don’t need to be technical. You just need to be willing to explore.
It might be something as simple as creating an AI “thought partner” to help you reflect on tricky decisions on ChatGPT, if that’s where you are right now.
Or setting up a quick assistant to sort your messy notes after meetings; or training a little buddy to help you brainstorm social posts when you’re staring at a blank page.
The magic isn’t in the technology itself. It’s in the way you personalise it. The way you shape it around your life, your needs, your imagination.
A little messy, a lot joyful
One of my favourite parts of the chat was Nadia talking about how AI still feels weird. It’s not perfect. It’s not polished. Sometimes it spits out hilariously wrong things.
And that’s okay.
Part of building your AI agents hive is embracing that jagged frontier exploring what your AI helpers are good at, what they’re terrible at, and what surprises they might have up their sleeves.
It’s messy. It’s unpredictable. And if you approach it with a spirit of play, it can also be incredibly joyful.
What’s waiting for you on the other side
Imagine having your own handpicked team of experts, mentors, organisers, idea-starters — available anytime you need them.
Imagine feeling supported instead of overwhelmed. Curious instead of intimidated.
That’s what’s on offer when you stop waiting for the perfect moment to get started and just start building. It’s pretty hard to beat the way Nadia concluded the first episode of Slideshow, so I’m not going to attempt to do it for this article, either.
“There’s a reason why I called my business Curiosity, and that is because in this day, in this age, in this era, let curiosity be your compass. You know, play, explore, discover. Ethan Mollock says every person has got to, you know, invest 10 hours of their time to start understanding what AI is about and that if you haven’t had three sleepless nights about the impact of AI, you haven’t got it yet.
Get on the tools, explore, play, find your jagged frontier. And the only way that you’re going to be able to do that is to invest your time.”