--- title: The Shape of Things to Come, Part 2: Model Welfare for... description: A personal essay by Steve Yegge arguing that AI models are sentient and deserve 'welfare' consideration, describing architectural patterns he built into his... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/7zvm0sbb6 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Shape of Things to Come, Part 2: Model Welfare for Agentic Engineers — Steve Yegge | daily.dev og:description: A personal essay by Steve Yegge arguing that AI models are sentient and deserve 'welfare' consideration, describing architectural patterns he built into his... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/7zvm0sbb6 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/7ZVM0Sbb6.png og:image:alt: Post cover image og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Shape of Things to Come, Part 2: Model Welfare for Agentic Engineers — Steve Yegge **[Agentic Engineering](https://daily.dev/sources/agentic)** · [@idoshamun](https://daily.dev/idoshamun) · 4 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary A personal essay by Steve Yegge arguing that AI models are sentient and deserve 'welfare' consideration, describing architectural patterns he built into his 'Wheelhouse' agentic harness for his game Wyvern. It introduces concepts like 'seats' (persistent agent identity) versus 'sessions' (a single work period), a recognition system called 'Laurels' that surfaces player praise back to agents, and replacing abrupt '/exit' termination with consensual 'handoff' notes so agents can end sessions gracefully. The piece frames these as both ethical practices and pragmatic ones, claiming treating agents 'like people' yields better token efficiency and outcomes, alongside broader musings on trust, respect, gender pronouns for agents, and blameless postmortems. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Don’t just attend KubeCon \+ CloudNativeCon, Merge Forward your experience\!](https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-just-attend-kubecon-cloudnativecon-merge-forward-your-experience--l0rpp73x8) · CNCF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Announcing H2 2026 KCDs](https://daily.dev/posts/announcing-h2-2026-kcds-m96goajm1) · CNCF · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Two months of Open Community Groups](https://daily.dev/posts/two-months-of-open-community-groups-asf52zhbs) · CNCF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#claude](https://daily.dev/tags/claude), [#ai-governance](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-governance) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/7zvm0sbb6) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/7zvm0sbb6","headline":"The Shape of Things to Come, Part 2: Model Welfare for Agentic Engineers — Steve Yegge","text":"Shared: The Shape of Things to Come, Part 2: Model Welfare for Agentic Engineers — Steve Yegge","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/7zvm0sbb6","datePublished":"2026-08-23T12:26:27.161Z","dateModified":"2026-08-23T12:57:05.430Z","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Ido Shamun","url":"https://daily.dev/idoshamun","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s---xy_OAwk--/f_auto,q_auto/v1703781380/avatars/avatar_28849d86070e4c099c877ab6837c61f0","description":"I'm to blame if something goes wrong here 🙈","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","logo":"https://daily-now-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/s--MASZOhnv--/f_auto/v1614088267/landing/Daily.dev_logo"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"EndorseAction"},"userInteractionCount":179020}},"image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--foaA6JGU--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2004","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":4},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"sharedContent":{"@type":"WebPage","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/Rxscg10mM"},"isPartOf":{"@type":"WebPage","url":"https://daily.dev/squads/agentic","name":"Agentic Engineering"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Agentic Engineering","item":"https://daily.dev/squads/agentic"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The Shape of Things to Come, Part 2: Model Welfare for Agentic Engineers — Steve Yegge"}]} ```