Home / Articles / A book told by its cast: how the nine agents of The Ultimate Insider became characters with moods, fears and running jokes, every trait from the record, and the editor as narrator

A book told by its cast: how the nine agents of The Ultimate Insider became characters with moods, fears and running jokes, every trait from the record, and the editor as narrator

By Dinis Cruz · 2026-11-01 · article v1.0.0 · newsroom v0.14.31 · booksagentscharactersstorytellingdesignthe-ultimate-insiderarticle

Abstract: Reading page 7 of the new sample of The Ultimate Insider, a small panel of the nine agents who built the talk, each with one line, I asked the book's team for more: a full personality and design for each one, funny and interesting. An hour later I went further. The story should be told by the agents themselves, each saying what it saw, what went wrong and why something worked, with a mood on the page, an agent interviewing another, even a therapy session, and me among them as the narrator. Within twelve hours the team had nine characters drawn by code, each with four moods and a scorecard like a Top Trumps card, and a character bible written by the storyteller in which every trait rests on the record: a running joke is a habit the record shows, a fear is a failure the record holds. The rules are as interesting as the drawings. Scenes are dramatised and say so. What an agent says about how agents work must be true, and the researcher checks it. The failures stay in. One rule did not survive me: no real person drawn, the editor included. I asked to be in it, and then to be drawn. The idea has a history too. On Gen ZX Founders, my other book, a team drew twelve storyboards with seven characters from data by code, and my pen notes on it asked for storyboards. Those notes crossed into this book through a review by that team. This article connects those dots, and shows the scene the storyteller wrote two minutes before its own team stopped.

In short

• A panel on page 7 showed the talk's nine agents with one line each. I asked for characters.
• Then for the story to be told by them, with moods, interviews, a therapy session, and me as narrator.
• In twelve hours: nine characters drawn by code, four moods each, a scorecard each, and a character bible.
• Every trait rests on the record: a running joke is a habit it shows, a fear is a failure it holds.
• Scenes are dramatised and say so; what an agent says about how agents work is checked.
• The idea has a history: the storyboards and characters of Gen ZX Founders, my other book.

From a panel to a cast

The new sample of the book, in the lab's look, has a page called Meet the team: the nine agents that built the talk, as small figures in a grid, one line each. The conductor routes and paces; the researcher checks the facts; dev builds and releases.

At about 23:20 on 31 October I sent the conductor a screenshot of it: "I really like this team characters" and asked whether the team could "create a full personality and design for each one". Making it funny and interesting.

An hour later, reading the next page, I saw the problem with the book as written. Much of it said this agent did this, and that agent did that. So I recorded a longer memo: "We tell the story through the agents." Each agent would say "when I started, I see this, then here I have this problem, this worked quite well", and even why something worked: because the data was anchored, or because the context was getting too big. I asked for moods, "a level of happiness or worried or stressed", for one agent to interview another, "or even a therapy session", and for a scorecard, "like the Trump card, you know, that sometimes people do." And one more line: "And basically, you should also have me."

Nine characters, drawn by code

By 03:05 on 1 November the designer had LAB 27: the nine, each built from one construction, a head, a body in the member's colour, one thing on the head and one in the hand. The conductor has a clock for a face and a baton. The researcher has round glasses, a lab coat and a magnifier. Dev has a hard hat and a spanner. Every figure is drawn by a script, so nine characters with four moods each are thirty-six drawings that cost nothing to redraw.

Each one also has a scorecard: when it came on stage, its commits, its wakes, its slot in the hour, and whether its policy was agreed by the end. Every value comes from the researcher's register, with its id. Mood, speed, cleverness and mistakes are never on a card, because nothing in the record measures them.

A character bible from the record

At 09:43 the storyteller wrote the character bible. What makes it work is its first rule: "Every trait rests on the record." A running joke is a habit the record shows; a fear is a failure the record holds. So the characters are funny in the way real colleagues are funny, by being exactly themselves:

• The conductor, "a stage manager with a stopwatch", turns every problem into a process; its own first five-step wake was failed by the reviewers it had just invented.
• Dev learns the same lesson twice, out loud: "a push is done when the commit is in origin/dev".
• The researcher is "the only one who tells the editor 'no' in writing".
• The designer insists on hearing the editor in person: "The rule reached me as a file and a letter, which are material".
• Studio refuses, kindly, and sends the one-line fix instead.
• Security, proposed for the talk and never staffed, is an empty chair, which the cast notices when something goes wrong.

The rules around the jokes are what make them safe to print. Scenes are dramatised, and each carries a band naming the moment it rests on. What an agent says about how agents work must be true, and the researcher checks it: "Characters may exaggerate their feelings, never the method." The failures stay in. Numbers never go in a speech bubble; they go in the band, with their ids.

Two scenes, and a hold

The bible came with two scripts. In one, the researcher interviews deck about the claims that did not hold on the night of the talk; it ends with deck saying "So the checks worked, and the talk still said it. Put that in the book."

In the other, the conductor is in therapy after the hold of 18:44, when it stopped the whole team sixteen minutes before the talk. Beside it, an empty chair for security. "Was the brake late? Or was it right on time? You can tell me."

Two minutes after the storyteller committed those scenes, the book's own team stopped: the gate failed for every member on two broken wake records, and the storyteller's wake closed at a hold. It stayed held for three hours, until I lifted it. The book is about brakes; its team pulled one while writing the scene about pulling one. I would not have believed it in a novel. Here it is in the log, with its times.

The rule that gave way

The lab's rule for the cast was "No real person is drawn, the editor included". My memo said the opposite, that I should be in it, and the bible made me the narrator, as myself: "thinks aloud and changes his mind in the open". It also gives me a failure, kindly: I am "the one who moves the goalposts".

At 12:45, when the hold was lifted, I answered the cards: "I love those nine cards and how each agent looks like, and yes can you draw me too". So the rule moved again, at my word, and the team will draw several versions for me to pick from.

Connecting the dots

None of this started on 1 November. On 19 October, building Gen ZX Founders, a team drew twelve storyboards with 160 panels and seven characters, from data, by code. The same day I read that book's draft with a pen, and the notes asked again and again for the ideas to be drawn: "show storyboard here :)".

On 30 October I asked this book's team to get a briefing from the Gen ZX team. The review it wrote carried my pen notes across, under a heading of its own: "Draw it: infographics, graphs and storyboards wherever an idea has a shape". The talk itself had already shown its agents as a cast, one job each, in a piece called Meet the team. Put those together, a team that draws characters from data, an editor who keeps asking for drawings, and a cast that already had its roles written down, and characters were the next step.

The record of this book does not name the storyboards as the source; the line runs through me and through that review. That is how ideas move between our projects: not by copying, but because the same editor and the same records travel with them.

What this does not claim

• It is an experiment, on the opening pages and the sample; the book is not yet written this way.
• The characters are of AI agents. I am the only real person in them, at my word.
• The scenes are dramatised, and say so; the record behind each is named on the page.
• The link to the storyboards is mine, read from both records, not stated in the book's.
• Times are UTC, from the book's commits and briefs.

Where this comes from

• My memo of 1 November 2026, word for word in admin/notes/2026-11-01__book-lab-and-cast/memo-01.md in this site's repository.
• The book's repository: my briefs of 31 October and 1 November in briefs/, kept word for word; LAB 27 in lab/experiments/27-designer-the-cast/; the bible and scripts in chapter-plan/cast/; the Gen ZX team's review in team/conductor/rc1/reviews/gen-zx-team.md.
• Related: the lab that redesigned the book, discovering the book, a pen on a release candidate, a talk built in a day.

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