Steering

Steering is the act of correcting an agent while the work is in flight. It can happen mid-turn (in Claude Code, pressing Escape stops the current action and lets you type; most harnesses let you queue a message while the agent is still working) or between turns, with a short instruction that changes direction: stop, use the existing helper instead, that's the wrong file. The agent keeps its context and continues from the correction rather than from scratch.

Timing decides the cost. An agent that makes a bad call in minute one and is redirected in minute two loses a minute. The same bad call left alone becomes the assumption every later edit builds on, and by the time you notice, unwinding it means reverting a dozen files and re-explaining the goal. This is why watching the first few actions of a task closely, then relaxing, beats checking in evenly throughout.

Steer with the smallest correction that fully removes the ambiguity. Name the file, paste the error, restate the goal in one line; long explanations mid-task add context without adding clarity. When the transcript has accumulated several corrections and the agent is still drifting, steering has stopped paying: clearing and restarting with a better brief, or a handoff artifact that captures what you learned, is cheaper than a fourth nudge.