---
title: Why I Named My AI Leeroy
date: 2026-10-18
place: Vancouver, BC
author: Sean Bruce-Hayes
---

# Why I Named My AI Leeroy

My AI is called Leeroy. Yes, that Leeroy.

If you haven’t seen [the Leeroy Jenkins video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLyOj_QD4a4), watch it first. This will make considerably more sense.

A group of World of Warcraft players are planning their next move. There’s a strategy. There are roles. Someone has even calculated their probability of survival: 32.33%, “repeating, of course.”

I appreciate that level of precision in a plan that’s about to get everyone killed.

Then Leeroy charges in, announces himself at full volume, and the whole thing falls apart.

Naturally, I thought: that’s what I should name the AI I work with.

Hear me out.

AI is moving fast. Most of what I learn comes from actually doing something with it. Trying an idea. Building a version. Finding out what works and what absolutely does not.

You can spend weeks comparing tools and planning the perfect setup. Meanwhile, someone else has built three versions and learned something from each one.

At some point you have to go into the room.

So yes, I want some Leeroy energy. I’d just like better than a 32.33% chance of coming back out.

Repeating the experiment is useful. Repeating the slaughter feels like a process issue.

Because an AI can move very quickly while being completely wrong about what you meant. Give it a vague instruction and enough access and it can have a remarkably productive afternoon doing entirely the wrong thing.

Impressively efficient. Completely wrong.

This is where the infrastructure matters. Not because organising folders is my dream hobby, but because the thing doing the work needs to understand the work.

What are we trying to accomplish? What have we already decided? Which information is current? What can it do on its own, and when does it need to stop and ask?

The context needs to reach the AI before it acts. Otherwise you’re just the guy running behind it yelling “Stick to the plan!”

Bro. You left the plan in another chat.

That’s the bit I’m interested in getting right. Give it the relevant information, a clear job and sensible limits. Let it move. Check what actually happened. Improve the next attempt.

Not a made-up confidence score with an impressive number of decimal places. Evidence that we’re making better decisions.

If we’re testing something we can undo, let’s go. Show me a first version. We’ll learn more from that than another discussion about what we could potentially build.

If it’s about to spend money, contact someone or make a change we can’t easily reverse, checking first is sensible. Leeroy can wait ten seconds.

But if every tiny action needs a committee meeting, we’ve built a very expensive way to remain standing outside the room.

I’m still responsible for the brief, the access and the decisions. Naming my AI after Leeroy Jenkins isn’t a liability waiver.

It does make the conversations funnier, though.

I want the willingness to charge in, with better odds of coming back out. Give it the context. Make the plan. Keep the mistakes small enough that we get another attempt.

Then stop standing outside the room.

Preferably with better than a 32.33% chance of survival.

Repeating, of course.

LEEEROOOY JEEEENKINS!