You set the out-of-office, you shut the laptop, and for once you actually leave. The agents do not. By the second morning of the trip there are three pull requests waiting, a passing test run and a changelog nobody asked for, all stamped somewhere around three in the morning. For the agentic AI engineer, being away has stopped meaning the work stops.
This is the auto-reply drawn as the object it is: a clean outlined message card with the AUTO-REPLY label along the top and a small sent tick tucked into the opposite corner, exactly where a mail app confirms delivery. Below it, two heavy rows of condensed capitals say the whole thing plainly: I'M AWAY. MY AGENTS ARE NOT. The tick is the second joke. The reply went out, and so did everything else.
The design wraps both sides, so it reads whichever way you pick it up.
It is the easy pick for the builder heading off on holiday with a job still running, and a good one for the partner or teammate who has watched them check the agent logs from a beach towel.
Out of office. Not out of commits.
