  We propose active steering protocols for quantum state preparation in quantum
circuits where each system qubit is connected to a single detector qubit,
employing a simple coupling selected from a small set of steering operators.
The decision is made such that the expected cost-function gain in one time step
is maximized. We apply these protocols to several many-qubit models. Our
results are underlined by three remarkable insights. First, we show that the
standard fidelity does not give a useful cost function; instead, successful
steering is achieved by including local fidelity terms. Second, although the
steering dynamics acts on each system qubit separately, entanglement in the
generated target state is introduced, and can be tuned at will, by performing
Bell measurements on detector qubit pairs after every time step. This
implements a weak-measurement variant of entanglement swapping. Third,
numerical simulations suggest that the active steering protocol can reach
arbitrarily designated target states, including passively unsteerable states
such as the $N$-qubit W state.
