Agents don't fail because they lack information. They simply don't know which information matters right now, for this situation, with these constraints.

Aristotle called that phronesis ...

... or practical wisdom. This is the capacity to read a situation and act well within it.

Not a skill you look up.

Not a rule you apply.

Something closer to judgment built from experience and accountability.

It's what's missing when a documentation agent passes every test and still produces content that misleads the person who actually needs it at 11pm trying to fix a production problem.

We keep trying to solve this with better prompts, more context, tighter specifications. Those help.

But they're all attempts to simulate phronesis by anticipating every situation in advance. And situations have a way of not cooperating.

That's why a "docs as tests" approach is so crucial.

I wrote about it this week on Cyborgs Writing, check it out.