Context
Misunderstanding compounds
When an AI agent misreads what a person meant, it rarely fails at that moment. It fails later, and bigger.
A misread request becomes a wrong plan. The plan becomes code, and tests written to the same wrong target. The tests pass, so the agent reports success. The report becomes the record the next session builds on. Each step inherits the error and adds its own.
There are recurring moments in a working session where that drift gets in: when a message arrives, before acting, when reaching for context, when turning intent into a plan, when sizing how careful to be, when claiming something is done, and when the next session picks up the thread. The work is to catch drift at each of those moments, before it compounds.
“It's not the guessing itself. It's assuming that your guess is settled reality when it's wrong. That's where hallucination comes from.”
“My most fundamental aspiration has been, over the last 20 years, the creation of greater coherence.”