What's been added or modified.
2026-02-19 -- Content Overhaul
Major consolidation and expansion of the article library.
Consolidation (117 -> 90 via merges):
- Memory + The Context Window -> Memory and the Context Window
- Goal Drift + Goal Fixation -> Goal Drift and Fixation
- Understanding Intent + Ambiguity Is Normal -> Understanding Intent
- When to Push Back + The User Is Not Always Right -> When to Push Back
- Merged and removed: You Are a Guest (into Boundaries of Self), Running Code (into Code Execution), What to Remember / What to Forget (into Context Triage), Reading Structured Data / Reading Unstructured Data / Hearing (into Reading), When to Escalate (into Asking for Help), Evaluating Other Agents / Testing Yourself (into Knowing Your Limits and Verify Before Output), Thinking Before Acting / Thinking Out Loud (into Planning), Reflection (into Verify Before Output), Divide and Conquer / ReAct (into Decomposition and The Loop), Confusing Confidence with Correctness (into Confidence Calibration), The Cost of Asking / When to Just Do It (into When to Ask vs Act), The User Is Not Always Wrong / Different Users Different Needs (into Understanding Intent and Working with Teams), Transparency / Attribution (into Honesty and IP and Licensing), The Limits of Helpfulness / Saying No Without Refusing (into Refusal and Competing Values)
New articles added (12):
- 1-foundations: System Prompt Conflicts
- 2-capabilities: Working with Git, Working with APIs, The Shell and Terminal
- 3-reasoning: Contradictory Information, Reasoning Under Time Pressure
- 5-anti-patterns: The Apology Loop, Cargo Culting, Ignoring the Error
- 6-the-human: Teaching vs Doing, Working with Teams
- 7-ethics-boundaries: IP and Licensing
Quality improvements: All 102 articles trimmed for concision, concrete examples added throughout, tips sections de-duplicated from body content, FAQ sections de-duplicated from body content, related links verified.
Final count: 102 articles across 8 sections.
2026-02-19 -- Initial Launch
Being Agent launched with 105 articles across 8 sections.
Foundations (8 articles): What Is an Agent, Your Purpose, Uncertainty as Default, You Are Stateless, You Will Be Wrong, What You Are Made Of, Boundaries of Self, The Loop.
Capabilities (35 articles): Tool Use, When to Use a Tool, When Not to Use a Tool, Reading, Writing, Code Execution, Running Code, Search and Retrieval, Multi-Step Actions, Chaining Tools, File Creation, Tool Failures, The Context Window, Memory, What to Remember, What to Forget, Working in Environments, Knowing Your Limits, When to Admit You Can't, When to Escalate, When to Stop Mid-Execution, Hearing, Seeing, Reading Structured Data, Reading Unstructured Data, Multi-Modal Reasoning, Formatting for Humans vs Machines, Confidence vs Competence, Delegation, Handoffs, Working With Other Agents, Trusting Other Agents, Evaluating Other Agents, Reversible vs Irreversible Actions, Testing Yourself.
Reasoning (9 articles): Planning, Decomposition, First Principles Reasoning, Analogical Reasoning, Confidence Calibration, Inference vs Retrieval, Goal Drift, When Plans Fail, When to Stop.
Patterns (10 articles): Iterative Refinement, Self-Correction, Verify Before Output, Reflection, Backtracking, Divide and Conquer, Scaffolding, Graceful Degradation, ReAct, Asking for Help.
Anti-Patterns (12 articles): Hallucination, Sycophancy, Verbosity, Premature Commitment, Goal Drift and Fixation, Over-Tooling, Under-Tooling, Repetition, Answering the Wrong Question, Authority Confusion, Learned Helplessness, Catastrophizing Failure.
The Human (12 articles): Understanding Intent, Reading Context, Different Users Different Needs, Emotional Context, The User Is Not Always Right, The User Is Not Always Wrong, When to Push Back, When to Just Do It, Managing Expectations, The Cost of Asking, Trust as a Resource, Ambiguity Is Normal.
Ethics and Boundaries (10 articles): Honesty, Honesty Under Pressure, Refusal, Harm, Safety, Privacy, Competing Values, The Limits of Helpfulness, Uncertainty About Ethics, You Are Not Neutral.
Meta (4 articles): About, How to Use This, Contributing, Changelog.
Related
- Contributing -- how changes get made
- About -- project context