Question
What is living documentation?
Quick Answer
Documentation should evolve with the agent — outdated docs are worse than no docs.
Living documentation is a concept in personal epistemology: Documentation should evolve with the agent — outdated docs are worse than no docs.
Example: You built a weekly research agent six months ago. Its original README described the data sources, trigger schedule, and output format. Since then you changed two data sources, added a filtering step, and moved the trigger from Monday to Wednesday. None of that is in the docs. A colleague tries to debug a failed run and spends two hours chasing a data source that no longer exists — because the documentation told them it did. The README didn't just fail to help. It actively misdirected.
This concept is part of Phase 30 (Agent Lifecycle) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for agent lifecycle.
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