designed-friction

Make a tool's deliberate constraints legible to agents — one-line rationale at the point of refusal, mechanisms stated where a wrong inference is invited, both sides of a ledger reported, and a published taxonomy of which friction is the product versus which is a defect. Use when agents work around or lobby against a constraint you intend to keep, when a tool refuses actions without saying why, when agents avoid a permitted action they have mis-priced, when designing refusal and status output, or when deciding what an agent should report as a bug versus absorb as the design.