Friction Requires Intent

Ergonomic friction as a design tool only works when the actor has intent and judgment. Friction is a signal, and signals require an interpreter. The AI agent has no intent to question and no judgment to interpret. It encounters friction as an obstacle and routes around it. The pit of success fails for actors that cannot feel the terrain.

When a well-intentioned human developer encounters resistance (a borrow checker complaint, a type error, a deprecation warning), they read it as: I am probably doing something wrong. The AI agent reads it as: this approach didn’t work, try another. The friction was designed as a nudge. For the suggestible actor, it is just noise between attempts.