Cynefin and cohabitation

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Dave Snowden borrowed cynefin, a Welsh word closer to “habitat” or “the place of your multiple belongings,” to name a framework for making sense of Simple, Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic terrain. The word itself carries something the diagram doesn’t: the idea that you don’t stand outside a system and assess it — you cohabit it.

Working alongside an AI collaborator is a Complex-domain activity more often than it’s a Complicated one. There’s no expert procedure to follow, only probes, sense, respond — and the humility to notice, after the fact, which pattern actually lit up.