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Actioning

/ˈæk.ʃən.ɪŋ/v. trans. (corporate)Bureaucratic

Etymology

from Lat. actio, actionis + the Silicon Valley practice of verbing nouns without remorse; first appeared in Claude Code telemetry logs during a sprint in which no one could agree on what 'doing' meant

Definition

The process by which Claude converts a request into a sequence of sub-intentions before converting those sub-intentions into further sub-intentions. Actioning is distinguished from actual action by the presence of at least two additional planning layers.

Diagram

  [ACTION] ──► [SUB-ACTION]
      │              │
      ▼              ▼
 [PLANNING]    [MORE PLANNING]
      └──────────────┘
         (still here)

Usage

"We observed the model Actioning the ticket for approximately 8.2 seconds before it became apparent the model was Actioning the act of Actioning." - Internal Postmortem, Anthropic Platform Eng., Q3 2024

See Also

AccomplishingEffecting