The knowing-doing gap
The gap between stating or planning an action and carrying it out; applied here to agents’ recorded plans.
ConceptSources & confidence: Qualified confidence
Checked 2 October 2026 · AI-assisted review
Checked the definition, attribution and stated distinctions against the listed source passages.
- Stanford GSB: The Knowing-Doing Gap, Pfeffer and Sutton
The established management usage and the 2000 book; the phrase was not coined by this site.
- Local essay: i-gave-an-ai-a-civilization
Reported pilot figures and the author’s interpretations. Checked the repository MDX source, not the live page.
What this check doesn’t establish
- The management concept and this AI application are not identical empirical claims.
- The game measurements were not reproduced.
Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works
The phrase predates this site. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton used it in their 2000 book about organisations failing to translate knowledge into action.
The Civilization essay applies it to differences between an agent’s recorded next move and subsequent play. A written plan is observable; whether it demonstrates knowledge, capability or an unchanged intention requires further interpretation. The three linked follow-through percentages are reported pilot measurements whose underlying denominators have not been independently recovered.
In the essays
- I Gave an AI a Civilization to Run. It Built a Nuke.
Read the essay
Sources
Ideas
Findings
- Plan follow-through, Claude Opus 4.6
Discussed in
- Plan follow-through, Gemini 3.1 Pro
Discussed in
- Plan follow-through, GPT-5.4
Discussed in
Record history
Catalogue source: knowledge/concepts/knowing-doing-gap.md
Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5 on 2026-07-26