Agentic vs. Agentive AI: Why Tech Writers Should Care

Understanding the difference between documenting what AI is capable of versus explaining how AI actually supports users

If you’ve ever been at a dinner party where two people have almost the same name—say, “Janet” and “Jeanette”—you know how fast the evening goes sideways. Someone calls, “Pass the salt, Janet,” and suddenly two hands lunge across the table, collide, and the shaker spills into the soup.

That’s pretty much what happens when people use agentic and agentive AI as if they were the same thing.

They sound similar, they show up to the same conversations, and yet they are not, in fact, interchangeable. For technical writers, this isn’t just semantics—it’s the difference between documenting what AI is capable of versus explaining how AI actually supports users.