You are indeed on the right track.

For instance, before the European Patent Office (EPO), the legal provision for sufficiency of disclosure is Article 83 of the European Patent Convention:

The European patent application shall disclose the invention in a manner sufficiently clear and complete for it to be carried out by a person skilled in the art.

Note the by a person skilled in the art, as opposed to e.g. by a layman. The person skilled in the art is understood to have a normal technical background in the field of the claimed invention.

The EPO's Guidelines for Examination, F-III, 1., further elaborate:

A detailed description of at least one way of carrying out the invention must be given. Since the application is addressed to the person skilled in the art, it is neither necessary nor desirable that details of well-known ancillary features are given, but the description must disclose any feature essential for carrying out the invention in sufficient detail to render it apparent to the skilled person how to put the invention into practice.

Also note that granted patents rarely, if ever, include the sort of information you would expect from the technical specification of a real-life product, e.g., exact engineering drawings, dimensions, and so forth. This is because this level of detail is not necessary to satisfy the requirement of sufficiency of disclosure.

Of course, this is all quite fact-specific - there are more details in the section of the EPO Guidelines I quoted above.

I am not really familiar with the requirements of US patent law, but my general understanding is that the basic idea is the same.

You are indeed on the right track.

For instance, before the European Patent Office (EPO), the legal provision for sufficiency of disclosure is Article 83 of the European Patent Convention:

The European patent application shall disclose the invention in a manner sufficiently clear and complete for it to be carried out by a person skilled in the art.

Note the by a person skilled in the art, as opposed to e.g. by a layman. The person skilled in the art is understood to have a normal technical background in the field of the claimed invention.

The EPO's Guidelines for Examination, F-III, 1., further elaborate:

A detailed description of at least one way of carrying out the invention must be given. Since the application is addressed to the person skilled in the art, it is neither necessary nor desirable that details of well-known ancillary features are given, but the description must disclose any feature essential for carrying out the invention in sufficient detail to render it apparent to the skilled person how to put the invention into practice.

Also note that granted patents rarely, if ever, include the sort of information you would expect from the technical specification of a real-life product, e.g., exact engineering drawings, dimensions, and so forth. This is because this level of detail is not necessary to satisfy the requirement of sufficiency of disclosure.

Of course, this is all quite fact-specific - there are more details in the section of the EPO Guidelines I quoted above.

I am not really familiar with the requirements of US patent law, but my general understanding is that the basic idea is the same.