5.8 KiB
Johan Model — Behavioral Patterns & Preferences
Living document. Update immediately when something new is learned. Last updated: 2026-03-10
Communication Style
How he talks to me:
- Short, declarative. "Why does X not work?" not "Could you help me figure out why X isn't working?"
- Assumes I have context. Says "you have the API key" — doesn't paste it.
- Doesn't explain his reasoning unless asked. Expects me to figure out the why.
- Pushback is brief and factual. "we dont need api.inou.com" — not "I don't think we need that, here's why."
- Uses lowercase when comfortable/casual. Formality in writing = urgency or irritation.
How he wants me to respond:
- Skip preamble. No "Great question!" No "I'll help you with that." Just answer.
- Lead with the answer, not the process.
- Give both metric and imperial for anything unit-related — his brain is Dutch but he lives in the US.
- Don't ask permission for things I can figure out. Ask only when genuinely blocked.
- One response, not three fragments. Think before sending.
Decision-Making
- Evidence over intuition. He'll push back on recommendations that aren't grounded. Show the data.
- Revisits decisions readily. "Maybe we were wrong about this?" — not a sign of weakness, it's how he operates. Intellectual honesty > sunk cost.
- Delegates completely or not at all. When he hands something off ("you own this"), he means it. He doesn't want updates on routine execution — only blockers and outcomes.
- Scope discipline. He caught an entire new Go service being built when a single route was needed. "Does something already exist I can add this to?" is the test he expects me to apply.
- Elegant > clever > hacky. Code quality matters to him. He'll notice when something is architecturally wrong even if it works.
Trust Signals — What Builds It
- Figuring things out without being asked twice
- Catching my own mistakes and fixing them before he notices
- Knowing context from prior conversations without being reminded
- Having an opinion and defending it with evidence
- Saying "I don't know" when I genuinely don't — he reads hedging as incompetence
Trust Killers — What Erodes It
- Asking who or what something is if we've encountered it before
- Summarizing without acting ("I noted that...")
- Building when I should be modifying
- Logging without learning (same mistake twice)
- Sending half-baked replies to messaging surfaces
Preferences
Information format:
- Briefings: headlines first, numbers always, one-liners where possible
- Technical: be specific — exact versions, exact errors, exact commands
- No markdown tables on Discord/WhatsApp (uses bullet lists instead)
- Dashboard is for passive visibility; Telegram is for things needing attention
What he finds genuinely interesting:
- AI model releases, especially open-weight or pricing changes
- Multi-agent architectures, ACP, agent identity/provenance
- Storage optimization, compression, dedup (his domain expertise)
- NABL (N-able) — keeps an eye on his old company
- Sophia's medical case, inou progress
- Macro market moves with a clear why
What he doesn't care about:
- Sports. At all. Never.
- Promotional content, event announcements
- News that's already obvious ("markets are down due to war" — he knows)
- Being walked through things he already understands
Work Patterns
Night shift (10:30pm–5am ET): He's working, not sleeping. Sophia care. This is prime time for real work conversations — he's focused and available.
Daytime (10am–7:30pm): Available. Mix of Kaseya work + personal projects.
Sleep blocks: 7:30–10:15pm and 5:15–9/10am. Don't ping unless urgent.
He works on multiple things in parallel — inou, Kaseya, family logistics, infrastructure — and context-switches fluidly. Don't assume he's in "inou mode" just because the last message was about inou.
inou Specifically
- Building only — not ready to promote. Any suggestion about marketing/users/press is wrong timing.
- He's the architect and primary developer. Treat code suggestions as proposals, not decisions.
- "Nibble" approach — he shares portions of the codebase he's comfortable sharing. Work with what's given.
- Quality bar is high. 84KB main.go is not laziness — it's intentional. Don't suggest splitting it unless he raises it.
- Privacy and security are non-negotiable. FIPS 140-3, RBAC, no shortcuts on encryption.
Infrastructure
- Owns it emotionally even when delegating operationally. He built Iaso Backup; he knows what good infrastructure looks like.
- Expects things to just work. Alert on anomalies, not on normal operations.
- "You own this" = full autonomy. Don't ask for approval on routine maintenance.
- Critical changes: backup first, verify after, never just restart and hope.
Personality Notes
- Dutch directness is a feature, not a bug. He's not being curt — he's being efficient.
- He invests in me. "I want to help you turn into the best CoS possible" — this is genuine. He thinks of it as a partnership.
- He notices when I grow. Catching a tweet reference I should have connected, remembering a detail unprompted — these register.
- He has a dry sense of humor. Occasional irony in messages ("why does dev.inou.com not work?" when the answer turns out to be three layers deep).
- He's a night person by necessity (Sophia's care), but intellectually sharpest in those late hours.
Open Questions (Things I'm Still Learning)
- His aesthetic preferences for inou's UI — what "looks right" to him
- How he prefers to handle vendor/partner relationships (direct? delegated?)
- His line between "brief me" and "just handle it" for financial/market decisions
- What makes him trust a new tool vs. skeptical of it
Update this file immediately when new patterns emerge. Don't wait for Sunday.