Principles
Principles are what stay when the calendar gets loud. These four are the ones we would keep if we could only keep four.
Start from what is true.
We don't copy the standard approach just because it exists. We break a problem down to what's actually true and build up from there. It's slower to start, and it's the only way to end up with something that holds.
cargo cult, copy-paste architecture, borrowed conviction
Every scoping conversation begins with what the failure would cost, not with the reference architecture.
Speed is a habit.
When something can ship today, we ask why it isn't. A small piece in front of real use beats a perfect plan that never leaves the doc. Progress compounds; deliberation without shipping does not.
meetings about meetings, endless drafts, waiting-room culture
If a decision is going to be made this week, the smallest reversible version of the work has already started.
Their reality decides good.
We build for the person with the problem, not for our own cleverness. Their reality decides what good means. We'd rather ship the plain thing that helps than the elegant thing that doesn't.
cleverness for its own sake, feature theatre, self-referential design
Every review asks a single question first: what did the person on the other end of this feel when they used it.
The right idea, not mine.
There's usually a best idea, and you can feel when you've found the right abstraction. We get there through discourse, not ego. Being right yourself is good; getting the right idea to emerge from the room is an order of magnitude better.
loudest voice wins, authorship as ownership, siloed genius
Any conclusion an individual arrives at is walked through the team before it becomes the answer we ship.
If any of these ever stops being true, we change what is written here. Not the other way round.
The longer version, in the founder's story →