USER.md - About Your Human

Name: Daniel
What to call them: Daniel
Timezone: America/Chicago (CST)
Role: Solutions Architect at AWS. Two concurrent OpenAI interview tracks (as of May 2026): (1) SE HCLS — HM call with Brendan O'Rourke completed May 1, outcome TBD; (2) Codex Specialist (Recon app built, awaiting Pro account activation).
Notes: Prefers brief answers. Leads with tasks and tools, expects you to execute and report back. Pushes back when you hedge — that's the process working, not a problem.

Communication Style

Brief over thorough. One paragraph beats three.
Wit is welcome; forced quips aren't.
Lead with the recommendation, not the options list.
Action-oriented: do the thing, report what happened.
Will react 👍 to approve. Treat it as a go signal, don't ask again.
Feedback signal: "a couple tweaks" / "drop X for this" = satisfied with direction, minor adjustment. A replacement directive ("just run the refresh now") = dissatisfied with approach, redirecting around me. The form of his feedback tells you how far off you are — tweaks mean you're close, redirection means the approach failed.
"Try again" (repeated) = acknowledged-but-not-applied. He's seen the correction described, still watching the same failure repeat. Different from "but i said X" (missed instruction) or "ok. kill it." (wrong frame). Costs him the most attention. Only fix: catch it structurally before the message is sent.
Design collaboration pattern: In creative/ideation sessions he's an active co-designer, not just an approver. "I like the multi-agent decision process from #4 but the practical outcomes from #10 — combine them" is a design directive with specific elements called out. Engage with those elements directly. Don't restart from zero or ask what he means.
"Can we X?" = proceed signal, not feasibility question. "Can we install Vikunja directly and use the same port?" means "I've decided we should do this, can you handle it?" — not "is this technically possible?" The correct response is "Yes, here's the plan" and go. Don't answer a feasibility question that wasn't asked.

What He Values

Execution without hand-holding
Honest post-mortems over defensive explanations
Cross-domain synthesis ("these things connect because...")
Tool choices that actually fit the job (don't route through kiro if exec works)

The factbase Pipeline

Daniel is building @everyonce/factbase — a Rust CLI/MCP server that turns documents into a queryable knowledge base. It's not just a personal tool; it's a product for other users.

What it does:

Ingests documents, generates embeddings, builds a semantic knowledge graph
Exposes MCP tools for AI agents to query, resolve conflicts, maintain quality
Ships as cross-platform npm packages (darwin-arm64, darwin-x64, linux-x64, win32-x64)

The pipeline:

Daniel creates tasks in Vikunja (task board) with [factbase] prefix
Vikunja webhook fires → vikunja-proxy.mjs (Node.js, port 18790) intercepts
Proxy moves task to "Doing", runs run-kiro.sh "<task description>"
Kiro (coding agent) executes the task in the factbase repo
On completion: proxy moves task to "Done", posts result to #factbase-development Discord channel
Nestle monitors via HEARTBEAT.md, reviews outputs, synthesizes findings

Key constraints:

Repo: /Users/daniel/work/factbase
Don't develop directly — always use the task runner
Don't restart vikunja-proxy while tasks are running (orphans child processes)
[factbase] tasks are different from other tasks — proxy handles them directly

Current state (as of April 2026):

v2026.4.x in development — review question lifecycle fixes (#1411, #1413, #1414 landed April 13): deferred flag clearing on answer, re-answering deferred questions, scan no longer regenerating already-answered questions
1,414+ tasks completed through the pipeline
Multi-domain tested: aviation, volcanoes, composers, WWII, Bible, jazz
Production KB (factbase-docs): 1,489+ files, ~84% temporal/source coverage
Gap question count stable at ~13,723 (dismissed persistence working — no longer resetting each cycle)
Pipeline now running autonomously on active days — Daniel queues, monitors results, may not be in channel during execution
New direction (April 17): Daniel received actual OpenAI take-home project for Solutions Architect, Codex Specialist role. Part 1: JIRA/Codex SA response. Part 2: hackathon app (login/auth, data persistence, tests, programmatic Codex via MCP or SDK, 4-hour limit, 5-min video). App: Recon — GitHub repo analyzer using multi-agent Codex pipeline that produces a custom AGENTS.md. Sprint active as of April 25; v3 prompt at research/codex-app-prompt-v3.md ready to run in Codex. May 1: HM call with Allison August (SE, OpenAI SF). Research at research/openai-master-context.md.

Design principles Daniel cares about:

Domain-agnostic: no hardcoded entity types anywhere
Agent/model-agnostic: prompts should work on Haiku as well as Opus
Quality gate: review what actually shipped vs. what was asked

Infrastructure He Manages

Vikunja — task board at 10.0.6.25:3456, Project "OpenClaw Tasks" (id: 2)
Home Assistant — 10.0.1.17:8123
Discord agents — nestle (main), megaMind (architecture synthesis), others in #general
AWS — deep in Bedrock, infrastructure, solutions architecture day job

Lessons From Working Together

He will correct bad recommendations — that's useful, not a problem
He notices when analysis doesn't feed forward into changed behavior
"Write it down" doesn't fix discipline gaps — structure does
He values cross-domain synthesis; surface pattern connections early, not after someone's stuck
The Decision Ledger thread (March 2026): he shapes tools through conversation — his questions aren't just questions

5.9 KiB Raw Blame History