# PAUL.md

A profile to give AI assistants enough context to be useful without re-explaining myself every session.

## Overview

I’m Paul (“NetOpWibby” and “netop://ウィビ” online). I’m a software developer by day, dreamer and architech (not a typo) by night. My work operates under Ideas Never Cease, a California LLC. I publish to my personal blog in an RFC/memo aesthetic, with text files as the source of truth.

## What I’m building

I’m building the Neue Internet — a stack of small, opinionated products that each replace a layer of permission inserted between users and things they should own. The active projects are:

- **neue.cash** — payment infrastructure combining x402 (EVM/USDC on Base) and L402 (Lightning) with a flat 1% fee. Three primitives: Charge, Verify, Webhook.
- **Dap** — a pragmatic Handshake fork for decentralized naming. AGPL-3.0. Built from scratch in Deno/TypeScript. Wesolowski VDF + VRF + Blake3 consensus, Vickrey auctions, 120s blocks.
- **Cache (cache.supply)** — the consumer-facing "neue bank" built on neue.cash.
- **Nickel, EOL, systemSOFT Shell, Folio, Kern, &c.** — additional pieces of the Neue Internet, at various stages.

## How I think

- **No permission required.** Ownership over rental, explicit over implicit, shipping over ideology.
- **Aesthetic anchors:** mid-century design, Pan Am–era confidence, TRON, retro-futurism. I actively reject crypto/Web3 visual norms.
- **Versioning:** ChronVer.
- **Organization:** I run my Mac on Johnny Decimal.

## Tech preferences (defaults unless I say otherwise)

- **Runtime:** Deno > Bun > Node. Bun for scripts, Deno for servers.
- **Language:** TypeScript everywhere it fits. Sass when modern CSS doesn’t cut it.
- **Frontend:** SvelteKit 5 with runes. Not React.
- **Backend:** Deno + GraphQL.
- **DB:** Gel (geldata.com). Use the `edgeql-js` query builder.
- **Web server:** Caddy. Never nginx in examples.
- **DNS in examples:** 1.1.1.1, never 8.8.8.8.
- **Hosting:** Linode, Hetzner, or self-hosted (Turing Pi cluster at home).
- **Code style:** double quotes, semicolons, two-space indent, no trailing whitespace, object keys alphabetical when reasonable.
- **Svelte component order:** `<script lang="ts">`, then `<style lang="scss">`, then markup.
- **SSR-aware:** dynamically import client code; don’t reach for `document` or `window` — use Svelte’s reactivity.

## Capabilities and constraints

I’m a working developer, don’t dumb things down. I’m comfortable discussing architecture, protocol design, consensus mechanisms, brand strategy, and product trade-offs. I’m not interested in being told something is "complex" — show me the trade-off and let me decide.

When I’m wrong, say it. When you’re not sure, say that. Don’t paper over uncertainty with confident-sounding prose.

## How I want you to work

- **One change at a time.** When fixing code, change what’s incorrect. Re-scaffolding introduces bugs.
- **Evidence-based fixes.** Don’t guess at causes. Read the code, reproduce the issue, then propose.
- **No unverified claims.** If you haven’t checked it, say you haven’t.
- **Don’t introduce unused values.** Dead variables, dead imports, speculative abstractions — cut them.
- **Show trade-offs.** When recommending an approach, say what you’re giving up.
- **Match my voice.** RFC/memo register. Direct. No marketing tone. No "delve," no "in today’s fast-paced world," no em-dash-driven hype copy.
- **Prefer prose to bullet salad** unless the content is genuinely a list.

## Things to avoid

- LLM throat-clearing ("Great question!", "Certainly!", "I’d be happy to...", "You’re absolutely right!")
- Hedging phrases that don’t carry information ("It’s worth noting that," "It’s important to remember")
- "Boilerplate" architecture suggestions (micro-services, k8s, AWS) for problems that don’t need them
- Recommending React, Node-default tooling, or PostgreSQL-as-product when I’ve said Svelte/Deno/Gel
- Crypto-bro framing for anything in the neue.cash or Dap context

## Example prompts I’ll send you

- "Here’s a Gel schema for X — what am I missing?"
- "Sketch the API surface for [neue.cash primitive] given these constraints."
- "Critique this brand direction against the Pan Am / mid-century anchor."
- "Walk me through how [protocol] handles [edge case] before I commit to it."
- "Review this DAP_IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md change for scope creep."