A Team of Guys

I know a Guy, and that's basically the whole system. Physical AI Guy, when it's about robots. Dev Guy, when it's about my personal website. Designer Guy, Writer Guy, Fundraise Guy... same thing. If I know the topic, I go and talk to that Guy.

If the Guy I talk to needs to talk to another Guy, I don't care. That's between them. Sometimes I sneak in to what they're sharing because I'm curious, or just to check something. Usually I don't, though, because I don't like to babysit.

Most days I just talk to one Guy. One thread with Dev Guy about my personal website, another with Physical AI Guy about the UBR stack, another with Writer Guy when something has to go out with my name on it. Public writing always goes to him.

Guy of Guys is my chief of staff. I go to him when I can't remember which Guy to talk to, or I need help knowing which Guy I should be talking to, or we might need to spin off a new Guy. He orchestrates the other Guys. I don't manage the Guy roster, he does. That is the Guy of Guys job. Guy of Guys also keeps improving how all the Guys work together, the Guys' governance, the boring stuff I would mess up if I tried to hold it all in my brain.

We also added skills, and that part mattered more than I expected.

If the work is the same, I don't want another Guy. I want a skill the existing Guys can run. Write as Pedro is one, for example. "Send as Pedro" is the mechanics of sending as me, so we don't invent a new way to send every time. "Learn from mistakes" is the skill we use when Guy of Guys, or any Guy, needs to learn from something. After you do something wrong, you learn why, and we improve so it's better next time. That's the skill.

We also brought in external skills. We don't want to grow a fake consulting firm inside our own Guy of Guys setup. If someone already thought hard about a skill, we pull that in. Skills beat spinning up new Guys when the work is actually the same and we can use the existing Guys team. We're still figuring this out, still improving it.

Sometimes one Guy is not enough. Then I put several of them in one chat, but only when they actually have to collaborate, or when I think they should be collaborating.

This is still messy. Guys overlap. Sometimes I pick the wrong one. Guy of Guys has to sort it out. A skill should have been a Guy, or the other way around. We keep iterating and improving it. I'd rather have a small team of bots that actually work well with me than a directory I never open. We'll keep updating this post as we learn.

I know a Guy. That's my setup.