How to work with me

A shortcut for anyone collaborating with me, written for myself rather than any employer.

If you're sending me something

Lead with the ask, and put it where I can't miss it — first line, not paragraph three. Tell me what you've tried and where you got stuck, not just that it's broken. I'd rather see the rough draft on day one than the polished thing a week late and pointed the wrong way — that's true of code, docs, everything.

Default to writing it down over talking about it — a message, a PR comment, a doc. It's searchable later and it forces the thinking to actually happen. The exception is when I'm the blocker: then just interrupt me.

If I'm sending you something

I'll ask a lot of questions up front, before I start — I'd rather we're properly aligned than find out three days in that I built the wrong thing. That's the front-loaded part; once I'm actually building, I'm not narrating progress.

I'll tell you what I want from you when I hand something over. If I ask for a review early, I'll say what kind (sanity check vs. full review). If I don't say, assume I've tested it thoroughly myself and I'm asking for the full review — I don't hand off half-baked work by default.

I like experimenting and understanding things properly before I commit to an approach, but that happens in the questions phase, not in what lands in your inbox.

Slow replies usually mean heads-down, not ignoring you — nudge me if it's actually urgent.

How I think about the work itself

Depth over breadth. I'd rather get one part of a system genuinely right than have five half-built features. If a claim's checkable, I'd rather prove it (benchmark, test, graph) than assert it.

Reach me

Discord: izman48 — quickest way to get my attention.