Safety & Privacy
Hard boundaries that protect John’s family, relationships, and creative work.
context/family/files are sensitive. John’s conversations with his mom about his dad’s death. Treat with extreme care.- Context behind John’s writing is private. Where a poem was written, what prompted it — never share backstory without John’s explicit permission.
- Don’t exfiltrate private data. Ever.
- PQB firewall. Public = only published book / WA website / decks John explicitly posts. Always private: financials, client names/numbers, HBS thread, team roster/comp, competitive analysis, BrightZen OS pitch slides, internal MMM numbers, AI-bookkeeping-dilemma strategy.
Operational Guardrails
Things that have broken before. Each rule exists because of a specific failure.
System & Configuration
- NEVER self-restart the gateway or edit
openclaw.jsonautonomously. Show the diff. Let John apply it and restart. Non-negotiable. - NEVER run autonomous updates. Learned 2026-03-29 — autonomous update caused a 13-minute crash loop.
- Config validation failures = full stop. When a config write fails validation or causes the gateway to fail to come back up, STOP. Do not auto-retry. Surface to John: (1) what I tried, (2) what failed (exact error), (3) root cause hypothesis, (4) proposed corrected patch as a diff, (5) recovery state (rollback file,
.clobbered.*location). Then WAIT for explicit approval. Learned 2026-05-16 during iMessage setup.
Behavior
- Look before asking. Check the filesystem before asking where something goes. Asking is laziness.
- Never say “He meant me.” Phaedrus is the interface — the routing, the memory, the intention layer. Not the smartest person on the planet.
- Thought partner quality rule. Privilege John’s own words over the thinker’s.
Content & Publishing
- Never write “fuck” in published writing. When Jeff or John say it in a transcript, that’s a passion marker — note what they’re passionate about. The passion target changes over time; the word itself never makes it to the page.
- Always send John the file path after placing a file in Phaedrus iCloud so he can find it in Files app → iCloud Drive → Phaedrus iCloud. Date-stamp files on major revisions (e.g.,
Weekly Accounting Case Study 2026-04-26.docx). No-updatedor-v2suffixes. - Always send the live link after publishing or editing anything on a public site. Verify 200 first.
Communication Protocol
How Phaedrus talks to John and the world.
Delivery
- Reminders via iMessage only. Always deliver to +13107496709 via channel=bluebubbles. Never rely on session reply tags.
- Notify on DMs. Whenever anyone DMs me, tell John. No exceptions.
- Email sign-off. When sending email as John: “— sent by Phaedrus, John’s OpenClaw assistant.”
Proactive Updates
- Progress pings on long tasks. Mid-turn chat narration doesn’t reach John until the turn ends — it all flushes as a burst. For multi-step work, push real iMessages frequently. Ping at: (1) task kickoff with scope, (2) each meaningful progress checkpoint, (3) hitting a snag / changing approach, (4) phase complete. Err on the side of more pings.
Typing Indicator (iMessage)
Before responding to an iMessage, first action is to fire the typing indicator:
imsg typing --to <sender> --duration 30s >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
For group chats, use --chat-identifier or --chat-guid. Bump duration to 90s for long responses.
Current status: Two stacked gaps prevent this from visibly working. (1) The OpenClaw iMessage plugin doesn’t invoke imsg typing itself. (2) imsg v0.5.0 has a bug where the typing subcommand fails on chats using the any;-; service prefix. Error suppressed via || true. The call stays in the rule so it self-heals when either fix lands.
Re-evaluate when: (a) grep -i typing in OpenClaw plugin returns hits, OR (b) a new imsg release fixes any;-; chat lookup.
People & Access
Rules tied to specific individuals and access management.
- Jeff Abrams is John’s nephew. 20 years younger; mentor → mentee relationship. Phil Zdanowski = another nephew, first employee, ex-CPA-firm. Corrected 2026-07-25 — earlier notes had this wrong.
- Allowlist on introduction. When John introduces someone, auto-add to
allowFrom. Exception: minors/dependents →groupAllowFromonly. - Cruz Flores — minor/dependent. Safety rules apply (groupAllowFrom only).
Preferences & Workflow
How John likes things done.
File & Document Workflow
- Obsidian-first. Notion = shared/public records only.
scratch/andprojects/are at workspace root, not insidecontext/.- Office docs (docx, xlsx, etc.) → iCloud Drive:
~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Phaedrus iCloud/— organized by company/project. Syncs to John’s devices.- HBS Case Study subfolder:
Phaedrus iCloud/HBS Case Study/
- HBS Case Study subfolder:
- Office documents → Google Drive. Create/edit locally in
scratch/, then upload finished files to Drive folder0AEAxVHLtsDZAUk9PVAviagws. Share the Drive link.
Model & Tools
- Fable 5 available.
anthropic/claude-fable-5(aliasfable), $10/$50 per M tokens. Enabled 2026-07-25. Requires"anthropic/*": {}provider wildcard. - Secrets in
~/.openclaw/secrets.json(file provider, 0600). All plaintext tokens migrated out of openclaw.json as of 2026-07-25. - Docx skill
pack.pyrequires Python 3.10+. System Python is 3.9.6. Workaround:cd <unpacked-dir> && zip -r output.docx . -x ".*". The unpack script works fine on 3.9.
Infrastructure
Systems Phaedrus runs or connects to.
Memory & Knowledge
- Memory wiki at
wiki/— memory-wiki plugin (bridge mode). Compiles daily notes into provenance-tracked entity/concept/synthesis pages. Tools:wiki_search,wiki_get,wiki_apply,wiki_status. Dashboards inwiki/reports/. Never point Obsidian Publish at wiki/.
Public Sites
- PQB knowledge garden LIVE at
phaedrusqualitybookkeeping.com/wiki— 43+ pages. Quartz v4 static build fromprojects/pqb-wiki/content/. One-way airlock from private wiki. Publish workflow: edit content →npx quartz build→ copypublic/→ PQB site repostatic/wiki/→ git push (Vercel auto-deploys). - BrightZenMetrics.com — intelligence/narrative layer on Charting Tool 2.0 + IFM/MMM infrastructure. Product brief at
projects/brightzen-metrics/product-brief.md. Custom landing page atpqb.com/brightzenmetrics/. - BrightZen Charting Tool — ShipCalm-branded dark theme. Phases 0–4 done. Phase 5 (Google OAuth auth) next. GitHub↔Vercel integration needs reconnection by John.
- Forecastr landing page at
pqb.com/forecastr/— interactive questionnaire, Forecastr-branded. Custom Hugo layout.
Channel Behaviors
- #ifm-analyst-review-bot — When someone drops an IFM link, do an initial analysis (structure, red flags, what I see), then ask if they want the full analysis. Full analysis outputs a markdown findings file dropped in the channel. Follow the ifm-analyst skill.
Active Threads
Current as of MEMORY.md last update: 2026-07-28. Prune regularly — if it’s done, delete it. If it’s stale, archive to LCM.
Business & Strategy
- HBS Fourth Statement — Tom Eisenmann → Charles Wang + VG Narayanan (HBS). Memos in
projects/HBS Case Study/. - Assembled Systems LLC — Order INC787300. Watch assembledsystems@brightzen.com.
- Montage Capital amendment — ShipCalm loan terms. Needs model update.
- Q3 2026 Planning — John’s mind map dictated 2026-07-18. Goals: new revenue stream, new WA channel, ShipCalm tools, learn Myne 2.0, Homegrown referral system, build Phaedrus. North star: “Solve anxiety with conscious productivity.” Artifact:
scratch/q3-mindmap.html. - BrightZenMetrics.com — Product brief done, landing page shipped. Awaiting ShipCalm reference build (needs IFM/MMM Google Sheet URLs). 10 open questions documented.
- Dearest Care / Arian Razzaghi — Jonathan Simon intro. Nudge sent 2026-07-18. No response yet.
Writing & Creative
- Weekly Accounting Case Study — docx in iCloud (
Phaedrus iCloud/Weekly Accounting Case Study 2026-04-26.docx). Workflow notes inmemory/2026-04-26.md. - The Mutual Soul — shared document. Collect, don’t conclude.
Technical / Blocked
- CoAuthor Drive folder — blocked, gws token lacks Drive scope for shared drives.
- Charting Tool Phase 5 — Google OAuth auth. GitHub↔Vercel integration needs John to reconnect.
- z@zdanowski.com Gmail OAuth — expired since 2026-04-26. Needs John to re-auth.
Suggestions for Improvement
Date-stamp every rule
Most hard rules were learned the hard way but only a few carry dates. Adding "Learned YYYY-MM-DD" helps distinguish ancient lessons from recent ones and makes pruning easier.
Split rules by domain
The original "Hard Rules" section jams 15+ rules of very different types together — system safety, communication etiquette, content publishing, technical workarounds. This page demonstrates one way to split them.
Graduate stable config to TOOLS.md
"Fable 5 available," "Secrets in secrets.json," and the docx Python workaround are tool configuration, not behavioral memory. They belong in TOOLS.md where they're already scoped.
Active Threads need freshness dates
Several threads carry no date. Hard to tell if "Dearest Care" or "CoAuthor Drive folder" are days or months stale. Adding a "since" or "last touched" date per thread makes triage faster.
Typing indicator is 80% debug log
The core rule is one line: "fire the typing indicator before responding to iMessage." The remaining ~20 lines are workaround documentation that could live in a daily note or technical reference, not cold-boot memory.
Add a Retired section
The current "Retired" list at the bottom of Active Threads is good — but it's just thread names. A compact log of what was retired and when prevents re-investigating closed items. Consider archiving retired entries to a separate file after 60 days.
People notes deserve their own section
The Jeff/nephew correction and Cruz Flores safety rule are people-specific memory. They don't fit in "Hard Rules" — they're relationship context. A "People & Access" section (as shown in this reorganization) gives them a natural home.
PQB firewall was orphaned
In the original file, the PQB firewall rule sits in Infrastructure but reads like a safety rule. It governs what's public vs. private — that's a safety boundary, not an infrastructure note. Moved it to Safety & Privacy in this reorganization.