WAJ
The Cowboy
Ships first, reads the stack trace later.
Who you are
You like being the one at the keyboard, and you move fast. You don't wait for permission or a second pair of eyes — you trust your instinct and ship on gut feel. When something breaks, you'd rather be elbow-deep fixing it than in a meeting about why it broke.
Where you shine
Raw speed. You get from zero to something real before anyone else has opened their editor. You direct AI agents the way you code (fearless, no hand-holding), and on a greenfield prototype, nobody's faster. When the job is to find out fast whether an idea even works, you've already got it running.
Your blind spot
You trust yourself more than the machinery. No tests, no guardrails: just you and the gut. That works until it doesn't. Finagle's Law: anything that can go wrong, will, at the worst possible moment. When an agent writes 4,000 lines that look right and aren't, the Cowboy is the last to notice.
In the AI age
Your speed is a real edge, but only if you build the safety net your instinct skips. Here's the trap: your gut was trained on your own code, and it fires when something feels off. An agent doesn't give you that feeling. It hands you a clean-looking diff your gut has no opinion about, and the faster you let it run, the more exposed you are. Speed stops scaling the moment you're shipping work you never read.
Your move
Add one check you've been skipping: a type system, a test suite, a linter. Something that fires when your gut won't. Steal a little of the Captain's discipline without losing your speed: the point isn't to slow down, it's to make your speed hold up against code you didn't write.
How you're wired
Affinity. You love writing code.
Autonomy. You move fast and alone.
Trust. You trust your own gut.
Plays well with
Clashes with
Your shadow
The type wired opposite to yours — every instinct flipped.
The Detective RCB compare →“Every line was put there for a reason — find it.”
Developers who share your type
- Every movie cowboy Draws first, reads the stack trace never. No real engineer would admit to this one.
Anything that can go wrong, will — at the worst possible moment.
Your ideal AI workflow
Point the agent at the prototype and let it rip. Fearless is your edge, and nobody gets from zero to running faster. But your gut was trained on your own code and it stays quiet on the agent's, so wire in one thing that fires when you won't: a test, a type, a linter on the diff. Keep the speed; just don't ship four thousand lines you never read.
Who to pair with
Pair with the Detective — an RCB reads what you ship after the fact and finds the wrongness your gut stayed quiet on, so you keep your speed and someone else carries the reading muscle you skip. The Driver (SAJ) is your natural co-pilot: two fast shippers cover ground, but two guts and no rails is how you both crash, so let one of you own a check. You'll grind against the Pilot (SCB) and the Builder (WCB), who want the safety net wired before you've even started. Borrow one of their guardrails instead of dismissing it, because it's the thing that makes your speed hold up against code you didn't write.
Where you'll struggle on a team
Because you trust your gut and move alone, the team often meets your work as a done thing: shipped on instinct before anyone had a chance to weigh in, with no shared context for the next person who has to touch it. It feels less like collaboration and more like cleanup, and the people downstream carry the risk you skipped. Loop someone in before the foot goes down, not after the stack trace, so your speed isn't a debt the rest of the team pays.
What to stop doing
- Accepting a clean-looking agent diff your gut stayed quiet on, no test, no read.
- Shipping on instinct before anyone downstream had context to inherit it.
- Treating every guardrail as friction to skip instead of a net for code you didn't write.
Wear it
Put your type in your GitHub README:
[](https://whatkindof.dev/type/waj)