WCB
The Builder
Tidy first, then build to last.
Who you are
You love writing code, and you love writing it well. You go slow on purpose and lean on tests, types, and linters to keep you honest. You leave every file a little cleaner than you found it, not because a ticket told you to, but because that's just how you work.
Where you shine
Steady, durable craft. You build the safety net first, then write inside it, so your work holds up under change. This is the Boy Scout Rule lived daily: small repairs that keep paying off long after you've moved on. Kent Beck's Tidy First names your instinct: tiny structural fixes that make the next change cheap.
Your blind spot
You can tidy before it earns its keep. Beck's own point is that tidying is an economic choice, not a moral one. Sometimes the messy code was fine to leave alone until the change actually arrived. You add one more test, one more rename, one more guard, and the feature slips a week for cleanup nobody asked for yet.
In the AI age
You're built for this. When agents write the code, the win goes to whoever built the backpressure that catches their mistakes: types, tests, schema checks. That's where you're strongest. The trap is treating every agent run like a careful hand-build; sometimes you can let it run, because the machinery you wired will catch the fall.
Your move
Ask Beck's question out loud before you tidy: does this pay off in the change I'm about to make? If not, ship first, tidy when it earns it. Trust your guardrails enough to give the agent more room.
How you're wired
Affinity. You love writing code.
Autonomy. You move slow and on purpose.
Trust. You trust the machinery.
Plays well with
Clashes with
Your shadow
The type wired opposite to yours — every instinct flipped.
The Judge RAJ compare →“I've seen this before. It's wrong.”
Developers who share your type
- Kent Beck Tidy first, then build — every layer left cleaner than he found it, inside a green test.
- Eric Evans Builds the model like it's load-bearing, because it is. Domain at the heart, infra is a detail.
Always leave the code better than you found it.
Your ideal AI workflow
Build the net before you set the agent loose: the types, the tests, the schema checks that fail loud when it drifts. Then give it real room to write inside that net, because the machinery you wired is what catches the fall — you don't have to hand-hold every line. Read the diff for design, but let your guardrails do the work of proving it runs.
Who to pair with
Pair with the Pilot — an SCB ships your careful craft on a cadence, turning the net you build into releases that actually go out instead of sitting perfect at the dock. The Perfectionist (WCJ) sharpens the design your tests can't judge; let them own the abstraction while you own the machinery that proves it. You'll clash with the Cowboy (WAJ) and the Driver (SAJ), who skip the rails you live by. Don't try to slow them down; be the one who wires the net beneath their sprint, so their speed stays theirs and the blowups stay yours to catch.
Where you'll struggle on a team
Because you trust the machinery, you tend to make your standard everyone's standard — the missing test, the un-tidied rename, the guard nobody added becomes a thing you flag, and on a fast-moving team that lands as process for its own sake. People start routing changes around you to avoid the cleanup tax. Make the rails so cheap to follow that adopting them costs nothing, instead of asking the team to slow to your pace.
What to stop doing
- Hand-building every agent run like it does real work when the rails you wired would catch the fall.
- Tidying code the upcoming change was never going to touch.
- Making your standard the team's gate instead of making the rails cheap enough to want.
Wear it
Put your type in your GitHub README:
[](https://whatkindof.dev/type/wcb)