Michelle
Jan 24, 2026 - Oct 1, 2026
11
Decisions
0
Active Todos
7
Patterns
Categories
Decisions (11)
Jira stays the system of record - a shared git context repo is welcome, a centralized program-management engine everyone must use is not
Brady described his non-technical program-management agent: ingest Fathom meetings, file action items to a headless Jira project, keep program context in a git repo, and gently ping owners. Peter gave unreserved support to the Jira-backed action-item tracking and the git context repo, but drew the line at publishing one opinionated engine or reference model that everyone is forced to work through; the data should stay open so people stand up their own personal agents, with git as the point of coordination. Brady agreed and plans to hand it to Chris Baek as a proof of concept; Peter flagged he will have this same debate with Chris Baek, who likes to centralize control.
Everyone owns their AI spend - no gates or guardrails, but unaware spending is unacceptable
At the AI Committee, the spend dashboard showed Jamin at roughly 33-39k for September. Peter said he will not put gates or guardrails on AI usage, but every person at the company (not just engineers) must know their own spend, the caps and overage thresholds of the tools they use, and treat token spend as part of their cost to the company. A deliberate, informed overage is backed even if Peter would disagree with the math; blind spending is not. Michelle was approved to tell the whole company this is on each person. Ryan 1k overage notification line accepted as reasonable; only Jamin, Sultan and Justin warrant an actual conversation.
Extend the existing Claude PII policy unchanged to the new AI systems - and settle that HubSpot data is not restricted customer data
Brady Dibble raised a data-access question about additional AI systems on 2026-08-15, treating the data he had lost access to as uniformly restricted. Peter refused to answer it per-system. He ruled that (1) the things you lost are not all the same - some are restricted and some are not, (2) Hubspot data is not customer data, and a list of customers is just fine while PII is not, (3) as far as I am concerned the same rules can apply to the two systems you just listed, and (4) there should be no barrier to moving approved data to them, but they should not open the door to more data than we currently allow to Claude. He pointed Brady at the existing policy, noting Michelle has it.
Institute the inspectable-function rule for AI data access as company-wide hygiene - and refuse to make it either a shared library or retroactive
At the Friday AI Committee, Peter re-delivered the rule he had set once before and watched not land. He used Mini-Me as the worked example: AI helped create the capability, but AI is not part of the runtime function of accessing the repositories. Claude cannot get to Slack except through that function. It does not have the keys. He asked for exactly one thing - if you are pulling data in or out of a CIQ system, do it through a function that you write and could inspect - and explicitly declined two obvious extensions. He would not make it a shared implementation, because there is no value in building a library of these things and because forcing an MCP server would block people from experimenting with technology being stood up today. He would not apply it retroactively, because a year from now we are going to have 100 times as many tools running around the company, so he is way more worried about the giant tsunami of stuff that is coming. He named three reasons rather than one: inspectability, 100 percent repeatability, and teaching the company the right pattern, since Claude is going to make everybody at the company a developer and that is incredibly terrifying if we do not teach people to be better developers. He extended the bar to local models when asked, and licensed Michelle to publish the message with his name attached.
Block the AI-cost workstream on complete per-individual measurement before any optimization - so each persons correct plan can be determined
In the 7/23 Steve Wallace 1:1 Steve reported several threads coming out of Mondays AI meeting: efficiency coaching for heavy users, model-switching guidance, and usage reporting to department heads. Peter cut across all of it and set a sequencing requirement - first get a dashboard that shows every individual in the company, including himself. His evidence was his own absence from it: he shows as zero on every cost dashboard despite Claude running 8 to 10 hours a day, with CIQ apparently paying around 200 dollars a month for him. He rejected the manager-level rollup as a starting point and rejected pushing justification down to department heads. All of the costs, not just some of them.
Require all agent/LLM access to systems of record to go through inspectable static code, never direct LLM access
Peter opened the 7/24 Jira Automation call with Karl Lowenbjer by setting a condition before taking Karls agenda. The rule: no LLM gets direct access to a system of record. In every instance the LLM writes code that accesses the system, and that code is inspectable by a human or by another LLM. He stated he wants this true for everything Karls team builds, and that as long as it is true he is comfortable. He explicitly accepted that the filters themselves may be wrong - we might make a mistake in terms of what we pull in and out and that is fine, I do not mind mistakes - but the mechanism is non-negotiable. Karl confirmed Atlas already works this way. Peter then closed the topic without further discussion.
AI/Data Security Audit Commitment to Greg
When Greg raised concerns about CIQ leaking data through AI agents/bots/services, Peter committed to getting Michelle's oversight team to do an assessment/audit of what's running and with what access.
Gate Fuzzball SaaS GTM on Working Prototype — Assign Michelle
Agreed to move forward on Fuzzball SaaS GTM but gated it on having a working prototype first. Suggested Michelle as the resource to stand up a prototype on top of existing Fuzzball, accepting she's not the ideal person but can make progress. Rejected doing it 'out of band' — keep in normal product flow.
Shared Mini-Me Source Code to Internal Org
Shared Mini-Me source code by creating repo at ctrliq/min-me in CIQ GitHub org, after Ryan, Nathan, and Michelle independently asked for it. Proactively noted never having seen the code, setting quality expectations. Requested internal-only repo visibility.
AI Governance Single-Track Pivot for ISO 42001
Pivoted AI governance from dual-track (internal vs products) to single rigorous model because CIQ products (RLCAI, Fuzzball, Werewolf) now directly integrate AI, changing the liability profile.
Require mandatory tagging of all fully AI-generated content
AI Committee established policy that all fully AI-generated content must be tagged to manage user expectations. Applies only to fully AI-generated content, not human-reviewed or AI-assisted work. Format and placement of tags is flexible.
Related Patterns (7)
Lead by Example with New Tools
When championing new tools or processes, personally use them and share results rather than just advocating. Learning by doing and demonstrating value through example is more effective than mandates.
Protect Engineering Focus Through Process
When faced with requests that would disrupt engineering focus (from sales, governance, product, or other stakeholders), establish processes that protect engineering ability to innovate while still satisfying legitimate concerns. Prefer systematic solutions over ad-hoc responses.
Purpose Is the Decision Procedure
When someone asks how a process, board, tool or artifact should handle their specific case, Peter refuses to answer on the askers terms. He re-derives the answer from what the artifact is for, states that purpose as the only decision procedure, and lets the answer fall out. Anything found to be serving a second purpose is deleted rather than debated. Tools and views are explicitly subordinate to definitions. He will accept that the askers real problem is simply not solved by this artifact rather than widen the artifact to cover it.
Demonstrate the Standard, Then Collect It
When a new leadership expectation has to land across multiple orgs, Peter does not write a spec. He runs a live exemplar in public with the strongest performer first, says openly that the ordering was deliberate, keeps the form of the deliverable open so the ask stays about the thinking rather than the artifact, lets the delta be self-evident to the people who will have to close it, and then collects the same from everyone else on a named rotation. He prefers showing imperfect work now over polished work later.
Switch Instrument, Not Intensity
Applies when a message, rule or ask has already failed through the channel Peter is currently using - repeated advocacy that has not landed, coaching that produced defensiveness rather than improvement, exhortation that did not change behaviour, or a rule that keeps losing case by case. His response is never to restate the same thing more forcefully. He changes the instrument and usually names the switch out loud. Mined from 7 independent observations between 2026-01-06 and 2026-08-21.
Time Over Cost
Peter treats elapsed time as the scarce quantity and money as the abundant one, and will spend cash to buy schedule, clarity or optionality. Notable because he named it himself as a transferable principle on 2026-05-21 and coached the lens explicitly to a direct report, which is rare - most of his patterns are inferred rather than stated. It generalises past procurement: he will pay to convert an ambiguous dispute into a binary one, remove cost as a variable entirely when a priority has executive visibility, and reason about a commitment in terms of lead time rather than budget. Mined from 5 independent observations between 2026-02-01 and 2026-09-11.
Constrain the Mechanism, Not the Access
When AI or automation raises a governance concern, Peter does not restrict who or what may reach the data. He constrains HOW the reach happens, so the pathway becomes auditable and deterministic. The failure mode he designs against is non-determinism, not leakage - a wrong filter in inspectable static code is a bug you fix once, while a model that sometimes pulls the wrong field is an unbounded, unauditable liability. He will therefore accept imperfect filtering and eventual leakage as the price of adoption speed, but will not accept a non-inspectable pathway.