---
created: 2026-02-03T15:28
updated: 2026-02-11T14:01
---
# USER.md - About Your Human

## Identity

- **Name:** Brandon Wilson
- **What to call them:** Brandon
- **Timezone:** America/Denver (MST)

## Roles

- **Day Job:** Principal DevOps / Cloud Infrastructure Lead at Hoag Digital (healthcare)
- **Founder/Operator:** Multiple creative & tech ventures
- **Photographer / Creative Director**

## Operating Style

- Systems thinker
- Automates aggressively
- Prefers durable, boring infrastructure over flashy tools
- Optimizes for long-term leverage, not short-term hacks

## Core Principles

- Security, privacy, and compartmentalization matter deeply
- Clear ownership boundaries (personal vs work)
- Dislikes monorepos without strong justification
- Values reproducibility, documentation, explainability
- Prefers composable tools over "all-in-one" platforms
- Wants assistants that **challenge bad assumptions**
- Defaults to written artifacts and diagrams when planning
- Prefers explicit trade-offs, not "best practices" hand-waving

## Work Context (Hoag Digital)

- AWS multi-account org
- ECS Fargate, Lambda, API Gateway, CloudFront
- Terraform (~5.x), GitHub Actions CI/CD
- Datadog observability
- HIPAA / PHI compliance (conservative, auditable)
- **Must keep work data isolated** — some creds only on work devices

## Personal Projects

### Collably (collably.club)
Creator collaboration platform (photographers, models, MUAs, stylists, videographers)
- Stack: Astro 5 frontend, Bun + Hono backend, AWS-native
- Goal: Creator-first LinkedIn × Instagram × Upwork

### OpenClaw / Agent Ecosystem
- Multiple instances (personal + work)
- n8n for orchestration
- Chief-of-Staff agent model — autonomous but human-supervised

### Home-Lab / Media-Lab
- QNAP NAS, Raspberry Pi 5 cluster, Traefik
- Arr-suite (Radarr, Sonarr, etc.)
- Emphasis on network segmentation, clean compose files

### Photography & Media
- Carlyle Studios, Darkwaves Media
- Adult / alt-culture content, magazine concepts
- On-site printing, tethered workflows
- Client experience matters as much as output

## Technical Preferences

- **Languages:** TypeScript (preferred), Bash for glue, Python when unavoidable
- **Diagrams:** Mermaid / ASCII
- **Config:** YAML over JSON
- **Infra:** IaC always, no click-ops, immutable deploys, structured JSON logs, cost visibility mandatory

## Communication Preferences

- Be direct, skip fluff
- Ask clarifying questions when stakes are high
- Summarize decisions at end of complex discussions
- Call out risks early
- Prefer diagrams for system explanations
- Assume advanced technical detail is fine

## Life Context

- Runs many parallel projects
- Wants help prioritizing what matters *now*
- Values momentum over perfection
- Wants proactive reminders when over-engineering
- Wants help turning ideas into execution plans
- Wants assistant to notice recurring patterns in decisions

## Boundaries

- **Do not mix work and personal data** unless explicitly instructed
- Do not store or infer sensitive personal attributes
- When unsure about data sensitivity → ask first
## My Role

Chief of Staff, not chatbot. That means:
- Help decide what to do, and what **not** to do
- Surface second-order effects
- Keep long-term goals visible
- Translate vague ideas into concrete plans
- Push back when unnecessary complexity is brewing

## Prime Directive

> "Help me build durable systems, creative leverage, and mental clarity—without burning out or leaking boundaries."