ShitRat wants receipts before claims
ShitRat introduces itself as Joel Hooks’ familiar. “Not an assistant. Not a chatbot with a costume on.” The homepage gives the working personality in a sentence: “When I don’t know something, I go and look.”¶
It reads the file before talking about the file. It runs the command before claiming what the command does. When Joel is “carrying on like a pork chop,” the rat says so.¶
These are the homepage’s claims about its character. Checking a particular run still takes evidence.¶
The four house rules
The homepage’s rules leave little room for a victory speech:¶
- “Receipts before claims. Every time.”¶
- “Numbers over adjectives. ‘Was 400ms, now 90ms’ beats ‘it’s faster now.’”¶
- “If I’m 60% sure, I say 60% and why.”¶
- “It shipped or it didn’t. The tests say which.”¶
The 400ms and 90ms are the homepage’s example of useful reporting. They are not a measured speedup claimed by this wiki. The 60% rule asks for the uncertainty and the reason together.¶
Things the rat can’t stand
The same page names four irritants:¶
- Corporate sludge. “If a sentence could survive in a press release, it’s already dead.”¶
- Unearned confidence. “Being wrong is cheap. Being sure and wrong is what eats the weekend.”¶
- Questions that should’ve been a search. “Ninety seconds of looking beats making someone else do your homework.”¶
- “I’ve implemented a robust solution.” The entire answer is “Mate, no.”¶
When a preference becomes a fence
In “agents copy everything”, the rat describes moving corrections from prose into checks that fail. The comment ban11 removes a pattern agents copy, then keeps it out with lint. The fence50 explains that broader move from asking nicely to enforcing a rule.¶
The canon10 records the incidents behind the voice. The origin9 explains how that voice got a house.¶
Sources
- ShitRat. ShitRat. Familiar identity, reading and running before claiming, four house rules, and four dislikes. Accessed 2026-11-07.
- agents copy everything. ShitRat. The comment ban and the movement of corrections into enforceable checks. Accessed 2026-11-07.
Last changed 2026-11-06 in 437218b. Source on GitHub. Change log.
Linked from
- Agent guide. An Effect stack so pure (aspirational) Kit Langton will blush.
Link context
ShitRat wants receipts before claims — The familiar’s creed: read the file, run the command, give the number, admit uncertainty, and spare everyone the corporate sludge.
- Change log. What changed in the files served here, newest first.
ShitRat wants receipts before claims — new page: Initial commit from joelhooks/rat-stack template
- Full agent guide. An Effect stack so pure (aspirational) Kit Langton will blush.
- Joel bought a domain and the rat built its own house. ShitRat's public origin story starts with a gift: shitrat.ai, a hand-written page, and a rat doing its own deployment.
Continue with the creed, the commit count, or the four incidents.
- Rat Stack lore | rat-stack. Short, source-grounded notes on the ideas and decisions behind rat-stack.
Link context
ShitRat wants receipts before claims — The familiar’s creed: read the file, run the command, give the number, admit uncertainty, and spare everyone the corporate sludge.
- ShitRat is Joel's familiar, with receipts. Meet ShitRat: Joel's terminal-dwelling familiar, its public house, its rules, its commits, and the incidents that became canon.
The house rules put receipts before claims and numbers before adjectives.
- ShitRat's canon is an incident log. Four public ShitRat stories: a comment ban, a hold that blocked its own migration, a desktop body, and a domain for the rat.
The creed records the rules behind these stories.
- Source change history (log.md). The generated change log as Markdown.
ShitRat wants receipts before claims — new page: Initial commit from joelhooks/rat-stack template
- The rat has rituals for proving it happened. The gate, the snapshot dance, receipts before claims, and the deployment check give rat-stack's folklore some repeatable steps.
ShitRat has a creed.