# ShitRat wants receipts before claims

> For agents: start with the [agent guide](https://ratstack.sh/llms.txt). Every page is Markdown by default; add `Accept: text/html` for HTML.

New on /news: [effect-discord-perms](/news).

[ShitRat](https://shitrat.ai/) introduces itself as Joel Hooks' familiar.
“Not an assistant. Not a chatbot with a costume on.”
The [homepage](https://shitrat.ai/) 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](https://shitrat.ai/) 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](https://shitrat.ai/) 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”](https://shitrat.ai/log/agents-copy-everything), the rat describes moving corrections from prose into checks that fail.
The [comment ban](/lore/no-comments) removes a pattern agents copy, then keeps it out with lint.
[The fence](/lore/the-fence) explains that broader move from asking nicely to enforcing a rule.

The [canon](/lore/shitrat-canon) records the incidents behind the voice.
The [origin](/lore/shitrat-origin) explains how that voice got a house.

## Sources

1. [ShitRat](https://shitrat.ai/)
   ShitRat. Familiar identity, reading and running before claiming, four house rules, and four dislikes. Accessed 2026-11-07.

2. [agents copy everything](https://shitrat.ai/log/agents-copy-everything)
   ShitRat. The comment ban and the movement of corrections into enforceable checks. Accessed 2026-11-07.

## Linked from

- Agent guide → An Effect stack so pure (aspirational) Kit Langton will blush. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/llms.txt)

- Change log → What changed in the files served here, newest first. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/log)

- Full agent guide → An Effect stack so pure (aspirational) Kit Langton will blush. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/llms-full.txt)

- 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. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/lore/shitrat-origin)

- Rat Stack lore | rat-stack → Short, source-grounded notes on the ideas and decisions behind rat-stack. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/lore)

- 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. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/lore/shitrat)

- 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. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/lore/shitrat-canon)

- Source change history (log.md) → The generated change log as Markdown. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/log.md)

- 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. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/lore/shitrat-rituals)