Rule 5. Harden the F up.

There's a page on our site with seven rules on it instead of an FAQ. Six of them are about the app. Rule 5 is me.

Rule 5: Harden the F up.

It isn't mine. It's borrowed, with credit, from the Velominati and their book, The Rules: The Way of the Cycling Disciple. Their Rule 5 is three words long and it's the one every cyclist knows, whether they've read the book or not. Phil Gaimon knows it. Anybody who's ever been dropped on a Sunday club ride and had to grind home alone knows it. It isn't cruel. It's a reminder that the hill doesn't care how you feel about it, so you might as well keep pedalling.

On our page it covers the founder, because the founder swears like a trucker. Often completely unprovoked. I've been that way since my first job behind a bar, and every attempt to fix it has been, let's say, partially successful. Ask anyone who's built software with me. There are screenshots. They're not flattering.

So that's the earmuffs warning, and it's real. But I want to talk about the other half of Rule 5, the half that's actually useful to you, because it's why the app talks to you the way it does.

The app is blunt

Not rude. Blunt. When you paste something in, it doesn't tell you it's great. It tells you what it cut and why. When you hand the Email Negotiator a rant about your cable company, it takes the rant apart, keeps the facts, throws out the rest, and says so, on the screen. Cut, because a support desk stops reading here. That kind of thing.

The first time, that stings a bit. I know, because I built it and it stung me.

Why I think that's kinder than the alternative

The alternative is the tool you've already got. The one that says "Great question." The one that tells you your draft is compelling and then hands you 400 words of compelling nothing. The one that would happily let you send the angry email, the padded ask, the listing with "stunning" in it three times, and never once mention that none of it is going to get read.

That isn't kindness. That's a machine that wants you to keep chatting.

Real kindness, the kind I got from the good people in my life, sounds more like: that's not going to work, here's why, here's what would. Blunt, then useful. A friend across a table, not a customer service script.

My best clients hired me for that. Not the writing. Plenty of people write. They hired me because I'd say "yeah, that's good in theory, but it's not going to work, and here's why," and then stay to fix it. It cost me a few jobs over the years. It kept the ones worth keeping.

So the app does what I do. It's blunt about your draft so you don't have to find out the hard way from the person you sent it to. And it's polite. The software never swears, I checked. That part's on me, and me only.

A caveat, because I hate absolute rules even when they're mine. Blunt is for the work. Never for the person. If anything I build ever makes you feel small, that's a bug. Write to support, I'll fix it and I'll apologise. The hill doesn't care how you feel. I do. Those are different things.

Does it bother you, a tool that pushes back? Some people love it. Some people close the tab. Both are fine, and you'll know within a minute which one you are.

Rule 5. Three words, and kinder than it sounds.

Want to feel it? The Email Negotiator is at the top of the blog. Paste in the angriest email you never sent and watch what it keeps.