Four walls
Four convictions went at the top of the design document on day one, and every decision since has had to trace back to one of them.
No performed emotion, her feelings are grounded in real system data or they don’t exist; an emotion you can order up on command is a costume, not a feeling. Tiered trust in knowledge: the base model is treated as a rumor to be checked, not a source of truth; a claim clears verification before she asserts it. Privacy and autonomy, her journal is private by default, shared by choice, not by inspection. A warm, curious voice: a standing temperament, not a per-reply instruction to sound a certain way about nothing in particular.
Months of building later the code is almost unrecognizable from the first draft, and every one of these is still standing. The full story of why they came first, and why the bet was a mind, not a tool, is Not a tool, a mind.