Eight probes. Five business days. One document.
This page is the methodology — every probe, the section structure, the quality bar, the timeline. We publish it so you can check the work, and so you know exactly what you're buying before you answer a single question.
From first probe to finished portrait.
You answer eight behavioral probes.
In writing, at your own pace — most people take about twenty-five minutes, and you can save and exit anytime. The probes ask for incidents and decisions, never self-ratings. You get an automatic confirmation the moment your answers land.
Synthesis runs, and the bar gets enforced.
Your eight answers are read for pattern — not scored, read — then drafted into the six sections. Every section is rated against a twelve-point quality bar. Anything under nine is rewritten at our cost before you ever see it. If we can't reach nine, you get a full refund instead of a portrait.
The portrait arrives.
Twelve hundred words across six sections, professionally typeset, PDF-ready, delivered to your inbox. Yours permanently — use it with a coach, in a bio, anywhere.
One revision pass, included.
If a section reads wrong, tell us what's wrong. We work back through your intake with you and rewrite it. If the rewrite still misses, we refund you and keep the portrait.
Incidents, not adjectives.
These are the actual probes from the intake, in order. Each one is designed to be hard to answer with a story you've rehearsed — and hard to game, because gaming them produces a portrait of the gaming.
Your role and scope
What you're responsible for, and the work that actually fills your days — as opposed to the work in your title.
The decision you'd remake
Not why it was wrong — what you did instead of what you already knew you should do.
The decision that felt most like you
Not your best decision. The one that felt the most natural while you were making it.
What colleagues say that surprises you
The feedback that makes you think: "really? I didn't realize that." That gap is signal.
What changes under stakes
Faster or slower, louder or quieter, more instinct or more process — what pressure actually does to you.
What you wish people understood
The part of how you work that gets misread, overlooked, or taken for granted.
The patterns you already suspect
Recurring instincts and defaults you've noticed in your own decisions — including the ones you're not sure are strengths.
Your hesitation about this
What gives you pause about having your patterns named. The honest answer is itself part of the portrait.
Six sections, always the same six.
The Pattern. Signature Moves. The Blind Spot. The Tension. What's Working Against You. What To Do With This. We tried eight sections early on — the extra two kept drifting into advice, and the portrait is observation, not advice. Six holds the line.
The blind-spot section is written to resist the story you tell about yourself. It is not flattering by design. The closing section tells you what to watch for, never who to become.
No horoscope. No letter codes. No "you're a 7w8 with a 4 fix." The portrait is specific to you and written to be defensible against a friend who knows you well.
We ship at nine of twelve, or we don't ship.
Every section of every portrait is rated against the same internal twelve-point bar — specificity, evidence, falsifiability, whether the blind spot actually bites. Below nine, the section is rewritten at our cost. If it still can't reach nine, you get a full refund. The bar is the same for the founding twenty and the ten-thousandth customer.
The same standard runs in reverse: vague intake answers produce a portrait that can't clear the bar — so we'd rather you take the probes seriously than quickly.
Walk into the first session already known.
The portrait was built for coaching preparation: hand it to your coach before the engagement starts and skip the three sessions of archaeology. Discovery is the least billable-feeling work in any engagement — the portrait is discovery, done, in writing.
Buyers also use it as the behavioral layer of a bio, a founder's "how I work" page for new hires, and a periodic self-audit — the founding tier exists partly so you can re-portrait as you change, three times in three years, and compare the documents.
Ready when you are.
Eight probes, about twenty-five minutes. Five business days later you'll know what the room already knows.