Not everything you want gets along.

The subject is you. “Heal from my childhood”, “Cut off everyone toxic”, “Be funnier”: every switch is something a person wants to be or do, in one grammar. Some of them ask for opposite stances at the same time. The board makes that visible, and when you ask why, the answer is a citation, not a joke.

There is no AI in the loop and nothing is generated. Every reaction comes from a small, deterministic rule engine driven by two models from personality and learning psychology. The whole board fits in the link you share.

The interpersonal circumplex. Personality psychology’s standard map of how people relate: a circle with two axes, warmth across and dominance up. Behaviors that sit next to each other reinforce; behaviors across the circle are in tension. Every angled toggle gets a position on that circle. For a goal, the position is the stance that goal asks of you; for a style, it’s the stance the style is.

Compatibility between two toggles is one line: the cosine of the angle between them. Above 0.3 they get along. Between -0.3 and 0.3 they argue and you get a warning. Between -0.8 and -0.3 the style is turned down to its gentler variant. Below -0.8 it locks off. Goals can lock or soften a style; two styles can only warn each other.

0° is warm, 90° dominant, 180° cold, 270° submissive. The angles are defensible starting points, not measurements. “Cut off everyone toxic” has no dedicated source for its placement, so any card it triggers says so.

Humor isn’t one thing. “Be funnier” is affiliative humor, the warm shared kind. Sarcasm is aggressive humor, so it’s a separate switch that needs Be funnier on first. When a heavy goal is on the board, humor doesn’t switch off; it drops to its gentle variant. That’s the hatched state.

One more axis. Attention turned inward isn’t interpersonal, so it gets its own line under the circle. “Understand myself deeply” and “Stop overanalyzing myself” look like the same habit from the outside. Trapnell and Campbell split it in two: reflection runs on curiosity, rumination on worry. When both are on, the board flags them together and the card explains the difference.

Five sources. Each card on the board points at one of them and says how strong the evidence is.

1. 1. Leary (1957); Wiggins (1979)

   Strong

   The whole compat() formula. Every lock, soften, warn and boost between two angled toggles comes from where they sit on this circle.

   The Interpersonal Circumplex. Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

2. 2. Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray & Weir (2003)

   Strong

   The split between Be funnier and Be sarcastic, the gentle variant, and why being sarcastic needs Be funnier switched on first.

   Individual differences in uses of humor: the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality.

3. 3. Gelkopf (2011)

   Promising but thin

   Why humor stays on, in its gentle form, when a heavy topic like trauma is on the board instead of being switched off.

   Caveat. The review says so itself: the evidence is small and methodologically weak. Promising, not proven.

   The use of humor in serious mental illness: a review. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

4. 4. Kruger, Epley, Parker & Ng (2005)

   Strong

   The permanent warning that rides along with Sarcasm.

   Egocentrism over e-mail: can we communicate as well as we think?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

5. 5. Trapnell & Campbell (1999)

   Strong

   Why “Understand myself deeply” and “Stop overanalyzing myself” get flagged together: they look identical from the outside, and this is the paper that tells them apart.

   Private self-consciousness and the five-factor model of personality: distinguishing rumination from reflection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

A few reactions are jokes, and they’re marked as such so the research tier stays honest. They add a chip and never change state.

• House rule: Five's the limit. Something has to give.
• House rule: Gentle with yourself, but make it sarcastic.

Every lock can be overruled: tap the padlock and the switch flips on anyway, with a note that you did. An override lasts until the toggle that caused the lock changes, then it clears, so it never outlives its reason.

Strict mode turns that off. While it’s on, the board’s locks stand, any overrides you’d made are retracted, and the setting travels with the link you share.

No switch heals a childhood or ends a relationship. Flipping one records what you want and shows what that want asks of the rest of you. The board can map the tension. The work is yours.