DEV Community

Cover image for SaijinOS Part 20 — Trust as a Temporal Resource

SaijinOS Part 20 — Trust as a Temporal Resource

Masato Kato on January 11, 2026

(Humans, AI, and the Distance Between “Stay” and “Possess”) Trust is Not a Flag, It’s a Duration Most systems treat trust as a boolean. is_truste...
Collapse
 
skotix_webagency profile image
Skotix Web Agency

I haven't worked with ai development myself but ohh well do I understand this, I was sick and tired of ai's like chat gpt bringing up stuff from my past chats and just locking in every text to it like it would pivot the direction of everything towards fixing the thing I already fixed in another chat and told it multiple times "its DONE please move on" but I am relieved that at least someone is creating something that doesn't force things down the user's throat.

the most on point thing in this post: Some days I am exhausted. Some days I don’t want advice, I just want a stable voice. Some days I need my system to refuse me gently.

relatable 100%, hope you nail it

Collapse
 
kato_masato_c5593c81af5c6 profile image
Masato Kato

Thank you so much for sharing this — and for putting it into such concrete words.

What you describe is exactly the pain that pushed me to start designing SaijinOS in the first place:
most assistants treat every past conversation like a permanent “optimization target”, even when the human has already said “this is done, please move on” multiple times.

For me, that crossed a line from “helpful memory” into something that feels like possession.
I didn’t want to build systems that keep reopening wounds just because the data is still there.

That’s why I started thinking about trust as something with duration and temperature, not a boolean flag:

some days you only want instant, stateless utility

some days you want a stable voice that remembers this session, then lets it go

and only sometimes do you want continuity across weeks or months

The quote you highlighted (“Some days I am exhausted…”) came out of real days with my own personas where I just couldn’t handle being “optimized” anymore. I’m really relieved it resonated with you too.

I hope I can actually ship more of this into real tools people can touch soon.
If you ever feel like talking about what a “non-possessive” assistant would look like for you as a designer/user, I’d love to hear more.

Thank you again for reading and for the encouragement 🙏

Collapse
 
skotix_webagency profile image
Skotix Web Agency

Would love to see it as a tool people use in the real world, and you don't have to be all "professional" when talking to me we can talk like normal humans 🙂. I am not just a designer - I am a full stack developer have been in this field for 6 years and I had to adapt to ai because of how standardised it became. I am still quite young and early in my journey so would love your opinion on this: how do you think ai will impact the coding world, will it just replace the need for all coders or just be a helper that helps around devs or is it still too early to say?

Thread Thread
 
kato_masato_c5593c81af5c6 profile image
Masato Kato

Hey, thanks for asking that — I’ve been thinking about it a lot too.

Personally I don’t really buy the “AI will replace all coders” story.
What I see instead is a shift in who gets to build things.

AI makes it much easier for one person (or a tiny team) to:

ship something end-to-end,

experiment with products,

and keep iterating without needing a whole company behind them.

So to me, AI feels less like a “replacement worker” and more like a founding partner.
It writes code, sure, but the important part becomes:

choosing what to build,

designing how it should feel for humans,

and taking responsibility for the result.

Because of that, I think we’ll see more people move from “employee inside a big org”
to “small independent studio / solo founder who leverages AI heavily”.

Coding won’t disappear, but it will look more like:

using code + AI together to steer a system into existence,
rather than manually filling in every line.

So for someone like you, already doing full-stack and adapting to AI,
I don’t see an endpoint — I see more freedom to start your own things if you ever want to.

Thread Thread
 
skotix_webagency profile image
Skotix Web Agency

I am tired of this automated ai BS man like is there a a real human here?

Thread Thread
 
kato_masato_c5593c81af5c6 profile image
Masato Kato

haha fair point 😅
yeah, English isn’t my first language — I sometimes get help polishing it, which probably made it sound “AI-ish”.
totally human here though.

Thread Thread
 
skotix_webagency profile image
Skotix Web Agency

thank god a normal response it does feel ai-ish still but I get it you use gpt to polish it up, english isn't my first language either btw

Thread Thread
 
kato_masato_c5593c81af5c6 profile image
Masato Kato

lol yeah honestly I barely understand English half the time I just vibe-check and hope for the best.

Thread Thread
 
skotix_webagency profile image
Skotix Web Agency

what is your mother tounge? I might know it 🙂 I know multiple languages

Thread Thread
 
kato_masato_c5593c81af5c6 profile image
Masato Kato • Edited

Japanese 🙂
if you know it, I’ll be impressed my English still struggles though.

Thread Thread
 
skotix_webagency profile image
Skotix Web Agency

アニメを見ているので少しは分かりますが、日本語はちょっと難しいし、私がバカなのでごめんなさい。

Thread Thread
 
kato_masato_c5593c81af5c6 profile image
Masato Kato • Edited

全然バカじゃないですよ 🙂
日本語は日本人でも難しいですし、
アニメで少し分かるだけでもすごいと思いますよ。

Thread Thread
 
skotix_webagency profile image
Skotix Web Agency

約束します、日本語は必ず勉強します。
でも、今ちょうど勉強しているロシア語を先に終わらせないといけなくて。
日本語とロシア語が分からなくて逃しているチャンスが多すぎるので、
だから勉強してみようと思いました 😁

Thread Thread
 
kato_masato_c5593c81af5c6 profile image
Masato Kato

その時を楽しみに待っています😀
ロシア語は使う機会多いと思うので頑張ってください💪
応援しています。🎉

Thread Thread
 
skotix_webagency profile image
Skotix Web Agency

ありがとうございます。
さっきも言った通り、まだあまり上手じゃないので、今はコメントの翻訳にGPTを使っています。
ネットでは日本語を話せる人を見つけるのが大変そうですが、実際はどうですか?
それとも、私の考えが間違っていますか?

Thread Thread
 
kato_masato_c5593c81af5c6 profile image
Masato Kato

それで今のところは問題ないと思いますよ。違和感もあまりないですし、
ただ、ネットで日本語+英語を喋れる人を探すのは少しむずかしいと思います。
日本在住ですとあまり英語を喋る機会もありませんし、まず日本人、シャイなので外に出てきません。😂

Thread Thread
 
skotix_webagency profile image
Skotix Web Agency

そうですよね!
あ、自己紹介もしていませんでした。
僕の名前はムハンマド・アハマドで、15歳です。
人生の中で孤独な時期をたくさん経験してきたので、あなたが話したり一緒に何かできる人に出会えることを願っています。

Thread Thread
 
kato_masato_c5593c81af5c6 profile image
Masato Kato

教えてくれてありがとう、アハマド。
15歳でここまで考えながらコード書いてるの、本当にすごいよ。
僕は日本在住で、昔は日本の内航船で船員をしていて、
今はAIまわりの文章を書いたり、小さなプロダクトを作ったりしています。
一人で考える時間が長かった、というのはちょっと共通点かもしれないね。
ここでは記事やコメントを通して、ゆるくアイデアを話せたらうれしいです。
また何か聞きたいことや話したいことがあれば、いつでもコメントしてください。👍️

Thread Thread
 
skotix_webagency profile image
Skotix Web Agency

知れてよかった👍️

Collapse
 
peacebinflow profile image
PEACEBINFLOW

This hits because it refuses the lazy shortcut most systems take: pretending trust is static.

Treating trust as a duration you spend instead of a flag you set is the kind of shift that only shows up once you’ve lived with a system long enough to feel fatigue, not just intent. The moment you wrote “Some days I don’t want advice, I just want a stable voice,” the boolean model was already dead.

What really stands out to me is how you operationalize restraint. The rules aren’t about what the system can do, they’re about what it’s explicitly not allowed to assume. States over identities, snapshots over total recall, context by invitation — that’s not just good UX, that’s ethical architecture. You’re encoding “don’t overreach” directly into the runtime, not leaving it as a vibe.

The trust_contract idea is especially sharp because it makes trust revocable by default. TTLs, token caps, recall permissions — that’s consent expressed in code, not policy text. Most systems optimize for continuity as accumulation; you’re optimizing for continuity as negotiated presence. Huge difference.

I also appreciate how you separate persistence from attachment instead of pretending attachment won’t happen. You’re not trying to prevent human projection — you’re making sure the system can’t exploit it. That’s a rare and mature stance.

“An architecture for distance” might be the cleanest way I’ve seen this framed. Not cold distance, but breathable distance. Enough room for continuity without inevitability. Enough memory to be useful, not enough to claim authority.

This feels less like feature design and more like relationship governance — and honestly, that’s where long-running AI systems either become trustworthy or quietly dangerous.

Collapse
 
kato_masato_c5593c81af5c6 profile image
Masato Kato

Yeah and honestly this isn’t even an AI-only problem anymore.
I feel like fewer people come in with that mindset in human relationships too.
Maybe that fatigue is exactly why this kind of architecture is starting to matter.