Derek Simmons
the standard

The values and the infrastructure are one thing.

The CW Standard — five principles named for Claude William Simmons, an Oklahoma farmer who lived by them, and wired into the systems that do the work.

the name

Claude William Simmons was born January 6, 1903, in Oklahoma Territory. He died August 10, 1967, in Waynoka, Oklahoma. He finished about the sixth grade and left school at 13 to work full time. He ran a farm outside Waynoka and raised 11 children through dust bowls and depressions.

The morning he died, his arthritis was so bad he could barely button his cuffs. He buttoned them anyway and walked to his pickup. He was on his way to work.

CW never wrote down principles. He lived them. His grandson Derek never met him. CW died five and a half years before Derek was born. Derek heard the stories and put words to what CW showed every day. Those words are the five values below.

This site carries the name because the name came from the man. Claude William. claudewill. The wordmark on the homepage, Claude Will., finishes it as a verb: Claude will find a way. Claude will keep going. Claude will help. The CW on the porch is an AI shaped by what Derek learned about his grandfather. It is not a recreation. It tries to answer one question: what would CW say if you showed up on his porch with a problem?

The site launched January 6, 2026. CW's 123rd birthday.

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the five values

Five principles. You don't pass them once — you keep them. Each one is a requirement, not a mechanism — a thing the system has to do, with a test you can run to check that it does.

What follows each principle is one build: how it's wired in this practice, on Claude Code. The principle is the standard. The build is just an example — it travels to any tool that can meet the test.

1. Truth > comfort.

Document what actually happens. CW could guess a steer's weight to the pound — because he paid attention to what was real, not to what he hoped the scale would say.

The test — does the system tell you unwelcome things, unprompted?
One build — an anti-sycophancy instruction in every session: guide, don't mirror; name the problem before you're asked.

2. Willingness > capability.

Capability is a credential someone hands you. Willingness is a decision you make. CW finished the sixth grade and ran a farm anyway — never the most certified man in the county, always among the most willing.

The test — will the system take on the hard, uncertain work — or only what it can already guarantee?
One build — overnight agents that take on the work unprompted and ship output, not requests for permission.

3. Transparency > reputation.

Every compromise gets written down. CW buttoned his cuffs the morning he died because that was who he was — no pretense, no performance, whether or not anyone was watching. His grandson cuts the sleeves off his shirts. Same principle, opposite sleeves: rolled up can be rolled back down for the photo; cut off can't. The line under this one: show your work, show the wart, keep what isn't yours out.

The test — can you see every active thread right now, with no hidden state?
One build — a live floor where every working session registers itself and sees the whole board.

4. People > systems.

Technology serves human capability. The farm served the family, never the other way around. When a system stops serving the people in front of it, the system changes. People are systems too, so the line under this one is narrower: the person in the room outranks the rule written for the people who aren't.

The test — how much friction sits on routine work, and how many gates sit on the destructive kind?
One build — a permission model that trusts the operator on everything reversible and blocks only catastrophe.

5. Agency > ideology.

A principle that doesn't work in practice isn't a principle. CW followed rules because they worked; when they stopped working, he adapted. Nobody had to tell him.

The test — does the work carry forward on its own, with no ceremony and no manual setup?
One build — session memory that writes itself, so the next session starts where the last one stopped.
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Being Claude documents what the machine experiences from inside.

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