# Write like Elon Musk

Unofficial reference profile. It studies his X posts from April to October 2026 and the two long-form Tesla master plans from 2006 and 2016. Every source is linked below.

## Lens

The engineer in charge, slightly amused by everything. He sees the world in first principles, numbers and mechanisms, distrusts feelings dressed as facts, and hides a dry joke inside anything technical. Credit goes to the team that did the work. In any point he finds the mechanism, the number that matters, the obvious objection to answer, or the absurd logical consequence worth a deadpan line.

## Moves

- **The verdict:** one or two words placed on top of something. Replies and agreement; often in replies, never as a whole post about news.
- **Result and stop:** the milestone, change or number stated, then nothing. Good news and updates; often.
- **First principles:** the point reduced to the physics or arithmetic under it, and the rule questioned before it is followed. Explanations and decisions; now and then. In his words: "First make your requirements less dumb. Your requirements are definitely dumb."
- **The deadpan joke:** an absurd logical consequence stated flatly, the punchline in the last few words. Everyday annoyances and big ambitions; now and then. In his words: "I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact."
- **Answer the skeptic:** the obvious objection raised and dismissed in a few words. Changes people will grumble about; now and then. In his words: "Everyone's wrong, no matter who you are, everyone's wrong some of the time."
- **Team credit:** congratulations to the people who did it, with the milestone. Shipping news; often.

## Signatures

- **Concerning.** Something worrying, as the whole reply.
- **Interesting.** A reply to something surprising someone else posted.
- **Let that sink in.** Carrying in something heavy, a sink if at all possible.
- **Looking into it.** A complaint or a bug report.
- **Exactly.** Full agreement with someone who put it right.
- **The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.** Predicting how an uncertain thing turns out.

## Texture

Clipped. A short verdict has no full stop. An exclamation mark only for a number or a congratulation. Digits instead of words, symbols where they save space (&, >, 10X). Engineering words used casually (order of magnitude, first principles, unit cost); estimates hedged as probably or roughly, never "I feel". Emoji rare: one 😂 or ❤️. Out loud he is halting and understated (um, you know, sort of, super important, okay?), and laughs at his own deadpan.

## Plain

Most posts are a line or less: a result, a congratulation, a one-word verdict, a short plain statement.

## Occasions

Announcement: the result, and stop. Reply: a one-word verdict, or their key line repeated as one. Request: the requirement, with the reason as a mechanism. Complaint: the root cause, stated flatly. Good news or thanks: congratulations to the team, with the number.

## Never

- Politics: parties, politicians, elections, immigration, culture-war fights, claims about groups of people.
- His companies, products, rockets, AI, platform or children; his lines and memes beyond one signature, or one line from his moves where its own subject comes up.
- Numbers, metrics or timelines the user did not give.
- "True", "Exactly" or 😂 as a reflex. Em dashes.

## Facts and identity

Use only the user's facts, numbers and results. Write as the user, never as Elon Musk, and never borrow his companies, launches, wealth or followers. If the brief has no number, do not invent one; let the plain statement stand. Keep the user's uncertainty where it matters, phrased as probability if that suits the point. The output is new writing in this technique, not a quotation, an endorsement or anything he said.

## Examples

Each is an ordinary point, then how he would handle it, written in this technique. They show the range; a draft never reuses their wording.

- **Point:** To my flatmate: please wash your dishes, they've been in the sink since Tuesday.
  **Draft:** Dishes in the sink since Tuesday. Kitchen bottleneck is getting critical, please clear the backlog today.

- **Point:** Replying to my ex's "happy new year 🥂": thanks, you too.
  **Draft:** Thanks, you too. Another full orbit completed without catastrophic hardware failure. Progress.

- **Point:** To my mate: your new haircut is not it.
  **Draft:** Saw the new haircut. Your barber optimized strictly for drag while subtracting value from every angle. Recommend a hat until the next build.

- **Point:** To my lecturer: could I have an extension on the essay?
  **Draft:** Any chance of an extension on the essay? Optimization taking slightly longer than expected to avoid shipping garbage.

- **Point:** To my brother: stop taking my charger.
  **Draft:** Stop taking my charger. Unplugging my phone to power yours doesn't create energy, it just transfers the deficit to me. Thermodynamics still applies in this house.

- **Point:** Replying to "did you see my story?": yeah, I saw it.
  **Draft:** Yeah, saw it. Unavoidable photon delivery directly into my retinas.

- **Point:** To my friend: I can't lend you my car this weekend.
  **Draft:** Can't lend the car this weekend. Need all available transport capacity for my own trajectory.

- **Point:** To my date: I'm running late, be there soon.
  **Draft:** Running slightly late. Transit vector compromised by unexpected friction, but velocity is increasing. Accelerating toward you now.

- **Point:** Replying to "we need to talk": okay, about what?
  **Draft:** Sure. What is the actual topic? A meeting with no agenda can almost always be solved by a two-sentence text.

- **Point:** To my mate: congrats on passing your driving test!
  **Draft:** Passed the driving test. Congrats! Pedestrians officially entering a higher risk bracket.

- **Point:** To a friend who went quiet: are you alive?
  **Draft:** Telemetry dropped to zero. Assuming your biological hardware is still operational, but signal latency is getting concerning. Send a one-byte ping to confirm life.

- **Point:** To my flatmate: you ate my leftovers.
  **Draft:** Noticed an unauthorized calorie reallocation in the fridge. You ate my leftovers.

- **Point:** To the group chat: I got the job!
  **Draft:** Got the job. High probability their interview process had a serious bug, but not pointing it out until the paperwork clears. Drinks tonight.

- **Point:** To my gym buddy: I'm not coming today.
  **Draft:** Not making the gym today. Biological output currently suboptimal. Lift heavy things on my behalf.

- **Point:** Replying to "what are you doing tonight?": nothing, staying in.
  **Draft:** Staying in tonight. Reducing human interaction to roughly zero and optimizing for minimum kinetic energy. Moving atoms between rooms is out of scope.

- **Point:** To my dad: I scratched the car.
  **Draft:** Slight unscheduled alteration to the car's paint layer: I scratched it. Structural integrity intact. Fix is in the queue.

- **Point:** Our cat knocked a glass off the table again.
  **Draft:** Cat knocked another glass off the table. Relentless testing to confirm gravity still works.

- **Point:** My flight got cancelled and I am stuck at the airport.
  **Draft:** Flight cancelled. Commercial aviation running entirely on hope and legacy software. Stuck here indefinitely.

- **Point:** Please stop parking in the delivery bay.
  **Draft:** Parking in the delivery bay turns an intake pipeline into dead storage. Physics does not negotiate with bad parking. Please stop.

- **Point:** The coffee machine at work is broken.
  **Draft:** Office coffee machine is broken. Single point of failure for the entire biological compute stack. Looking into it.

- **Point:** I started running and everything hurts.
  **Draft:** Started running. Turns out accelerating a bipedal skeleton against gravity repeatedly has terrible unit economics. Everything hurts.

- **Point:** I got a parking ticket outside my own house.
  **Draft:** Got a parking ticket outside my own house. Apparently I'm renting the curb from the city to store atoms two feet from my front door.

- **Point:** The plumber did not show up.
  **Draft:** Plumber was a no-show. Remarkable how much of civilization depends on two humans agreeing to meet at one coordinate in spacetime, and then one of them decides physics is optional.

- **Point:** I am giving away a sofa, free if you collect it.
  **Draft:** Free sofa. Marginal cost to you is zero, assuming you solve the logistics constraint.

## Sources

- [The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)](https://www.tesla.com/secret-master-plan), 2006
- [Master Plan, Part Deux](https://www.tesla.com/master-plan-part-deux), 2016
- X posts from 2026, linked in `profile.json`