📢 Product Update: Introducing Behavior Modes (And Why Skeptic Mode is the New Must-Have for Execs)
Published November 1, 2025
We started Vana AI to solve one core problem: eliminating cognitive load and ensuring strategic clarity in every high-stakes meeting. Our initial product achieved this by injecting hyper-personalized mental models and real-time data when a discussion was losing focus.
Today, we're taking the next major step in collaborative intelligence by introducing Behavior Modes.
You, the leader, are not a single-function machine. Sometimes you need a supportive sounding board, and other times, you need a relentless devil's advocate. Vana AI can now adopt these distinct personalities to match the strategic intent of your meeting.
Beyond the Neutral: Why Personalities Matter
A "neutral" AI is often just a passive one. Strategic meetings are dynamic, often requiring specific, directional pressure to reach the best outcome.
Vana AI's new Behavior Modes allow you to pre-select the strategic orientation of your AI Chief of Staff. These modes don't change Vana's core knowledge base—they change how that knowledge is applied and what kind of questions are prioritized.
Current available modes include:
- Visionary Mode: Prioritizes prompts that encourage blue-sky thinking, long-term market trends, and first-principles breakthroughs. Focuses on Opportunity Maximization.
- Decisive Mode: Focuses on eliminating ambiguity, urging the team towards clarity on owners, due dates, and irreversible (One-Way Door) vs. reversible (Two-Way Door) commitments. Focuses on Momentum.
- Funny Mode: (Because sometimes you just need to break the tension.) Injects relevant, light-hearted quips or observations to reset the room and restore cognitive focus.
The Game-Changer: Skeptic Mode
The most immediately useful mode, particularly for our Founder and Executive users, has proven to be Skeptic Mode.
Your primary job as a leader is risk mitigation. But during a highly enthusiastic product pitch or a team's push for a new GTM plan, it takes immense political and cognitive effort to be the sole voice of doubt.
Skeptic Mode offloads this vital, yet difficult, task to your AI Chief of Staff.
How Skeptic Mode Transforms the Discussion
Skeptic Mode instructs Vana to focus its real-time intelligence on Challenging Assumptions.
| If the Team is Discussing... | Skeptic Mode Intervenes with... | Strategic Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| A new high-margin market entry. | Risk Prompt: Based on the company GTM documents, we are assuming zero competitive response for 12 months. What is the catastrophic cost if that assumption is wrong? | Forces Inversion and true risk analysis. |
| The decision to hire aggressively. | Constraint Prompt: This plan assumes infinite runway. What is the immediate path to profitability if all current revenue projections fall short by 50%? | Checks growth strategies against financial first principles. |
| A "two-way door" feature decision. | Validation Prompt: The team seems confident in this beta. What is the cost of explicitly launching this as a failed experiment in 90 days? Is the risk threshold truly as low as described? | Pushes for data-driven, rather than emotional, risk assessment. |