Should you be yourself around his friends or act different

You're not actually worried about being yourself. You're worried about whether yourself will work here. That's different. Meeting his friends matters because it signals he's serious about you, and their approval shapes how he thinks about you going forward.

The real thing happening is you're testing whether you belong in his world. That's valid. But most people misread what his friends are actually assessing. They're not checking if you're cool enough or interesting enough. They care if you're kind to him, if you listen, if you're someone he'd keep seeing. They notice if you pretend to be someone else because that reads as either low confidence or dishonesty, both of which are red flags for them.

Being smart around his friends doesn't mean becoming a different person. It means entering a room where you don't know the inside jokes yet and reading the energy before you set the tone. It means not launching into your wildest stories in the first hour. It means asking questions and listening more than you normally would.

Keep the parts of yourself that actually matter to you. If you're sarcastic, stay sarcastic. If you're quiet, don't force yourself to be loud. What you're adjusting is how much space you take up, not who you actually are. Show up as the version of yourself that his friends would want around again, not as the version you think they want.

Don't ask him for feedback immediately afterward. Let the night sit for a day or two and see how he acts around you next time. If he's proud of you and wants to keep integrating you into his world, you'll feel it. If his friends seemed warm toward you, he'll probably mention it or make plans to do it again.

If things felt off or stiff, that's information too. But one awkward hangout doesn't mean you failed or that you need a different approach. Sometimes groups just have weird energy that night. If this becomes a pattern, then you know something needs to change, but one data point isn't enough.