Notes from the workbench.
Notes on AI engineering, agents, and the unedited parts of shipping solo. By Dee, an ex-fintech designer in LA.
- I was a half-builder A half-builder is an "AI builder" who can do one half of the design-to-deploy chain and skips the rest. They post the demo. They never post the URL. Builder.ai was the loud version. Most of your timeline is the quiet version. So am I. This essay is me stopping.
- I've Touched Everything and Mastered Nothing Except a few things that stuck.
- Don't Replace Me: My AI Survival Guide Book I wrote a 235-page survival guide for people scared about AI replacing their jobs. 24 rules, honest takes, built with AI itself. Here's what it is and why.
- SEO Is Dead? No. But the Game Changed. CTRs are down 30%, AI Overviews are everywhere. SEO isn't dead but the rules shifted. Here's what GEO is and why brand mentions now outrank backlinks 3:1.
- The Distribution Problem Nobody Talks About I have 61 post drafts, 18 finished blog posts, and published nothing. Here's what my AI agent diagnosed about why - and how I'm fixing the default.
- castkit: CLI Demo Videos From One Command castkit is an open-source Rust CLI demo video generator. Run one command on any binary and get a polished MP4 or GIF. Works headless in CI.
- 31 Rust CLI Tools Built for AI Agents I built 31 open-source Rust CLI tools for AI agents and measured 35x better token efficiency vs MCP servers. Here's the stack, the design decisions, and why it works.
- The 3-Month Gap: Building AI Agents That Actually Work The hard part of building AI agents isn't the demo - it's the 3 months after. Real lessons from running a 15-agent system in production for 90 days.
- Universal MCP Server: Two Tools, 56 APIs How I built a universal MCP server that wraps 56 APIs into just two tools using the OpenAPI Code Mode pattern - cutting token costs 50x.
- Prompt engineering is dead Prompt engineering had an 18-month run as a real skill. Models killed it. Learn what actually matters now - tool use, agent architecture, and MCP integration.
- I Stopped Posting on Twitter for 2 Months I accidentally stopped posting on Twitter for 2 months. Here's what happened to reach, followers, and my work - and what it actually cost me.
- My coding stack is 4 models deep How I use Grok, Claude Code, Codex, and more in sequence to ship faster - what each model does best and why one tool isn't enough.
- 0 to 500 Twitter Followers in 30 Days I rebuilt my Twitter from zero after a ban. Here's exactly how I grew to 500 followers in 30 days with replies, real takes, and no cross-promo deals.
- Building 7 Apps at Once as a Solo Founder With ADHD What it actually looks like to run 7 simultaneous projects solo with ADHD - the failures, the systems that survived, and why I'll never take a cofounder.
- Why AI Products Have Terrible UX Most AI products have terrible UX - not because the AI is bad, but because no one who understands both AI and design is building them. Here's what to fix.
- How ADHD and AI Work Together (My Real Stack) Scored 147 on RAADS-R and 38 on AQ-50 (autism), plus ADHD. Here's how I built AI systems that work with my brain, not against it. Real stack, real workflows.
- Why I Left My Role as Solo Product Designer at VALK I was the only designer at a $4B+ fintech platform for 5 years. Here's the real reason I left in 2025 and what I'm building now.
- When design stops being enough After 5 years as VALK's sole designer, I realized I want to build, not just design. On the gap between what I designed and what shipped - and what comes next.
- The unglamorous work that makes design real Five years into product design at a fintech, the majority of my work is documentation, edge cases, and maintenance. This is what senior design actually looks like.
- When your company pivots and your design work stops mattering After 4 years as VALK's sole designer, a major pivot taught me what happens when the product you built quietly gets deprecated - and how to stay.
- Agency vs product design - why I'm not going back After 2 years at a Moscow agency and 4 years as sole designer at a fintech, here's what actually changes when you go from agency to product design.
- Four years designing one product What four years as the sole designer on a fintech product teaches you about depth, restraint, and the trade-offs agency work never prepares you for.
- Accessibility in fintech is legally required, not optional Lessons from implementing WCAG 2.1 AA compliance in regulated financial software - data tables, chart contrast, focus management, and the institutional sales reality.
- Designing Merlin for 5 million Ledger Live users How I redesigned Merlin by VALK for the Ledger Live integration - two audiences, two design systems, and a compressed timeline.
- Moving doesn't fix your design problems I moved from Istanbul to LA and found the same Figma files waiting. Reflections on nomadic remote work, timezone pain, and why stability matters for design.
- Designing financial UI for 15+ countries What I learned designing VALK's platform across 15 countries - date formats, RTL, regulatory UI rules, and how to structure Figma for regional variants.
- Designing for users you cannot talk to Three years of enterprise B2B design at VALK with almost no user research access - and the proxy methods that replaced it.
- Why your design system probably does not work After 2 years maintaining a solo design system at VALK, I found the real problems are organizational - not technical. Here's what I got wrong.
- Designing DeFi for people who hate DeFi How I designed Merlin by VALK - a DeFi analytics tool built for traditional finance professionals who don't speak crypto-native language.
- Data tables are the hardest UI problem nobody talks about Lessons from designing financial data tables for institutional investors - density, sorting, accessibility, and why every table becomes a spreadsheet.
- Scaling a design system to 70+ institutions What breaks when your fintech design system grows from 7 clients to 70+ institutions fast - tokens, variants, documentation, and saying no.
- What seed funding does to design priorities After VALK closed its seed round in December 2020, everything I was working on suddenly changed. Here's what funding actually does to a startup's design work.
- Designing finance when you know nothing about finance 8 months into designing a fintech platform with zero financial background - how domain ignorance slows you down and unexpectedly helps you.
- Building a design system from zero at a fintech startup Six months into my first startup role, I rebuilt VALK's product from an engineer-built MVP. Here's what went wrong and what actually worked.
- Starting New Design Job During Global Pandemic I joined fintech startup as sole product designer right before COVID. Working remote from Bali during quarantine taught me things about design process I did not expect.