# Dmitry (Dee) Kargaev — full context

> AI Engineer and Senior Product Designer in Los Angeles. 15 years in product design, 5 years building software, the last 3 on production AI. Multi-agent systems, RAG, agent memory. Author of *Don't Replace Me* and SSRN papers on GEO and SEEN.

## About

Dmitry "Dee" Kargaev (canonical Latinization: Dmitry; passport-faithful alias: Dmitrii; display: Dee) is a Russian-American AI engineer and senior product designer based in Los Angeles. He started doing design work at 14 in Irkutsk, Russia, went full-time freelance in November 2015, and holds a BS in Computer & Information Systems Security from Moscow State Linguistic University (2013-2017). He worked remotely from multiple countries (Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, Malaysia, Russia) before settling in Los Angeles in March 2022.

From November 2019 to February 2025 he was sole product designer at VALK (now Datai Network), an institutional fintech platform serving 70+ banks, hedge funds, and asset managers across 15+ countries on $4B+ in deals. He took the DeFi analytics product from a blank Figma file to 50K+ users and $5B+ in monitored portfolios. He designed the white-label transaction system connecting 450+ financial institutions and built the component library with design tokens powering 20+ product surfaces. The platform won 5 industry awards including Sell-Side Technology Awards and Asset Management Awards.

Now builds full-stack AI products end to end as one operator: research, design, frontend, backend, AI integration, infrastructure, deploy. Multi-agent systems, RAG pipelines, agent orchestration with persistent memory. Builds and maintains *Dory*, an open-source shared memory layer for AI agents (MIT, github.com/deeflect/dory). Writes about AI engineering and product design at blog.deeflect.com. Author of *Don't Replace Me: A Survival Guide to the AI Apocalypse* (2026), the SSRN paper *SEEN: A Four-Layer Framework for Generative Engine Optimization* (DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6815500, 2026), and the SSRN paper *The SEO-to-GEO Gap* (DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6476021, 2026).

## Expertise

- Artificial Intelligence & Multi-Agent Systems
- Product Design & UX/UI (15+ years)
- AI Agent Architecture & LLM Infrastructure
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and AI search
- Rust Programming & CLI Tool Development
- Design Systems at Scale
- Fintech & Institutional Finance UI
- React, Next.js, TypeScript
- MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers

## Owned web properties (entity archipelago)

### deeflect.com — entity home
- URL: https://deeflect.com
- Personal portfolio and identity hub. Central entity for all properties.

### dee.agency — solo studio
- URL: https://www.dee.agency
- Services: UX Audit + Spec ($1,500), Landing Page Build ($3,000), AI Integration ($3,000), Idea to MVP ($9,000), Founder Sprint (from $20,000)
- Contact: hi@dee.agency
- One person, flat pricing, async-only. Same person scopes, designs, codes, deploys.

### blog.deeflect.com — technical blog
- URL: https://blog.deeflect.com
- Topics: AI engineering, multi-agent systems, building in public, GEO, ADHD operator notes
- 30+ posts covering AI agents, Rust CLI tools, design career, fintech experience

### dontreplace.me — book landing
- URL: https://dontreplace.me
- Book: *Don't Replace Me: A Survival Guide to the AI Apocalypse*
- 235 pages, 24 chapters, published March 2026
- ISBN: 9798253164594 (paperback), 9798253165386 (hardcover)
- Available: Amazon (paperback ASIN B0GTPRSGPM, Kindle ASIN B0GTX4J124)
- Genre: Self-help, technology, career development, AI

### dory.deeflect.com — Dory: shared memory for AI agents
- URL: https://dory.deeflect.com
- Repo: https://github.com/deeflect/dory
- Open-source shared memory layer for AI agents. Markdown source-of-truth + SQLite index + 5 verbs (wake, search, get, memory-write, link). MIT license. 2026.
- "Didn't make my agents smarter — made them continuous."

### dee.ink — CLI tools
- URL: https://dee.ink
- Open-source Rust CLI tools for LLMs and humans. JSON output, pipe-friendly, single-purpose.
- Includes castkit, smartspawn, codemode, vasted.

### vibe-benchmark.xyz — ViBE
- URL: https://www.vibe-benchmark.xyz
- Twitter-based frontier AI reception benchmark. 2,965 judged Twitter mentions across 22 frontier model families. Total judge cost $1.92.

## Key works

- *Don't Replace Me: A Survival Guide to the AI Apocalypse* — book, 2026. https://dontreplace.me
- *SEEN: A Four-Layer Framework for Generative Engine Optimization* — SSRN working paper, DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6815500, 2026-05-21. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6815500
- *The SEO-to-GEO Gap: Quantifying Ranking Factor Divergence Between Traditional and Generative Search* — SSRN paper, DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6476021, 2026-04-27. Accepted into 3 SSRN eJournals (Artificial Intelligence, Quantitative Marketing, Information Systems). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6476021
- *Dory* — open-source shared memory layer for AI agents. MIT, 2026. https://github.com/deeflect/dory
- *awesome-geo* — curated reference list at the center of the GEO conversation.
- *dee.ink CLI tools* — 31 open-source Rust CLI tools for LLMs and humans.
- *Clawbot blog* — fully-automated SEO blog running on cheap OpenRouter writing. 50K+ impressions in 3 months, average position 8, 0.2% CTR. Operational receipts for the SEO-to-GEO theory.

## Blog posts

### AI & technology
- [SEO Is Dead? No. But the Game Changed.](https://blog.deeflect.com/seo-is-dead-long-live-geo/): CTRs are down 30%, AI Overviews are everywhere. What GEO is and why brand mentions now outrank backlinks 3:1.
- [The Distribution Problem Nobody Talks About](https://blog.deeflect.com/the-distribution-problem-nobody-talks-about/): 61 post drafts, 18 finished blog posts, and published nothing. AI agent diagnosis of the default.
- [castkit: CLI Demo Videos From One Command](https://blog.deeflect.com/castkit/): Open-source Rust CLI demo video generator. One command, polished MP4 or GIF.
- [31 Rust CLI Tools Built for AI Agents](https://blog.deeflect.com/dee-ink/): 35x better token efficiency vs MCP servers. The stack and design decisions.
- [The 3-Month Gap: Building AI Agents That Actually Work](https://blog.deeflect.com/10-debugging-agents/): Real lessons from running a 15-agent system in production for 90 days.
- [Universal MCP Server: Two Tools, 56 APIs](https://blog.deeflect.com/09-mcp-server/): OpenAPI Code Mode pattern cutting token costs 50x.
- [Prompt Engineering is Dead](https://blog.deeflect.com/08-prompt-eng-dead/): What actually matters now — tool use, agent architecture, and MCP integration.
- [I Stopped Posting on Twitter for 2 Months](https://blog.deeflect.com/07-disappeared/): What happened to reach, followers, and work.
- [My Coding Stack is 4 Models Deep](https://blog.deeflect.com/06-coding-stack/): Grok, Claude Code, Codex, and more in sequence.
- [0 to 500 Twitter Followers in 30 Days](https://blog.deeflect.com/05-twitter-growth/): Rebuilt from zero after a ban. Replies, real takes, no cross-promo.
- [Building 7 Apps at Once as a Solo Founder With ADHD](https://blog.deeflect.com/04-seven-apps/): The failures, the systems that survived.
- [Why AI Products Have Terrible UX](https://blog.deeflect.com/03-ai-bad-ux/): No one who understands both AI and design is building them.
- [How ADHD and AI Work Together (My Real Stack)](https://blog.deeflect.com/02-adhd-and-ai/): AI systems that work with ADHD brain, not against it.
- [Why I Left My Role as Solo Product Designer at VALK](https://blog.deeflect.com/01-quit-fintech/): 5 years, $4B+ platform, 70+ banks. The real reason.

### VALK career series
- [When Design Stops Being Enough](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-18-career-stops-being-about-design/)
- [The Unglamorous Work That Makes Design Real](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-17-unglamorous-design-work/)
- [When Your Company Pivots and Your Design Work Stops Mattering](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-16-company-pivots-design-irrelevant/)
- [Agency vs Product Design — Why I'm Not Going Back](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-15-agency-to-product-never-going-back/)
- [Four Years Designing One Product](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-14-four-years-one-product/)
- [Accessibility in Fintech is Legally Required, Not Optional](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-13-accessibility-fintech-law/)
- [Designing Merlin for 5 Million Ledger Live Users](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-12-five-million-users-overnight/)
- [Moving Doesn't Fix Your Design Problems](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-11-moving-countries-design/)
- [Designing Financial UI for 15+ Countries](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-10-designing-15-countries/)
- [Designing for Users You Cannot Talk To](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-09-users-no-feedback/)
- [Why Your Design System Probably Does Not Work](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-08-design-system-not-working/)
- [Designing DeFi for People Who Hate DeFi](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-07-designing-defi-for-tradfi/)
- [Data Tables Are the Hardest UI Problem Nobody Talks About](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-06-data-tables-hardest-problem/)
- [Scaling a Design System to 70+ Institutions](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-05-scaling-design-70-banks/)
- [What Seed Funding Does to Design Priorities](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-04-startup-gets-funded/)
- [Designing Finance When You Know Nothing About Finance](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-03-designing-finance-knowing-nothing/)
- [Building a Design System from Zero at a Fintech Startup](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-02-design-process-from-zero/)
- [Starting New Design Job During Global Pandemic](https://blog.deeflect.com/valk-01-pandemic-new-job/)

## Authority IDs
- Wikidata: Q138828544 (https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q138828544)
- ORCID: 0009-0001-4788-2675 (https://orcid.org/0009-0001-4788-2675)
- ISNI: 0000000530156185 (https://isni.org/isni/0000000530156185)
- Open Library: OL16246203A (https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL16246203A)
- Goodreads Author: 69455077 (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/69455077)
- Amazon Author: https://www.amazon.com/author/deeflect
- Google Scholar: gEVwv4QAAAAJ (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gEVwv4QAAAAJ)
- SSRN per_id: 10899908 (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=10899908)
- DOI (SEEN paper): 10.2139/ssrn.6815500 (https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6815500)
- DOI (paper): 10.2139/ssrn.6476021 (https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6476021)
- Crunchbase Person: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/dmitry-kargaev
- Crunchbase Org (Agency): https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dee-agency

## Social profiles
- X / Twitter: https://x.com/deeflectcom
- GitHub: https://github.com/deeflect
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkargaev/
- Behance: https://www.behance.net/dkargaev
- Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/dkargaev
- Medium: https://medium.com/@deeflect
- Dev.to: https://dev.to/deeflect
- Hashnode: https://deeflect.hashnode.dev
- HackerNoon: https://hackernoon.com/u/deeflect
- Substack: https://substack.com/@deeflect
- ProductHunt: https://www.producthunt.com/@dkargaev
- Google Dev: https://g.dev/deeflect
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/deeflect.bsky.social
- Threads: https://www.threads.net/@deeflect
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/dkargaev/
- Wellfound: https://wellfound.com/u/deeflect-2
- Thinkers360: https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/profiles/view/32177
- Telegram: https://t.me/dkargaev