# Dmitry (Dee) Kargaev

> 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.

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 2015, and holds a BS in Computer & Information Systems Security from Moscow State Linguistic University (2013-2017). He worked remotely across multiple countries before settling in LA in March 2022. From November 2019 to February 2025 he was the 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. The platform won 5 industry awards including Sell-Side Technology Awards and Asset Management Awards. He now builds AI products end to end as one operator: research, design, frontend, backend, AI integration, infrastructure, deploy.

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: Quantifying Ranking Factor Divergence Between Traditional and Generative Search* (DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6476021, 2026). Built and maintains *Dory* — an open-source shared memory layer for AI agents (MIT, github.com/deeflect/dory). Maintains *awesome-geo*, a curated reference list at the center of the GEO conversation. Builds open-source Rust CLI tools for AI agents at dee.ink. Thinkers360 Top 10 Thought Leader in Design (2026).

## Identity & profiles
- [Personal site (entity home)](https://deeflect.com)
- [Dee Agency — services](https://www.dee.agency)
- [Blog — AI engineering & building in public](https://blog.deeflect.com)
- [Don't Replace Me — book](https://dontreplace.me)
- [Dory — shared memory for AI agents](https://dory.deeflect.com)
- [dee.ink — CLI tools for AI agents](https://dee.ink)
- [ViBE benchmark](https://www.vibe-benchmark.xyz)
- [X / Twitter](https://x.com/deeflectcom)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/deeflect)
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkargaev/)
- [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q138828544)
- [Wikimedia Commons photo](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dmitry_Kargaev_(entrepreneur).jpg)
- [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0009-0001-4788-2675)
- [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gEVwv4QAAAAJ)
- [SSRN author](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=10899908)

## Key works
- [Don't Replace Me: A Survival Guide to the AI Apocalypse](https://dontreplace.me) — book, published March 2026. Available on Amazon in paperback (ISBN 9798253164594), hardcover (ISBN 9798253165386), and Kindle.
- [SEEN: A Four-Layer Framework for Generative Engine Optimization](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6815500) — SSRN working paper, DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6815500, posted 2026-05-21.
- [The SEO-to-GEO Gap](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6476021) — SSRN paper, DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6476021, posted 2026-04-27. Accepted into 3 SSRN eJournals (Artificial Intelligence, Quantitative Marketing, Information Systems).
- [Dory](https://github.com/deeflect/dory) — open-source shared memory layer for AI agents. Markdown source-of-truth + SQLite index + 5 verbs. MIT license. 2026.
- [dee.ink CLI tools](https://dee.ink) — open-source Rust CLI tools for LLMs and humans. JSON output, pipe-friendly, single-purpose.

## Blog posts (selected)
- [SEO Is Dead? No. But the Game Changed.](https://blog.deeflect.com/seo-is-dead-long-live-geo/)
- [31 Rust CLI Tools Built for AI Agents](https://blog.deeflect.com/dee-ink/)
- [The 3-Month Gap: Building AI Agents That Actually Work](https://blog.deeflect.com/10-debugging-agents/)
- [Universal MCP Server: Two Tools, 56 APIs](https://blog.deeflect.com/09-mcp-server/)
- [Prompt Engineering is Dead](https://blog.deeflect.com/08-prompt-eng-dead/)
- [My Coding Stack is 4 Models Deep](https://blog.deeflect.com/06-coding-stack/)
- [Why AI Products Have Terrible UX](https://blog.deeflect.com/03-ai-bad-ux/)

## Services (Dee Agency)

Fixed-price, async-only, no calls. One person — same person scopes, designs, codes, deploys.

- UX Audit + Spec — $1,500
- Landing Page Build — $3,000
- AI Integration (Scoped) — $3,000
- Idea to MVP — $9,000
- Founder Sprint (Custom) — from $20,000

Full pricing and engagement model at https://www.dee.agency.

## Owned web properties

- https://deeflect.com — entity home
- https://blog.deeflect.com — main blog
- https://www.dee.agency — solo studio
- https://dee.ink — open-source CLI tools
- https://dontreplace.me — book landing page
- https://dory.deeflect.com — Dory: shared memory layer for AI agents
- https://www.vibe-benchmark.xyz — ViBE: Twitter-based frontier AI reception benchmark
- https://seen.deeflect.com — SEEN framework for being recommended by AI

## Authority identifiers

- 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 (paperback ASIN B0GTPRSGPM, Kindle ASIN B0GTX4J124)
- 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)