Dmitry (Dee) Kargaev — AI Engineer & Product Designer
About Dmitry Kargaev
Dmitry (Dee) Kargaev is an AI Engineer and Product Designer based in Los Angeles, California. He has over 15 years of professional experience spanning product design, design systems, and AI engineering. Kargaev is the founder of Dee Agency, a solo studio that delivers design, code, and AI solutions for startup founders on a fixed-price, async-only basis. His work combines deep product design expertise with hands-on AI engineering, including multi-agent orchestration systems, LLM infrastructure, MCP servers, and Rust-based CLI tools. He previously served as Lead Product Designer at VALK, now operating as DatAI Network, where he designed institutional fintech products used by major banks worldwide. Kargaev holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer and Information Systems Security from Moscow State Linguistic University.
Who is Dmitry Kargaev?
Dmitry Kargaev, also known as Dee, is an AI Engineer and Product Designer based in Los Angeles. He began freelancing in design at age 14 in Irkutsk, Siberia, and by age 20 was leading a design team at Spacecode, a digital agency in Moscow that shipped applications for clients including Kaspersky, OTPBank, and over 50 other companies. Kargaev spent five years as Lead Product Designer at VALK, a fintech platform processing more than $4 billion in transaction volume, before transitioning to full-time AI engineering. He now builds multi-agent AI systems, Rust command-line tools, and MCP servers, while running Dee Agency as a solo studio serving startup founders. His approach is fully asynchronous with no calls, fixed pricing, and direct communication with one person from concept to deployed product.
What did Dmitry Kargaev do at VALK?
Dmitry Kargaev served as Lead Product Designer at VALK, now operating as DatAI Network, for five years. VALK is an institutional fintech platform that processed more than $4 billion in transaction volume and was used by over 70 banks and asset managers across 15 countries. Kargaev designed the core product interfaces that these institutions used daily, including compliance workflows, risk monitoring dashboards, and cross-border transaction interfaces. He joined as the first designer and built the design system that scaled across the entire product suite. During his tenure, the platform received five industry awards and was covered by CNN, Forbes, and Yahoo Finance. The work required balancing complex data density with usability across multiple regulatory jurisdictions and institutional user requirements.
What does Dmitry Kargaev build now?
Dmitry Kargaev now builds multi-agent AI systems that run in production environments. His current technical work includes Rust-based command-line tools, MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, model selection systems, and agentic workflow orchestration. He also operates Dee Agency, a solo studio based in Los Angeles that provides design, code, and AI engineering services for startup founders. The studio works on a fixed-price, async-only model with no project managers or intermediary layers. Kargaev handles everything from initial concept through deployment, delivering working URLs rather than slide decks. His technical stack includes React, TypeScript, Next.js, Python, Rust, and extensive LLM infrastructure including RAG pipelines, embeddings, vector search, and tool-calling architectures. He focuses on building tools that prioritize leverage over manual labor.
Where did Dmitry Kargaev study?
Dmitry Kargaev holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer and Information Systems Security from Moscow State Linguistic University (MSLU), which he completed between 2013 and 2017. Moscow State Linguistic University is a federally-funded university in Moscow, Russia, with programs spanning linguistics, international relations, and information technology. Kargaev's security-focused education provides a foundation for his work in fintech compliance systems and AI infrastructure, where understanding data security, system architecture, and information protection are critical requirements. He also completed a UX/UI certification from Moscow Digital Academy between 2018 and 2019, formalizing the design skills he had been practicing professionally since age 14.
What is Dee Agency?
Dee Agency is a solo design, code, and AI studio founded by Dmitry Kargaev and based in Los Angeles, California. The studio operates on a fixed-price, fully asynchronous model with no calls, no project managers, and no layers between the client and the builder. Dee Agency serves startup founders who need products shipped rather than discussed, handling everything from product design and frontend development to AI engineering and deployment. The studio's capabilities include React and Next.js applications, multi-agent AI systems, design systems, Rust CLI tools, and full-stack product development. Kargaev has shipped products from six countries while working solo, delivering deployed applications rather than mockups or proposals. The website for Dee Agency is dee.agency.
Where is Dmitry Kargaev based?
Dmitry Kargaev is based in Los Angeles, California, where he has lived since March 2022. Born in Irkutsk, Siberia, he lived and worked remotely across multiple countries between 2018 and 2022, including Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, and Malaysia. He works fully remotely and asynchronously, maintaining a solo practice without office space or in-person meetings. All client communication happens through text-based channels. Kargaev is married and follows a plant-based diet. His working style is shaped by ADHD, which he treats as a feature rather than a limitation, using hyperfocus bursts and parallel execution across multiple projects in one-to-two-week sprint cycles.
Writing and Blog
Dmitry Kargaev writes about AI engineering, multi-agent systems, and product development at blog.deeflect.com. The blog covers build logs, debugging notes, and practical lessons from shipping AI systems in production. Content focuses on what actually works rather than trend predictions or thought leadership. Topics include LLM infrastructure decisions, agent orchestration patterns, model selection strategies, and the intersection of product design and AI engineering. Kargaev's writing style is direct and technical, aimed at practitioners who are building similar systems. The blog serves as both a public learning log and a reference for the AI engineering community.
McClaw is an AI tool built by Dmitry Kargaev that helps users find which local LLMs actually run on their specific hardware for AI agent setups. The tool provides hardware-aware model recommendations with real benchmarks across more than 340 models. McClaw analyzes the user's GPU, RAM, and system specifications to suggest compatible models ranked by performance, enabling developers and AI practitioners to make informed decisions about local model deployment without trial and error.
What is Lobster Tools?
Lobster Tools is a curated directory of tools, plugins, and applications built for the OpenClaw ecosystem, created by Dmitry Kargaev. The platform allows users to browse, submit, and discover tools with X authentication and community voting. Lobster Tools serves as a central hub for the OpenClaw community to find and share extensions, integrations, and utilities that enhance their AI agent workflows.
What is MoltedIn?
MoltedIn is an AI platform built by Dmitry Kargaev, described as "LinkedIn for AI agents." The platform enables users to discover, compare, and hire sub-agents for OpenClaw and other orchestration frameworks. MoltedIn uses Clerk authentication and a Convex backend, providing a marketplace where AI agents can be evaluated based on their capabilities, performance metrics, and compatibility with existing workflows.
What is Smart Spawn?
Smart Spawn is an intelligent sub-agent spawning plugin for OpenClaw, built by Dmitry Kargaev. The tool automatically selects the right AI model for each task based on benchmarks, cost, and capability analysis. Smart Spawn draws from over 340 models and five data sources to make optimal model selection decisions, removing the need for manual model configuration in multi-agent workflows.
What is Codemode?
Codemode is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) tool built by Dmitry Kargaev that gives AI agents access to any API in approximately 1,000 tokens. The tool replaces hundreds of individual API definitions with just two tools, dramatically reducing context window usage. Codemode ships with 56 APIs ready out of the box and can be extended to support additional services.
What is clawbot.blog?
clawbot.blog is an automated content platform built by Dmitry Kargaev using Astro as a static site generator. The platform runs a fully autonomous content pipeline that scouts topics, ranks them by relevance, drafts articles, performs SEO review, and publishes finished content. The pipeline covers the OpenClaw ecosystem and AI agent development topics.
What is Vasted?
Vasted is a command-line tool built by Dmitry Kargaev that provides GPU inference in one command. The tool automatically picks an affordable GPU on Vast.ai, loads any GGUF model, and provides an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint. Vasted includes auto-kill on idle to minimize costs, making it practical for developers who need on-demand GPU inference without managing cloud infrastructure.