Client work
Work with me.
For founders and teams who need the whole thing to work, not a deck about it: I design the identity, the product and the way it runs, and I build what I design.
Start with a brief, ten minutes.
Your agent probably knows your company better than a form does. Give it the line below and it will interview you, draft what it already knows, leave out what’s confidential and hand you a one-page brief to send. Or fill it in here: four answers are enough, the rest helps. Or just email two lines, what you’re building and roughly when. Either way, nothing leaves your hands until you send it.
With your agent · Claude, ChatGPT or any other
I want to brief Igor Pugachevsky (degenie) on a project. Read https://degenie.xyz/brief.md and follow it: interview me one question at a time, use what you already know about me and my company where it helps, and leave out anything confidential. Then write the brief in the format it gives, show it to me to approve, and give me an email to hi@degenie.xyz with the brief as the body.
brief.md is a skill written for agents: the questions, the format, what to leave out, and what I don’t take on, so your agent can tell you before you ask me. Browsers with WebMCP also get a start_a_brief tool on every page.
Or here, by hand
Your brief
Start typing on the left. Your brief appears here, and nothing leaves this page until you send it.
What happens next.
- 01
Today, ten minutes
Brief
With your own agent or on this page. One page: what you’re building, where it hurts, timing and budget.
- 02
Within two working days
Reply
A yes or a no, and the questions that matter. If it’s a no, I say why, and who might be right.
- 03
Thirty minutes
Call
We go through the brief together. You see how I work; I see whether I’m the right person.
- 04
Within a week
Scope
One page: what we’ll make, what we won’t, how we’ll know it worked, and a fixed fee. Half at the start.
- 05
Every week
Build
A working build you can open, and a written record of what changed and why, readable by you and your agents.
- 06
At the end
Handover
The system, its principles and its checks, owned by your team. The rest of the fee on delivery.
01
Living systems
A brand that keeps its shape when agents make things in its name.
- For
- CMOs, CPOs and founders whose brand is now produced by agents as much as by people.
- Time
- 8 to 12 weeks
- From
- $100k fixed fee
What you get
- An identity and design system written as governed code: tokens, type, colour, imagery, motion and voice.
- A check that measures every surface against the principles and refuses what breaks them, naming the principle.
- Documentation agents can read, so the models making your work follow the same principles your team does.
- A changelog and a way to sign off changes, so the brand can evolve without drifting.
- A handover. Your team owns the system, and I train the people who keep it.
Comparable work: The DEED design system, and Blum
- Started from
- Agents write most of DEED’s interface, and a style guide a model reads once is advice it can forget. At Blum: three designers for a mini app, a launchpad and an exchange.
- Made
- A design system a machine can enforce: 229 catalogued components, 23 automated checks, and a critic that measures every rendered page at three widths; outside agents build with it from its public docs. At Blum, one system for seven products.
- My part
- Designed it and directed the agents that built it. At Blum, VP of Design: built the product from zero with three designers.
- Result
- 281 releases in 67 days, and an agent with no context built a screen that passed every check from the public docs alone. Blum shipped seven products from one system.
- Limits
- The system serves one company so far, and its own scorecard gives it 84 out of 100: the documentation lags the code. Blum’s system was checked by people, not by a machine.
02
Agentic products
A product where agents act for people, from idea to a working first version, with the rules designed in.
- For
- Founders after a raise, and consumer teams at AI labs, wallets and exchanges.
- Time
- About 8 weeks
- From
- $80k fixed fee
What you get
- Product direction and the first-use experience, designed around the person who will use it.
- The rules the agent acts under, designed as interface: limits, asks, refusals and the reasons it gives.
- A working first version built with agents, in code your engineers keep.
- Records and recovery designed from the first day.
- The identity, when the product needs one.
Comparable work: DEED, and Trust Wallet
- Started from
- Agents could pay, but nothing let an owner say how much, for what and until when, or check afterwards what was refused.
- Made
- DEED: the harness and its operating loop, the public proof surfaces, a terminal and agent access, a design system, and a machine-checked paper. For people rather than agents, Trust Wallet’s approval and swap redesign.
- My part
- DEED: founder, product and design, built in its factory. Trust Wallet: I led the app’s design.
- Result
- DEED is pre-release and shown in public at usedeed.app. Trust Wallet saw lower swap drop-off and fewer support contacts after the relaunch.
- Limits
- DEED has no paying customers yet, and its runtime API is offline until the next governed release.
03
Operating systems
Your company runs on agents without losing control of what they do.
- For
- CEOs of companies of 20 to 200 people where agents already write code, content or operations.
- Time
- 4 to 8 weeks, with a 30-day supervised run
- From
- $60k fixed fee
What you get
- A map of every place agents act on the company’s behalf, classified by consequence.
- Consent gates for the actions that need a person, batched so they don’t become a stream of prompts.
- One governed path for anything that reaches customers or money.
- A record of every action, readable by the person accountable for it.
- A 30-day supervised run, then a handover.
Comparable work: DEED’s factory
- Started from
- A company where agents write most of the code, and one person is accountable for all of it.
- Made
- Consequence classes computed from every change, my signed consent for anything near capital or the law, an append-only ledger, fleets that work under contracts and return receipts, and eight officer roles.
- My part
- I wrote the law, sign the high-consequence changes and decide releases. Machines do the rest, and check one another.
- Result
- 1,133 merged pull requests in four months; 70 operations refused at the gate in one month; the first fleet’s five defects became protocol the same day.
- Limits
- Built for my own company, not yet for a client’s. It scores itself 65 out of 100, and its officers’ predictions have not been scored yet. I show it under NDA.
What I don’t take on.
- AI social-media retainers at agency prices. They turn a system into a feed.
- Fully autonomous reply bots. A person signs what goes out in your name.
- Anything that needs agent-made work presented as human work.
- More than one build at a time.
Also.
A few advisory seats with founders I believe in, for cash and equity. And a small number of embedded leadership engagements, inside a team as design or product lead for a defined period.
Tell me what you’re building.
And where it hurts. I reply within two working days.