--- title: "How I work · Marco Dong" description: "How Marco Dong works with AI agents: the rules they work under and the hooks that enforce them." canonical_url: "https://madong.me/how" meta: "og:description": "How Marco Dong works with AI agents: the rules they work under and the hooks that enforce them." "og:image": "https://madong.me/_og/s/o_02788e931efea3ea.png" "og:image:height": "630" "og:image:type": image/png "og:image:width": "1200" "og:title": "How I work · Marco Dong" "twitter:image": "https://madong.me/_og/s/o_02788e931efea3ea.png" --- > Index of every page on this site: [llms.txt](https://madong.me/llms.txt) # How I work Agents write a lot of my code. I wrote the rules they work under, I review what they ship, and nothing goes out under my name that I can't explain. ## Eight rules, eight gates Hover a gate for its rule. Click a change to stop it yourself. Tap a gate for its rule. Tap a change to stop it yourself. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. 1 ### The board goes up before the first edit. I run several agents at once, and the board is how I see what each one is doing. 2. 2 ### Never guess a fact a lookup could settle. Every claim rests on something read in that session. 3. 3 ### A comment says why, or it doesn't exist. A comment that narrates the code is the first thing to go stale. 4. 4 ### Files change through file tools, never the shell. So every change is one I can read before it lands. 5. 5 ### Nothing is created under my name unless I asked for it. No ticket, merge request or pushed branch shows up as a side effect. 6. 6 ### Fix the cause, not the symptom. Cleaning up the damage is step one. The fix is whatever made it possible. 7. 7 ### Whether it looks right is my call. Agents prove the logic with types, builds and tests, and I look at what people will see. 8. 8 ### A rule I keep breaking is a missing hook. A rule that matters gets a script that stops the agent, not another sentence. ## From the ask to shipped The agent reads what I typed, what I meant and what it forces. It puts the board up, builds in small steps, and proves each one with a check that could disagree. I review it before anything leaves. 1. Read what I typed, what I meant, what it forces 2. Board #4 \[AI] Crossfade the sequence frames 3. Build fix(scroll): crossfade the two frames around the scroll position 4. Prove check.ts: 0 failures 5. Review 6. Ship merged into main ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@id":"https://madong.me/#website","@type":"WebSite","description":"Marco Dong, AI product engineer in Milan. I build AI products end to end: Sidecar, Sage and AI Shell at Cela, and agents at Klarna and Moneyfarm.","name":"Marco Dong","url":"https://madong.me/","publisher":{"@id":"https://madong.me/#identity"}},{"@id":"https://madong.me/how#webpage","@type":"WebPage","description":"How Marco Dong works with AI agents: the rules they work under and the hooks that enforce them.","name":"How I work","url":"https://madong.me/how","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://madong.me/#website"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https://madong.me/how"]}]},{"@id":"https://madong.me/#identity","@type":"Person","jobTitle":"AI Product Engineer","name":"Marco Dong","url":"https://madong.me","address":{"addressLocality":"Milan","addressCountry":"IT"},"alumniOf":[{"@type":"CollegeOrUniversity","name":"University of Bologna"},{"@type":"CollegeOrUniversity","name":"Bologna Business School"}],"knowsLanguage":["it","en"],"sameAs":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcodong-838453","https://github.com/EthanITA"],"worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Klarna"}}]} ``` ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](https://madong.me/sitemap.md) for all pages.