Prateek Jain

Hercules · Software Engineer, Product

Brendan — three things I've been chewing on since we talked.

Each one is a problem I've shipped a solution for before — most of it at SalesMonk over 2+ years as Founding AI Engineer (agent + memory stack, durable workflows at 100k+ actions/mo, the 2M+/day chat widget), with Kaizen Trader as a self-healing side proof. If any of the three overlap with what's on your Q-next list, I'd love to dig in. If I'm reading the direction wrong, tell me — I'm calibrating off what's public.

Software Engineer, Product

Remote · 6h PST overlap


01Session memory across builds

Problem. This is the one I’m most confident about — your careers page has an “AI Context & Harness Engineer” plus a matching PM role open, so I’m guessing it’s already on the list. From outside: a non-technical user chats an app into existence, closes the tab, comes back next week. The agent has forgotten the stack, the design decisions, the data model, the half-finished TODOs. They re-explain from scratch, and casual users churn.

Build. Per-user × per-workspace memory layer. Writes: stack preferences, design decisions, schema shape, open TODOs, last-deploy status. Reads: a compressed summary injected into every new turn’s system prompt. Scored by recall@5 on a held-out eval set so quality regresses whenever the agent prompt changes.

I've done this: this is the exact layer I lead at SalesMonk — memory layer on mem0 + Qdrant, agent evals via Braintrust.

Sketch. Rough timing if the codebase doesn’t surprise me: v0 in a week — mem0 instance per workspace + a Braintrust eval deck scoring retrieval on scripted multi-session builds. v1 in a month — auto-summarise old sessions into a compact memory graph so context windows stay short as projects age.

02Reliability for long generations

Problem. Less certain this is a live pain point — I don’t know your current failure rates — but if it is: “building your app” looks like a 2–5 minute pipeline (plan → scaffold → migrations → auth → routes → components → deploy). One provider blip or closed tab and the user sees a half-built app or a white screen. On a generator platform that’s a brutal failure mode.

Build. Wrap the pipeline in Temporal (or stay on Inngest if you want pure serverless). Twelve-ish idempotent activities, automatic retry with cost-aware backoff on LLM hiccups, resumable from the last successful step if the user closes the tab. Every build gets a run ID support can replay — which I’d actually find useful for diagnosing regressions regardless of whether retries become a user-visible feature.

I've done this: I architected SalesMonk's durable workflow engine, and the 100k+/mo Inngest scoring pipeline next to it — zero data loss across worker restarts.

Sketch. Activities roughly: plan, scaffold, db-gen, auth-gen, route-gen, component-gen, wire, smoke-test, deploy, domain, onboard, index. Compensating action per step for clean rollback. Target I’d aim for: <0.3% of builds hit a fatal retry ceiling, though that number is mostly a gut call until I see your actuals.

03Native chat for every Hercules app

Problem. Speculative — this is a surface I’d want to explore, not something I’m sure is a priority. Most SaaS + ecom apps Hercules generates will end up needing support and sales chat; today the user wires Intercom, Crisp, or builds one themselves. That’s usage time leaking and a revenue surface Hercules doesn’t own. Could be worth picking up, could be a “later” — you’d know better.

Build. A native Chat component shipped with every generated app. Customisable colors + persona, routes to the app owner’s inbox (Slack / email / Hercules inbox), RAG’d against the app’s own docs + transaction history. Opt-in AI agent handles tier-1 and escalates on intent.

I've done this: I built SalesMonk's chat widget (2M+ visitors/day, +~50% meetings), and the Slack-escalation RAG layer behind it — two years in production.

Sketch. React embed + Pusher for realtime + pgvector on the app’s own DB (or a managed Hercules-hosted tier). Could monetise cleanly — included on paid plans, 2–5% take-rate on AI-resolved tickets — but that’s napkin math, not a pitch.


Stack resonance

Agent harness (Claude · OpenAI · Google)
LangGraph + Vercel AI SDK agents on Claude + GPT in prod
TypeScript · React · Postgres · Redis
Daily stack at SalesMonk — Next.js, Prisma/Postgres, Redis

Research trail

No public roadmap, so the three above are stitched from what Hercules is telling the world. The receipts:

Official launch
Feb 2026 — 100k+ users, millions visiting user-built apps in the prior 30 days. Brendan's launch post ↗
Mission wording
"Enable 8.5 billion people to build custom software for themselves and their business." (verbatim from docs) docs · who we are ↗
Founders
Brendan Falk + Grant Gurvis — previously Fig → acquired by Amazon → became Kiro CLI (formerly CodeWhisperer / Amazon Q Developer). Brendan on LinkedIn ↗
Strongest roadmap signal (dive 01)
"AI Context & Harness Engineer" + a paired PM role open in SF. That's why I led with session memory — if you're hiring for it, it's on the list. careers page ↗
Also hiring
Infrastructure Engineer, Full-stack, Frontend, Product Engineer. 8 growth roles. The remote tilt is on growth, not engineering — noted. careers page ↗
Philosophical stance
"No, Don't Do Palantir for AI" — Brendan's framing on why AI-native building beats wrappers + services. Useful context for how I'd think about the chat-widget dive (03). talk on YouTube ↗
Product surface
1000+ API integrations, auth, DB, payments, push, App Store + Play Store publishing, custom domains — all shipped with every build. Inferred from marketing site. hercules.app ↗
What I couldn't find
A changelog, a published roadmap, a CTO's public writeup of the architecture, or any current-user churn/retention data. Gaps I'd want to close with internal context.

— Prateek · prateekjain.io · contact@prateekjain.io

Pick my brain