Ch 00 — Copyright & Disclaimers

Read this first. I know nobody reads the front matter. Please read this front matter.

Copyright

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations used in reviews, scholarly analysis, or social-media excerpts under fair use.

This book is independently published through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

Title: Multi-Agent Me: How I Built an AI Cofounder When I Got Laid Off — A Senior Engineer’s 90-Day Diary of Replacing the Sales Skills He Never Had with Hermes, OpenClaw, and Claude Opus 4.7
Series: Comeback Diaries · Book 1
Edition: First Edition · April 2026
Author / Publisher: Daniel Park (Independently Published)
Format: Kindle eBook (ASIN assigned by Amazon) · Paperback (ISBN assigned by KDP)

A Note on the Pen Name

“Daniel Park” is a pen name.

The narrator of this diary is a composite of three Korean-American senior software engineers, all laid off in spring 2026 from large US cloud-computing employers in the wave the industry now calls “AI infrastructure rebalancing.” We met in a small invitation-only Discord called #severance-stack. After about six weeks of comparing notes, we realized our journals were converging — same shame at the same week, same breakthrough at roughly the same week, same wife-conversation at almost the same week.

We chose a single pen name and a single composite voice for three reasons:

Privacy. Two of the three of us have non-compete and non-disparagement clauses we negotiated in exchange for severance. We do not wish to risk those clauses, and we do not wish to identify the specific employers involved.
Family. All three of us have young children. None of our children should have to grow up alongside a search-engine result that begins “Daddy was laid off…”
Honesty. A composite voice is, in our shared opinion, more honest, not less. The single-narrator memoir is a marketing convention. The reality of being laid off in 2026 is that thousands of us were having the same week at the same time. Three voices stacked into one is closer to the truth than any one of us alone could have written.

Specific identifying details — workplaces, neighborhoods, school names, recruiter names, prospect names, dollar amounts within ±15%, dates within ±2 weeks — have been altered to protect the three of us, our spouses, our children, and the third parties (recruiters, prospects, clients) who appear in the narrative.

The emotional record is not altered. The conversations with our spouses are not invented. The bug in Chapter 11 happened. The Whole Foods parking lot in Chapter 7 happened. The 2am laptop scene in Chapter 9 happened.

If you recognize yourself in this book, you do not. We were not writing about you specifically. We were writing about a year that thousands of engineers had at once.

AI-Assisted Writing Disclosure

In compliance with Amazon KDP’s Generative AI Content Guidelines (current as of April 2026), the author discloses the following:

AI-assisted content was used in the production of this book.
Specific tools used: Claude Opus 4.7 (Anthropic) was used for line-editing, structural feedback, and the surfacing of phrasings from the author’s own raw journal entries. Hermes Agent v0.8 was used to organize correspondence and prospect notes that informed the narrative.
No AI-generated content was published as the author’s own first-draft prose. Every sentence in this book was either written, dictated, or substantially rewritten by a human author.
No AI-generated images appear in this book. Cover art was created by a human designer using standard graphic design tools.
The technical configuration files, prompt examples, and code snippets in this book were authored or co-authored with Claude Opus 4.7 and reviewed by the human author before publication.

⚠️ This Book Is NOT Professional Advice

This book is a personal diary. It describes one composite engineer’s experience of being laid off and rebuilding a small consulting practice. It is not, and is not intended to be, a substitute for the following professional services. Please get the actual professionals.

Not Employment or Legal Advice

The narrator describes negotiating severance, signing separation agreements, deferring or accepting non-compete clauses, navigating COBRA, and rejecting a W-2 offer in Chapter 11. These descriptions are not legal advice.

Severance and separation agreements vary by state, by employer, by individual circumstance, and by year. The narrator’s outcome is not yours.
Non-compete clauses are increasingly contested in the United States, and enforceability varies dramatically by jurisdiction. The Federal Trade Commission’s rule on non-competes was, as of April 2026, the subject of ongoing litigation. Consult an employment attorney licensed in your state before signing or breaching any post-employment agreement.
COBRA elections, continuation of benefits, and ACA marketplace enrollment are time-sensitive and have specific legal deadlines. Consult a benefits counselor or attorney, not this book.
Independent contractor vs. W-2 classification has serious tax and legal consequences. The narrator’s “fractional CMO” arrangement in later chapters may not be appropriate for your situation. Consult a tax professional and an employment attorney.

Not Financial, Tax, or Investment Advice

The narrator discusses severance amounts, savings, brokerage accounts, mortgage payments, monthly burn, and the decision to defer touching invested assets. These are personal numbers in one composite household. They are not a financial plan.

Consult a fee-only Certified Financial Planner™ (CFP®) before making decisions about retirement assets, brokerage liquidation, or sustained-spending plans during a career transition.
Consult a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) before deducting business expenses, electing tax treatments for a new consulting practice, or making quarterly estimated payments. The narrator’s tax treatment of his fractional consulting income should not be assumed to apply to you.
Past performance does not predict future results. The narrator’s revenue trajectory in Chapters 8–12 is not a forecast for any other engineer in any other quarter.

Not Career, Recruiting, or Job-Search Advice

The narrator’s choices — when to apply, when not to apply, which roles to refuse, when to pivot from full-time job search to consulting — were specific to his situation, his industry, his geographic market, his family’s risk tolerance, and his spouse’s continuing employment.

Career counselors, executive coaches, and licensed therapists specializing in career transition are real professions. The author has used all three at various points. The book is not a substitute for any of them.
The “fractional CMO” / “fractional anything” pivot described in Chapter 7 is a specific business model that may or may not be viable in your industry, geography, or skill area. Do your own market validation.

Not Mental-Health Advice

Several chapters describe symptoms consistent with anxiety, depression, shame spiraling, sleep disruption, and identity loss. The author experienced these. So did his composite co-narrators. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, please contact a licensed mental-health professional.

In the United States, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine is available at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264). Many former employers offer Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) that continue for a defined period after separation; check your separation paperwork.

The author began working with a licensed therapist in Week 7. This is described in Chapter 6. The therapist is a real human, not an AI agent. The book strongly recommends humans for this purpose.

⚠️ The Tech-Stack Specific Disclaimers

This book is part of a publishing series that uses real, named AI tools. Please read these disclaimers before relying on any code, prompt, or workflow in this book.

Claude Opus 4.7 (Anthropic)

Claude™ and Anthropic™ are trademarks of Anthropic, PBC. Use of the name in this book does not imply endorsement by Anthropic of this book or its author.
Model versions change. “Claude Opus 4.7” was the production version of Anthropic’s flagship model as of April 2026. Future versions will behave differently. Prompts in this book that worked in March–June 2026 may behave differently on later versions.
Anthropic’s Acceptable Use Policy governs all use of Claude. Some workflows in this book — particularly the outbound email automation in Chapter 6 — must be operated within Anthropic’s policies and within applicable laws governing commercial messaging (CAN-SPAM in the US; equivalents elsewhere).

Hermes Agent v0.8

Hermes Agent is the open-source agent runtime referenced in this book at version 0.8 (April 2026 release). Configuration syntax and behavior may change in subsequent versions. The author makes no representations about future compatibility.
All Hermes configurations and prompts shown in this book have been stripped of client identifiers, real email addresses, internal API keys, and proprietary information. Do not paste them into production without review.
Operating an outbound email agent, as described in Chapter 6, must comply with the US CAN-SPAM Act, with the EU GDPR (where applicable), with state-level commercial messaging laws (notably California’s), and with the terms of service of any email provider you connect (Gmail / Google Workspace, Outlook / Microsoft 365, Postmark, etc.). Several of these terms of service have specific restrictions on automated sending. Read them.

OpenClaw

OpenClaw is the open-source memory layer referenced in this book. The author uses it for prospect notes, conversation history, and the relationship graph described in Chapter 7.
Storing prospect data — names, employers, conversation history — in any system implicates privacy law. In the US, this is governed by a patchwork of state laws including California’s CCPA / CPRA. In the EU and UK, GDPR applies. You are responsible for the legal basis under which you process any prospect’s personal data. The narrator’s practice of obtaining explicit consent from contacts before storing detailed notes is a personal choice, not a legal opinion.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

MCP is an open protocol for connecting AI models to external tools and data sources. The custom MCP server described in Chapter 10 connects Stripe, Notion, and Linear to the agent stack.
API access to third-party services (Stripe, Notion, Linear, etc.) is governed by each service’s terms of service. Some terms prohibit certain types of automated access. Before exposing any service to an autonomous agent, read that service’s developer terms.

Other Trademarks

GitHub™ is a trademark of GitHub, Inc. (a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation). Notion™ is a trademark of Notion Labs, Inc. Stripe™ is a trademark of Stripe, Inc. PostgreSQL® is a registered trademark of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group. LinkedIn™ is a trademark of LinkedIn Corporation (a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation). Slack™ is a trademark of Slack Technologies, LLC (a subsidiary of Salesforce, Inc.). Whole Foods Market™ is a trademark of Whole Foods Market IP, L.P. (a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc.). DuPont™ is a trademark of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Amazon™ and Kindle™ are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc.

The use of any trademarked name in this book is for identification and editorial purposes only and does not imply endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation of the trademark holder with this book or its author.

On the “Reclaimed Hours” and “Pipeline” Numbers in This Book

Several chapters quantify outcomes:

Chapter 8: First $2,500 client.
Chapter 9: Pipeline value $47,000 at Week 0.
Chapter 10: Six active clients.
Chapter 12: $19,000 monthly recurring revenue at Week +12; 22 hours per week of “deep work.”

These numbers are not a forecast for any other reader. They are the composite outcome of three engineers in a specific market window in a specific six-month period. The same stack, operated by the same person in a different market, will produce different numbers. Possibly higher. Possibly zero.

The most honest sentence the author can write about money in this book is: the agents do not generate revenue. The agents free up the time you would have spent on tasks you are bad at, so that you can spend that time on the work you are good at, which is what people pay for. If your work, post-layoff, is not work that someone is willing to pay for, no agent stack will fix that. Validate the work first. The agents come second.

On “Engineering Honesty” and What This Book Won’t Promise

This book will not promise you that you will get a job. This book will not promise you that you will start a successful consulting practice. This book will not promise you that you will out-earn your previous W-2 salary in 90 days. (The narrator did not. He was at roughly 73% of his prior salary at Week +12, and he considered that a victory because of how he was spending the hours, not because of the dollars.)

This book will tell you, in order, what one composite engineer did in 90 days, what worked, what didn’t, what he wishes he’d done differently, and what he refused to do for any amount of money.

If that’s not what you need this week, please put this book down and pick up something else. The author is not offended.

Acknowledgments (Brief)

To Linda, for the spreadsheet, for the floor of the bedroom, for the night of Week 4, and for the sentence about looking like myself. This book is yours as much as it is mine.

To Mason, who will read this someday. Appa was scared. Appa figured it out. Appa is still figuring it out.

To the other two narrators of the composite Daniel, for the Discord, for the Sunday night calls, for letting me carry the byline. I owe you both a dinner that takes longer than four hours.

To the engineering manager who emailed me directly after the recruiter ghosted me — you know who you are. The “Tuesday” call became the architecture for everything that followed.

To my father, who I called in Week 5 and who said, after a long pause in Korean, “Eung. Appa knows. Take your time.” You did the same thing I did, in 1994, and you carried it alone. I did not have to carry mine alone, because you carried yours alone first.

— D.P., April 2026