12 weeks. Four agents, one operating system. Your pod ships a production AI Agent for a real dental practice. Patient intake, hygiene recall, revenue intelligence, and hiring, built together as the Dental OS and deployed inside MergeWorks's Valixon network of clinics. Top fellows continue as Co-Builders with real revenue share on what you built.
Each pod owns one agent in the Dental OS. You don't build a case-study project. You ship a production system a real dental practice uses, inside MergeWorks's Valixon dental infrastructure network.
Why dental. MergeWorks operates in dental through Valixon, our dental business infrastructure platform. The vertical has clear operational problems (new patient intake, hygiene recall churn, revenue leakage, hiring the right RDH or associate dentist) that AI Agents solve well. Cohort 2606 proved the foundation when Pod 3 shipped HireWise, our hiring agent originally trained on a dental hygienist use case. Cohort 2610 extends that from one agent to a full stack.
Replaces the front desk's new-patient workload. Pulls from online booking, verifies insurance eligibility against payer databases, drafts the intake form, SMS confirmation and reminder sequence, and preps the chart for the clinician before the patient walks in.
Dental practices leak six figures a year on hygiene patients who fall off recall. This agent predicts which patients are about to churn, triggers personalized reactivation sequences across SMS and email, re-books them into open hygiene slots, and reports recovered revenue weekly.
Builds on the HireWise foundation from Cohort 2606. Scores incoming resumes against dental-specific rubrics (RDH license status, state board compliance, experience with Dentrix or Open Dental, chair-side manner signals), runs AI first-round interviews, and surfaces the top 10 candidates to the hiring manager with a scorecard.
Real-time intelligence dashboard tracking production per chair, hygienist and associate utilization, denied claims, delayed insurance reimbursements, and chair-time efficiency. Replaces expensive practice-management-system reporting with a clean, AI-summarized weekly readout the owner actually reads.
The pod agent is the main artifact. These are the compounding deliverables you leave the program with, so you end the fellowship positioned as a builder with real work, not a résumé line.
Your pod's agent live at its own URL on the MergeWorks agents subdomain. Real data, real users, real cost tracking. Deployed by you, maintained by you post-Demo Day if you continue as a Co-Builder.
Minimum 2 recorded interviews with real dental practice owners or office managers using the MW 12-question discovery set. Video required. These become the voice-of-customer evidence that shapes your agent's design.
Published GitHub repo with your golden-dataset test cases, scoring rubric, and reproducible benchmarks for your agent. Plus a blog-post-length technical writeup publishable on your personal site or the MergeWorks blog.
Live presentation at Demo Day on Saturday, January 10, 2027 to MergeWorks leadership, Valixon network clinic owners, and the next cohort of applicants. Plus a 90-day post-fellowship execution plan for how your agent evolves after you ship.
The agent and the curriculum are the core. These are the compounding perks that keep paying dividends after Demo Day.
Four people who ship one production agent together under a tight 12-week clock. The pod relationships from past cohorts have turned into co-founder relationships, Co-Builder partnerships, and ongoing collaboration on new builds. You meet your pod on Day 1.
Standout builds get published to MergeWorks's partner network: Founders Board (business owners at $2M+ revenue led by Roland Frasier, Ryan Deiss, and Richard Lindner), MergeWorks's acquisition pipeline, and the Valixon clinic network. Your name on the byline, real distribution.
Top 10% of each cohort receive the MergeWorks Fellowship Distinction. Referenceable on resume, LinkedIn, and future applications. Comes with a signed letter from the MW managing partners describing the specific agent work that earned it.
Post-cohort alumni Slack and WhatsApp, quarterly build-review calls, invites to MergeWorks events in NYC, Orange County, Dallas, and Bangkok, plus standing intro-rights into the fellow directory and the Co-Builder pool. Access continues indefinitely.
The goal of this cohort is not to study AI Agents. The goal is to ship one and get a real clinic using it. The first pod (or solo fellow in the Advanced track) to deploy their agent to a live Valixon-network dental practice receives a public MergeWorks First to Deploy Award: dedicated spotlight on the MW platform, named Co-Builder spots on the agent going forward, published case study on the Grow By Buying podcast network, and a signed letter from the MW managing partners.
Pulled directly from the end-of-cohort feedback forms, in their own words. Fellows across Cohorts 2602, 2604, and 2606 shipped eight production agents including HireWise, DealGuard, the MergeWorks LOI Builder, the M&A Deal Sourcing Engine, and the Dentistry Analytics Agent.
"I liked how open-ended the work was with just enough guidance. For the Co-Builder track, I want to continue working on my project and see it through since I enjoyed building it and working with the client."
"I love the collaborative experience the fellowship gives me rather than having each pod work independently. I enjoyed the part where we can learn from different pods and see how they construct their workflow and tackle technical challenges, which inspires us to improve our agent with the similar ideas."
"I loved that the fellowship was centered around building something for a real business rather than just completing theoretical exercises. Working in a small pod gave me the opportunity to collaborate closely, learn new AI and automation tools hands-on, and figure things out through actual problem-solving. The experience gave me much more confidence in my ability to learn unfamiliar tools and build with AI."
"What I loved most was how hands-on the program was. I wasn't just learning about agents conceptually. I was actually building workflows, debugging them, changing parts of the stack when something wasn't working well, and seeing how those decisions affected a real product."
"I particularly enjoyed working with my specific team. All of us brought together different strengths, but above all we had good communication, which I believe to be the cornerstone of any good team. We were able to fill in for any issues or conflicts the others had and keep up to date with each other and the overall project."
"Even while building the M&A deal sourcing agent in the first cohort, I wanted to build upon the final product and actually push the product into production and onboard clients. Now actually having the chance to do it, I would love to be a part of it."
Not a lecture series. Not a hackathon. A 12-week co-building program that walks you through every stage of shipping a production AI Agent, from scoped problem to live clinic deployment and post-cohort Co-Builder ownership.
15-min application. Rank your top pod preferences.
15-min conversation. We match you to a pod and a Valixon-network clinic.
Weeks 1-3. Meet your clinic. Lock the problem spec and architecture.
Weeks 4-7. Ship v1. Live client feedback round. Iterate.
Weeks 8-10. Public URL. Real data. Real users. Evals.
Week 12. Live presentation to MW leadership + network.
Top fellows continue as Co-Builders with revenue share.
Every week compounds. By Week 3 you're on a call with your dental clinic owner. By Week 6 you're drafting the architecture of your production agent. By Week 12 your pod's agent is deployed and running against real patient data.
Weekly Build Reviews with MergeWorks partners run every week from Week 3 onward. Bring your pod's work, get real feedback, iterate. On top of that, every fellow gets a 1:1 Agent Walkthrough with MW roughly every 3 weeks (mandatory at Week 5, then Weeks 8 and 11) so you keep improving on YOUR specific agent, not just the group content. Advanced fellows get 1:1 office hours weekly.
You don't just leave with a portfolio piece. Top performers continue as Co-Builders with real economic upside on the agent they built, and a documented path to spin-out founder on the small number of agents MergeWorks decides to spin into standalone companies.
Standard Track teaches the AI Agent stack end-to-end (n8n, Claude APIs, Pinecone, deployment, evals). You need to bring the willingness to actually build and the ability to show up live every Saturday.
There's a $500 enrollment deposit that is fully refunded when you complete the program (see the Completion section below for exact criteria). The deposit exists to filter for commitment, cover your Anthropic and OpenAI API credits during the cohort, and keep pods full. Finish and you get it back in full. Beyond that, the program is unpaid: ownership and revenue share are earned through performance as a Co-Builder, not paid upfront.
Yes. Every pod is matched to a real dental practice in the Valixon network. You don't do a case-study project. Your agent gets built with input from a real clinic owner or office manager and deployed for them to use.
Plan for 8-12 hours per week including the Saturday live session (12:00-1:30 PM EST, 90 minutes) plus your own build time. Weeks 3, 6, 10, and 11 are heavier due to clinic interviews and the dress rehearsal.
n8n workflow automation (we're official n8n partners), Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5 and Sonnet 5.5, OpenAI as fallback, Pinecone vector database, structured output parsing, prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks (LangSmith), deployment (Vercel, Render), cost tracking, and full-stack agent architecture.
Yes, if you can protect Saturday afternoons and 8-12 hours per week. Our strongest fellows have been working professionals doing this on the side. Advanced Track meets 2:00-3:30 PM EST same day, so stacking both is possible but we don't recommend it.
You can withdraw at any time. Your agent work stays with MergeWorks per the IP assignment, and the deposit is not refunded in the case of early withdrawal. We prefer you finish. If life genuinely gets in the way (illness, family emergency, major personal issue), tell us early at trisha@mergeworks.org and we work something out.
We look at technical curiosity, communication clarity, past shipping (any kind of building counts: projects, side gigs, hackathons, no-code builds), and mindset. We're not looking for perfect résumés. We're looking for people who ship.
Yes. Four agents from Cohort 2606 are live at agents.mergeworks.org: Dillon (Financial DD), DealGuard (Operational DD), HireWise (hiring), and KKOA PR (press releases). Cohort 2604 shipped the LOI Builder (216 funding strategies) and the Fundraising Agent that both run inside the firm today. Cohort 2602 shipped the M&A Deal Sourcing Engine still running at MergeWorks.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. We can provide documentation for internship credit if your school allows it. Ask your career center. Several past fellows have gotten this recognized as an experience-based program.
The $500 enrollment deposit is fully refunded when you complete the program. These are the exact criteria. All of them are written into the fellowship contract you sign at acceptance. We define this up front so there is no ambiguity. We are not trying to keep your deposit.
Meet all 6 criteria above. $500 deposit refunded within 14 business days of Demo Day via original payment method. Confirmation email sent from trisha@mergeworks.org with refund transaction ID.
Withdrawal is welcome and non-punitive. If life circumstances change and you need to leave the program, tell us early. Your agent work stays with MergeWorks per the confidentiality and IP terms in the fellowship contract, and no completion economics apply. The deposit is not returned in the case of early withdrawal. Exceptions to any of the above are at the discretion of MW leadership and documented in writing. Serious medical, family, or personal emergencies are handled case-by-case. Contact trisha@mergeworks.org as early as you can.
Webinar Friday, October 16 · 2:00 PM EST. Applications due Saturday, October 18 · 11:59 PM EST. Cohort 2610 starts Saturday, October 24, 2026.
Apply for Cohort 2610 · Standard Track$500 refundable enrollment deposit on acceptance · fully refunded on program completion.
Working engineer or grad student? Toggle to the Advanced Track for a faster, deeper, production-focused path.