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AI Agent Fellowship · Cohort 2610 · Dental Operating System

Apply to the MergeWorks AI Agent Fellowship

12 weeks. Build + deploy a production AI agent inside the Dental Clinic Profit + Control System. Real clinic. Real patients. Not a tutorial. Not a hackathon.

Read this before you apply. This application is longer than most because MergeWorks is longer than most. We've run 3 AI cohorts. We know exactly which weeks fellows quit on and why. The questions below are built to test for the exact traits that break at those weeks. If you cannot answer them honestly and specifically, this is not the right cohort for you — and that's a useful filter for both of us. Expect to spend 45–60 minutes on this application. Generic answers do not advance to the interview round.

1 · Who you are

What Weeks 1–4 actually look like

Pod kickoff, clinic owner call, and the first drop-off wall: the scope wall at Week 3.

Week 1 Pod assignment, Valixon-network clinic match, stack setup (n8n, Claude API, Notion). Ship a hello-world workflow by Friday.
Week 2 Role prompt + scoring rubric for your agent. Study the HireWise rubric decomposition.
Week 3 Live recorded interview with your clinic owner. One-page problem spec. Clinic approves scope.
Week 4 MVP build sprint 1. Working agent runs end-to-end on the happy path. Live demo to your clinic for feedback round 1.
Where fellows drop off in Weeks 1–4 The "scope wall" at Week 3. Pods that cannot lock a crisp problem spec with their clinic by Friday of Week 3 spiral the rest of the cohort. In prior cohorts, roughly 1 in 5 fellows who were going to drop out did so between Week 2 and Week 4. The pattern is identical: excited in Week 1, stuck in Week 2 on tool setup, embarrassed in Week 3 when the clinic owner asks what the agent will actually do and the pod doesn't have an answer. The questions below are built to screen for this.

2 · Have you shipped something?

We are not looking for prior AI experience. We are looking for proof that you have ever actually shipped something that worked for someone other than you.

What Weeks 5–8 actually look like

Pinecone + RAG, second clinic meeting, first real deployment, and the deploy wall at Week 8.

Week 5 Add Pinecone to your agent for one knowledge query. Mandatory 30-min 1:1 with MergeWorks on your pod's agent.
Week 6 Second clinic owner meeting. Live demo of v1. Scope v2 with their feedback. Lock the production target.
Week 7 Build sprint 2. v2 of your agent incorporating owner feedback. Eval harness with 20 golden test cases.
Week 8 Deployment. Push to a public URL. Add Logfire traces. Agent runs against real data for the first time.
Where fellows drop off in Weeks 5–8 The "deploy wall" at Week 8 is the hardest week. Fellows who have never actually deployed a product publicly — URL, env vars, CORS, auth, the whole stack — hit a confidence crash when their agent works locally and then breaks in production. In prior cohorts, roughly 1 in 6 drop at Week 8. This is survivable, but we need to know you have shipped something end-to-end before Week 8, not after.

3 · Why this specific cohort

Standard Track · pod preference Cohort 2610 ships Valixon's "Dental Clinic Profit + Control System" in 5 pods. Pick the one you're most drawn to. We assign on the application + the interview — your top choice is not guaranteed. Advanced Track applicants, pick what interests you most as a secondary signal; you'll be on the backbone, not a single pod.
What Weeks 9–12 actually look like

Production hardening, clinic usage test, dress rehearsal, Demo Day. Co-Builder offers extended.

Week 9 Production hardening. Error handling, rate limits, cost tracking per request, PII handling. Document 5 failure modes and the fix for each.
Week 10 Your clinic uses your agent live for a full week. Log every interaction, every edge case. Fix what breaks. The "eval wall."
Week 11 Dress rehearsal with full deck. Backup screen recording. Third mandatory 1:1 with MW. Capstone writeup drafted.
Week 12 Demo Day. Live presentation to MW leadership, Valixon clinic owners, Founders Board community, next cohort of applicants. Co-Builder offers extended.
What finishing actually means A deployed agent your clinic uses. A capstone presentation at Demo Day. Deposit refunded within 14 days. Co-Builder tier eligible with Vesting Units on your agent. Top performers return as Teaching Interns on the next cohort (paid). Fellows who miss 3 or more Saturday sessions do not finish — regardless of effort elsewhere.

4 · Can you be in the room?

Tick every Saturday session you can attend live. Missing 3+ = failed cohort, no deposit refund. If you can't honestly tick at least 10 of these, this is not the right cohort for you.

5 · The honesty question

Acknowledgments · tick all 3 to submit