Out now on Leanpub
The Second Time Is a Bug
The first time a coding agent makes a mistake, it is the model’s. The second time, it is a bug in your harness.
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Co-founder at Seerly · Bengaluru · Open to advisory work
I help software get built and found in the age of AI.
I’m Rakesh Menon. I co-founded Seerly, where autonomous agents help brands get found and cited in AI answers on ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. They track how those answers describe a brand, find the gaps and draft the content that closes them. I also wrote The Second Time Is a Bug, a field workbook for engineering with AI coding agents.
Question
Who is Rakesh Menon?
Rakesh MenonCo-founder, Seerly · Author · Bengaluru, IndiaAtlassian · Maersk · Publicis Sapient · Nokia
Rakesh Menon is the co-founder of Seerly, where autonomous agents help brands get found and cited in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.1 He wrote The Second Time Is a Bug, a field workbook for engineering with AI coding agents.2 Before Seerly he spent almost 15 years on frontend platforms, most recently at Atlassian, Maersk and Publicis Sapient.3 He is based in Bengaluru, India.
Sources
At Seerly, which he co-founded and where he leads product, he is building autonomous agents that track a brand’s Google rankings and its citations in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, then draft the content that closes the gaps.1 At Atlassian he evolved the frontend foundations that 7 Jira squads build on.2 At Maersk he unified 20+ customer-facing apps into one platform, with frontend performance SLOs held to 99% adherence.2 Earlier, at Publicis Sapient, he built the server-rendered micro-frontend framework behind 6 global retail launches.3
Sources
Yes. The Second Time Is a Bug, a field workbook for engineering with AI coding agents, came out on Leanpub in October 2026.1 He is writing a second book, The Someday Folder, in public, with new chapters every week.2 He also writes about AI search and coding agents on Medium, the Seerly blog and LinkedIn.3
Sources
Seerly turns Google search and AI answers into one organic growth channel. Its autonomous agents track a brand’s rankings and its citations in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, find the gaps and draft the content that wins them, and the brand’s team approves what ships.1 Rakesh Menon co-founded it in 2025. The team also built Got Cited?, a free guide to how pages get cited in AI search.2
Sources
He argues that AI assistants now describe a brand from what they find everywhere else, not just its own website,1 and that being indexed is not the same as being cited in an answer.2 Seerly, which he co-founded, puts autonomous agents on that problem: they find where a brand is missing from AI answers and draft the content that closes the gap.3
Sources
Worked with
- Atlassian
- Maersk
- Publicis Sapient
- Tesco
- Marriott
- Diesel
- Nokia
<section id="books"> · Book · author: Person
Books
One out now, one being written in public
Writing in public
The Someday Folder
Turn unfinished ideas into small experiments with AI
New chapters every week, free on Leanpub while I write it.
Get it free on Leanpub<section id="make"> · Organization · CreativeWork · WebSite
What I make
Products I’m building, and things I make for the fun of it.
Products
What I’m building
Seerly
One organic growth channel for Google search and AI answers. Autonomous agents track your rankings and your citations in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, find the gaps and draft the content that wins them. Your team approves what ships.
Open seerly.app
VenturePulse
Startup strategy and validation backed by real-time data and multi-model verification, from concept to pitch deck.
AppRunner
Connect a GitHub repo and get a production-ready VM with Docker, HTTPS, crash alerts, metrics and logs, without a cloud console.
Side quests
Small sites I built because I wanted them to exist
From the Seerly team
Got Cited?
An interactive guide to how a page gets crawled, retrieved and cited in AI search, one step at a time, with a hands-on simulator.
Try the simulator at gotcited.fyi
An independent guide to the film
How to Live on Earth
The documentary’s three big puzzles, its standout stories and the full film to watch, with in-browser visuals and an ambient soundscape that follows your scroll.
Explore howtoliveonearth.life<section id="help"> · Service · provider: Person
How I help
Three ways to work together
Every engagement ends with something your team keeps: guards in the repository, an architecture your engineers can run, or a decision written down.
01
Agent-ready engineering
Find where your team’s knowledge lives that coding agents cannot reach, then move it into instruction files and checks so the same mistake does not ship twice.
You get
- Harness audit of your repositories
- Short, checkable instruction files
- Guards wired into hooks and CI
02
Frontend platform architecture
For organisations running many apps that should feel like one product: micro-frontends, shared design systems and performance targets the whole org can see.
You get
- Target architecture and migration plan
- Design system foundations
- Performance SLOs and dashboards
03
Technical leadership
Principal-level guidance for teams without one: architecture reviews, an RFC process that gets decisions made, and mentoring for senior engineers.
You get
- Architecture and code reviews
- RFC and decision-record process
- Mentoring for senior engineers
Not sure which fits? Tell me what you’re working on.
<section id="writing"> · ItemList · Article
Writing
On AI search, coding agents and how teams work
Indexed Does Not Mean Cited: The Missing Funnel in AI Visibility
Why being crawlable, indexed, or even retrieved still does not mean your brand will appear in an AI-generated answer.
AI searchReadDo Guardrails Make AI Coding Agents Better? What 270 Runs Showed
An experiment across 270 agent runs, measuring whether guardrails actually change what coding agents ship.
Coding agentsReadThe Pull Request Is Not the Product
On what performance-review season reveals about how big software companies measure engineering work.
Engineering cultureReadMore from me onMediumSeerly blogLinkedInThe book’s blog
<section id="map"> · question paths
Work map
How one question leads to the next.
platform craftfindable pagesshared rulesteaching, at book lengthin writingside projects
VenturePulse
AppRunnerAlso from the team: Got Cited? 
Frontend platforms at scale
20+ apps · Maersk7 squads · AtlassianServer rendering · SapientSLOs · 99%
Growing engineers
12 mentored · SapientGuild · MaerskRFCs · Atlassian
Product experiments
VenturePulseAppRunner?How do brands get found in AI answers?
?Why do coding agents repeat mistakes?
?What happens to the ideas you never finish?
?How should engineering work be judged?
Product · Co-founder
Seerly
Autonomous agents that get brands cited in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.
Explore the productAlso from the team: Got Cited?Book · Author
The Second Time Is a Bug
Turn each repeated coding-agent mistake into a small, tested guard.
Read the book Tested over 270 guardrail runsBook · Writing in public
The Someday Folder
Turn unfinished ideas into small experiments with AI.
Read it as it’s writtenAdvisory
Technical leadership
Architecture reviews, an RFC process that gets decisions made, and mentoring for senior engineers.
How I help →Leads toShared thread
<section id="career"> · Person · Organization · Role
Career
To scale, one role at a time
Now
201120142017202020232026NokiaLangoorPublicis SapientMaerskAtlassianSeerlylangoor.mobiSenior architect20+ apps, one shellSeerlyBook out
Drag along the timeline, or use the arrows.
Seerly
Jun 2025 to now
Building autonomous agents that help brands get found and cited in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews: they track rankings and AI citations, find the gaps and draft the content that wins them.
- Co-FounderJun 2025 to now
- Toolbox
- ReactNode.jsGraphQLMicro-frontendsDesign systemsAWSKubernetesDockerAI/ML
- Languages
- EnglishHindiMalayalamBengali
Contact
Let’s talk.
Advisory work, Seerly, the books, or anything else. I reply myself, usually within a day.