Scheduling Mastra Agents: A Weekly Report That Delivers Itself to Slack
Schedule a Mastra agent with a scheduled workflow: declarative cron, date ranges in code, an evidence check, and a Slack post the model can't trigger.
Production AI Engagements
Most AI projects die
between demo and production.
I'm Damian Galarza. I work with engineering teams on retainer to ship reliable AI features, harden the AI stack, and make agentic systems that survive past the demo.
15+ years building production software. Former CTO at Buoy Software where we shipped FDA-cleared medical device software. I still build production AI systems under real user, token-budget, and error-rate constraints — not just advise from the sidelines.
15+
years building production software
0 → 50+
engineers scaled as CTO
FDA
cleared medical device software shipped
1+ yr
daily Claude Code user, documented publicly
01.
How I Work
$12,000 · 2 weeks
Foundation Sprint
A focused 2-week engagement that produces a written architectural assessment and one shipped foundation piece. Either side can walk away after, or convert to retainer.
$15k–$60k/month
Production AI Retainer
Ongoing engagement at the intensity you need — Advisory, Embedded, or Full. Flat monthly rate, flexible hours, direction reset every two weeks. Two-month minimum after Foundation Sprint, then 30-day notice.
Backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. The same starting point covers architecture review, evals, Claude Code rollout work, and production agent systems.
02.
What Clients Say
"He quickly understood where we were with AI tooling and gave us immediately actionable advice, not generic frameworks. He identified gaps we hadn't considered, walked us through how he architects agent loops in production, and helped us think through our product-level agent strategy without over-engineering it."
03.
Start With The Topic You Care About
Production AI Engineering
Ship AI systems that survive real users, real costs, and real failure modes.
Architecture, evals, observability, governance, and the production tradeoffs most teams skip until it hurts.
Codebase Readiness
Find the codebase gaps that make AI-assisted development noisy.
Assess tests, architecture, documentation, feedback loops, and the repo context agents need before they can help safely.
AI Agent Architecture
Design agents with memory, tools, and boundaries that actually hold up.
Memory systems, orchestration, tool use, governance, and the production patterns behind agentic systems.
04.
Recent Writing
Aug 25, 2026
Jul 7, 2026
What a Fractional CTO Costs in 2026 When Agents Make Senior Judgment Go Further
Fractional CTO pricing in 2026 ranges from about $3K per month at the low end to $15K+ per month for ongoing architecture review, delivery guidance, and production judgment. The important change is that a senior human can use agents to turn decisions into reviewed implementation faster without handing judgment to the model.
Jun 26, 2026
Agent Loops vs. Workflows: The Boundary That Makes AI Reliable
Most AI demos hand one agent the whole job. When the output touches reputation, money, or outbound email, use a workflow instead of an agent loop. Here's where the boundary goes, built with Mastra.
Jun 8, 2026
Harness Engineering: The 4 Levers Behind Almost Every Agent Failure
When an agent fails, harness engineering gives you four levers (Context, Tools, Loop, Governance) to find which one broke in under a minute.
May 27, 2026
Human-in-the-Loop Agent Approvals: A Mastra Pattern
Prompt-based approval gates fail because the model decides whether to ask. Mastra's requireApproval primitive removes that decision entirely. Here's how to implement it.
May 13, 2026
Your AI Team Doesn't Need More People — It Needs Agents
What 'supported by a fleet of agents' means in practice: which tasks automate, which don't, and where the ROI breaks down. Evidence from Stripe, Coinbase, Ramp, and Shopify.
05.
Start a Conversation
Schedule a Free Intro Call
30 minutes. No pitch deck. We'll talk through what you're working on and I'll tell you honestly whether I can help.
No pressure, no upsell. Just a conversation to see if there's fit.
Schedule an intro callGet the newsletter
Insights on AI integration, engineering leadership, and building production systems. Written from ongoing practice, not past experience.
Occasional emails. No fluff.