# Nikolai Sheiko

#entity

## Summary

Speaker of the talk "Грабли во внедрении ИИ в SDLC" ([[2026-07-30-rakes-in-ai-sdlc-adoption]]). Russian-speaking AI-adoption practitioner/consultant who works with client companies (a frontend-migration team, a European outsourcer, a large-codebase company) on getting real results from AI in the software lifecycle. Background beyond the talk unknown.

## Current Understanding

His through-line: the models are already good enough — **people, companies and metrics are what throttle the gains**. Signature positions:

- The AI-developer is a **manager of an agent-employee**, IO-bound and parallel ([[developer-as-agent-manager]]).
- **Review is the new bottleneck**; review *with* the agent; measure completed-tasks-without-rework, never LoC/PRs ([[review-is-the-new-bottleneck]]).
- **Agentic Evolution**: walk the agent through hard tasks, then have it write the manual; verify skills with a context-free subagent ([[solve-first-then-skillify]]).
- Companies should install and configure Claude Code / Codex rather than build custom AI tooling; buy a **teacher/curator**, not an external configurator ([[enterprise-ai-reality]]).
- Best practices matter *more* with agents (compaction curse, AST search over grep); embeddings/RAG over code don't work ([[context-as-scarce-resource]]).
- AI eats **Intelligence**; **Judgment** (taste or domain expertise) stays human for now.

## Evidence

- All positions — [[2026-07-30-rakes-in-ai-sdlc-adoption]].

## Related Pages

- Concepts: [[developer-as-agent-manager]], [[review-is-the-new-bottleneck]], [[solve-first-then-skillify]], [[enterprise-ai-reality]], [[context-as-scarce-resource]]
- Entities: [[swepr]] (he cites their Stanford chart as the stakes — "be in the top half"), [[thorsten-ball]] (fellow frontier practitioner; they disagree on skills — Sheiko builds skill evolution, Thorsten uses none)

## Contradictions / Uncertainty

- His client cases are anonymous and self-reported; no numbers are verifiable. Status: tentative.
- Identity/affiliation beyond the talk unknown (the raw doc names only the talk itself). Status: tentative.

## Next Questions

- Who is he professionally — independent consultant, agency, vendor? Affects how to weigh the "you don't need custom AI development" claim (it is also a consultant's pitch).