Chain of Thought | AI Agents, Infrastructure & Engineering I Built an AI Coworker That Runs 90% of My Day
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Mar 4, 2026 Sterling Chin, an Applied AI engineer and Senior Developer Advocate at Postman, built MARVIN, a personal AI assistant that automates developer workflows. He demos how MARVIN bookends his workday, converts meeting transcripts into Jira updates, and uses sub-agents, personality rules, and integrations to act like a junior colleague. He also explains onboarding, security, and why DIY assistants can beat big tech alternatives.
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Structured Markdown Unlocks Reliable Personal Agents
- Sterling built Marvin after realizing LLMs perform best with structured data and Markdown, so he organized workflows and notes in Markdown to make agents reliable.
- He converted scattered personal tools into a "skills" folder and used Claude Code to orchestrate them into one assistant during a holiday hack session.
Bookend Your Day With Start And End Commands
- Bookend your workday with explicit start and end commands so the assistant pulls email, calendar, tickets, and session state automatically.
- Sterling runs slash start at login and slash end at close so Marvin maintains continuity and checkpoints session state.
Enforce A Brand Guide With A Content Sub-Agent
- Create writing rules and a content sub-agent to enforce brand voice and quality before any draft reaches you.
- Sterling's content agent auto-runs drafts through explicit rules (no m-dashes, avoid contrastive crutches) before saving.