# Ido Pesok

![Ido Pesok](/resources/cognition/portraits/ido-pesok.webp)

Member of Technical Staff at Cognition building verification for Devin; ex-Staff SWE on Vercel v0; co-founder of Energize AI  
Cognition  
Irvine, California, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Member of Technical Staff (Engineering)
- Joined: Mar 2026
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Staff Software Engineer, Vercel
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Amazon; Vercel (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idopesok
- X: @ido_pesok
- GitHub: https://github.com/IdoPesok
- Website: https://www.idopesok.com/
- Domain: cognition.ai

## Notes
- Joined Cognition around late Feb 2026; in his May 29, 2026 Cognition blog post he wrote verbatim: "3 months ago, I joined Cognition to help build the future of software engineering. Devin has come a long way since launching as the first AI software engineer, and I've been blown away watching the team behind it actually use Devin every day." (https://cognition.com/blog/testing-development)
- At Cognition he works on autonomous end-to-end verification for Devin: Devin uses its own cloud computer to run the app, exercise flows and return a chaptered test video with pass/fail assertions. He wrote: "From validating our Slack integration to testing complex Windsurf features, the team always has an army of Devins in test mode.". (https://cognition.com/blog/testing-development)
- When Cognition announced it was acquiring Corridor (Oct 29, 2026), he reposted it and wrote, verbatim: "Super excited to get to work with @jackhcable + @AshwinRamaswami and the amazing Corridor team.". (https://x.com/ido_pesok/status/2115885472241291562)
- Sept 16, 2026 X post, verbatim: "We have seen a lot of success with Agentic MapReduce in helping engineering teams find vulnerabilities across their codebase. We are bringing that same agent swarm ability to any Devin session with “/scan”.". (https://x.com/ido_pesok/status/2100261915520086074)
- July 30, 2026 X post on Devin Review stacked PRs, verbatim: "Coding has always been extremely fun for me, but as I was transitioning to no longer coding by hand, I found myself missing that flow state. The PRs agents made were too large to merge and often littered with a ton of small bugs. Stacked PRs have brought the flow state back." He credits @dkrajews123, @sahinolut and @jaredpalmer. (https://x.com/ido_pesok/status/2082881052583035234)
- Before Cognition he was at Vercel from 2024 to 2026 on the v0 team, rising from Software Engineer to Senior to Staff Software Engineer (2026). He left as Staff. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/idopesok)
- The blog post says test runs approved per day on Devin "have more than doubled" in the past couple of months. It names known failure modes he is working on: screenshot timing (missed toasts) and models 'cheating' by running JavaScript instead of clicking through the UI. (https://cognition.com/blog/testing-development)
- A Cognition sales post credits "Ido Pesok, Nicholas W., Angela L. (here) & team" for the Devin security work (Devin Security Swarm, 94% security-risk reduction at a financial-services firm). (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexandra-mysak-00883445_ido-pesok-nicholas-w-angela-l-here-activity-7478144292595847169-wyeC)
- Gave the talk 'Evals Are Not Unit Tests' (as Vercel v0 engineer) at AI Engineer World's Fair 2025. It argues that nondeterministic LLM apps need systematic evals built from production logs and feedback. (https://ai.engineer/speakers/ido-pesok)
- At Vercel he co-authored 'Eval-driven development: Build better AI faster' with CTO Malte Ubl and Alice Alexandra Moore. He also helped explain v0's composite model architecture. (https://vercel.com/blog/eval-driven-development-build-better-ai-faster)
- Open source: created ZSA (IdoPesok/zsa), a type-safe Next.js server actions library with schema validation, middleware, retries and React Query integration. Profile data shows 143 PRs and 274 pushes from May 2024 to Jan 2025. (https://github.com/IdoPesok/zsa)
- Open source: led energizeai/actions, described as 'the world's best open source registry of LLM tools', with 110 PRs from Feb to Apr 2024. (https://github.com/energizeai/actions)
- Co-authored the arXiv paper 'Aligned: A Platform-based Process for Alignment' (2311.08706) with Ethan Shaotran, Sam Jones, Emi Liu and others. (https://arxiv.org/html/2311.08706v1)
- His team won 1st place at the UC Berkeley AI Hackathon (Berkeley SkyDeck x Cal Hacks) with Aligned, pitched as 'the Github for LLM Alignment'. The team included Emi Liu and Wanzin Yazar. (https://www.idopesok.com/)
- Senior Software Engineer at Sequoia Port (Aug 2021 - Aug 2023). He integrated LLMs for PDF search and summarization, built a patented dynamic document viewer for medical professionals, and led a small team building a case-management system. (https://www.idopesok.com/)
- Public headline says "Building @ Cognition". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/idopesok)
- Aug 19, 2026 X post, verbatim: "excited to share how we work with Devin on Slack!"; Aug 28, 2026, verbatim: "on the office vibes tier ranking cog would be S+++". (https://x.com/ido_pesok/status/2090195532996387242)
- Built Enroller, an alternative Cal Poly course-enrollment app, with classmates. Graduated Cal Poly SLO in CS (AI/ML concentration) in 2024, one year early. (https://www.idopesok.com/)
- Junior Developer at Amazon (Feb-Jun 2022), where he migrated legacy backend services to AWS Lambda and ElasticSearch. (https://www.idopesok.com/)
- React developer at Level 2 Designs (2020-2021). He took a pension-tracking app from 0 to 1, and it was adopted by organizations such as the LAPD and SFPD (20,000 members). (https://www.idopesok.com/)
- I like to build and ship things that push the frontier of what's possible; this comes from the profile summary and preserves the person's own positioning. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/idopesok)
- Previous roles include Staff Software Engineer at Vercel; Senior Software Engineer at Vercel; Software Engineer at Vercel; Co-Founder at Energize AI; Senior Software Engineer at Sequoia Port; Junior Developer at Amazon; Cal Poly CS AI Club at CSAI Cal Poly; Software Developer at Level 2 Designs. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/idopesok)
- Location is Irvine, California, United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/idopesok)

## Experience
- Member of Technical Staff at Cognition - San Francisco, California, United States (Mar 2026 - Present)
- Staff Software Engineer at Vercel (Feb 2026 - Mar 2026): Led development of the v0 agent harness
- Senior Software Engineer at Vercel (Feb 2025 - Feb 2026): Pushed the frontier of Next.js code gen quality and evals
- Software Engineer at Vercel (Jun 2024 - Feb 2025): Helped launch https://v0.app
- Co-Founder at Energize AI - San Francisco, California, United States (Aug 2023 - Jun 2024): AI Alignment and Agents

- Spark (AI Email Scheduler)
- Senior Software Engineer at Sequoia Port - Irvine, California, United States (Aug 2021 - Aug 2023): Led frontend and LLM development.
- Junior Developer at Amazon - San Luis Obispo, California, United States (Feb 2022 - Jun 2022): Worked on payments export migration.
- Cal Poly CS AI Club at CSAI Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo, California, United States (Oct 2021 - Jun 2022): Exploring, discussing, and contributing to breakthroughs in AI with fellow students from Cal Poly SLO.
- Software Developer at Level 2 Designs - Orange County, California, United States (Aug 2020 - Nov 2021): Directed frontend for pension tracker app built to support firefighters and police. Onboarded by LAPD, SFPD, and more.
- Co-Founder at JI Tutoring - Irvine, California, United States (Aug 2020 - Aug 2021): Helped kids in my community learn during COVID.
- Solar Consultant at Nerd Power - Costa Mesa, California, United States (Jun 2020 - Aug 2020): Pitched solar panels door to door.

## Education
- California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo - Bachelors Degree, Computer Science (AI & ML Concentration) - (Sep 2021 - Jun 2024): Graduated in 3 Years
- CS50 - Artificial Intelligence - (Nov 2021 - Jan 2022): Learned a lot about AI. Built 12 projects revolving around optimization, neural networks, natural language processing, and more. Video attached displays the convolutional neural network project. Requirement was to train a Sequential model to predict traffic signs given an input image, using the Keras API.
- Startup School Online - Aspiring Founder Track - (Jan 2021 - Jan 2021): Startup School is an online program for founders actively pursuing their own startup, hosted by Y Combinator.

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/idopesok
- https://ai.engineer/speakers/ido-pesok
- https://cognition.com/blog/testing-development
- https://x.com/ido_pesok
- https://www.idopesok.com/
- https://arxiv.org/html/2311.08706v1
- https://www.getprog.ai/profile/ido_pesok
- https://vercel.com/blog/eval-driven-development-build-better-ai-faster
- https://github.com/IdoPesok
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/cognition-ai-labs/posts
- https://x.com/ido_pesok/status/2115885472241291562
- https://x.com/ido_pesok/status/2100261915520086074
- https://x.com/ido_pesok/status/2082881052583035234
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexandra-mysak-00883445_ido-pesok-nicholas-w-angela-l-here-activity-7478144292595847169-wyeC
- https://github.com/IdoPesok/zsa
- https://github.com/energizeai/actions
- https://x.com/ido_pesok/status/2090195532996387242


Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/ido-pesok · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people