I'm a builder who's spent ~8 years moving products from the messy beginning to the part where they actually work. I've shipped logistics at Google, healthcare automation, and the core platform of an AI startup as its founding engineer.
I care less about novelty and more about shipping the right thing — clear architecture, honest observability, and code the next engineer can actually live with.
On the side, I run valthrax.com, an open-source studio with four Apache-2.0 tools for LLM engineers — including Cue, an open-source Cluely alternative. I also teach system design and backend engineering at bootcamp.suryanand.com.
A few engagements I'm proud of — what I built, the constraints, and what shipped.
Joined as the first engineer. Designed the platform — agents, queues, observability, billing — with a small team and a tight runway. The stack had to handle real-time voice, async workflows, and survive a 100× usage swing without a rewrite.
Designed, built, and released Pressmark, Switchboard, Murmur and Cue (the open-source Cluely alternative) — each solving a real friction in the prompt-engineering, agentic-voice or live-meeting workflow. SHA-addressed prompts, multi-model TUI, sub-second voice loop, stealth meeting overlay. All on PyPI, all documented, all under Apache-2.0.
Replaced 4 disconnected forms and a paper clipboard with a single onboarding flow used by ~200 patients/week. Form automation, consent, e-sign, and a quiet little admin dashboard the front-desk team actually likes.
End-to-end ownership of the storefront, conversion UX, loyalty, and influencer pipeline. Margin-aware merchandising, COD-friendly offers, and an obsessive watch on funnel drop-offs.
Started from a personal annoyance. 7 days from idea to deploy. No login, no signup, no analytics theatre — just paste in a broken CSV, get a clean one back. The friction-free thesis, validated.
Four Apache-2.0 projects for engineers building with LLMs — Pressmark, Switchboard, Murmur, and Cue (the open-source Cluely alternative). All on PyPI, source on GitHub, indexed at valthrax.com.
A growing catalogue of free tools, plus AI products on the way. Live courses for engineers run at bootcamp.suryanand.com. Pitch a project. If a few engineers would use it, it gets built.
Prompt version control + eval harness. SHA-addressed prompts, async runner, five built-in scorers, FastAPI + HTMX web UI. CI gate via --min-pass-rate.
Terminal UI for OpenRouter. Query 200+ models, switch live, stream markdown, track cost per message. Built on Textual + httpx SSE. One install, no config.
pip install switchboard-tuiLocal-first agentic voice pipeline. Microphone → STT → LLM → TTS → speaker. Sentence-boundary buffering for sub-second perceived latency. Every stage swappable in one config line.
pip install murmur-voiceOpen-source Cluely alternative. Stealth desktop overlay invisible to screen-share, agent-driven answers, Ollama + OpenRouter routing, scriptable HTTP daemon, ten built-in scenario templates. Mac · Windows · Linux.
pip install cueSelf-paced video courses for backend engineers and interview candidates. One focused player. Structured modules. No filler. Live at bootcamp.suryanand.com.
Interview-ready Node.js, AWS fundamentals, and cloud system design. Built for backend engineers cracking offers.
Architecture layer by layer. Clients to services to queues to databases. Reasoning through real designs, not surface-level recipes.
Sharding, read replicas, and the patterns that show up at data scale. New modules added as the syllabus grows.
Side projects, experiments, and the occasional "I needed this so I built it."
A calm, course-first learning platform for yoga instructors and their students.
Patient onboarding & care workflows for a multi-clinic group.
Repair messy CSVs in your browser. No login. No tracking. Just paste & fix.
Prompt → API mockup. A weekend tool for prototyping interfaces and endpoints.
A minimal task app. Keyboard-driven, opinionated, fast.
A reverse-engineering exercise — feed, posts, real-time, all from scratch.
Boring where boring helps. Sharp where sharp matters. Always picked for the problem, not the resume.
Two weeks from Figma to a working app. We shipped to users on the call right after handoff.
Ananya Sharma, SaaS founder, PuneOur junior devs picked up the code without one question. That alone was worth it.
Ishan Kapoor, CTO at PaymentFlowThree other devs gave up on this build. Suryanand had it live in two weeks.
Priya Desai, healthtech founderWe launched on day 12. Closed our seed round on day 19.
Ravi Mehta, founderI take on a small number of engagements at a time — full-time founding roles and serious 0→1 contracts. If you'd rather pitch an open-source project, that goes through valthrax.com/#pitch.