Vinod "Kalki" Vardaram

About

I'm a software engineer in Bangalore. I build backend systems: queues, workers, webhooks, the parts that have to keep running. Since Aug 2025 I've been working independently on my own projects and open source.

Experience

• Self-directed products & open source
  Independent Software Engineer • Aug 2025 - Present

  Sole engineer on every project below - architecture, implementation, deployment, and on-call for my own bugs. Go, Node.js/TypeScript, Python, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, BullMQ, Docker, AWS.

• Pentagon Space
  Software Development Intern • Dec 2024 - Jul 2025

  Profiled PostgreSQL query execution plans and implemented connection pooling, reducing API response time by 30%. Built Node.js/Express REST APIs with JWT auth middleware, input validation, and schema design.

• Intervie Tech
  Machine Learning Intern • Nov 2023 - Dec 2023

  Preprocessed 5,000+ candidate profiles using pandas and NumPy; improved model accuracy 15% over baseline. Deployed trained inference model via Flask REST API.

Projects

• REEVE
  2026 • Python, FastAPI, asyncio, GitPython, Docker

  Concurrent PR review backend (GitHub App). HMAC-verified webhook returns 202 in milliseconds and hands off to a background worker; each job checks the repo out into an isolated git worktree. Four reviewers fan out per file under a concurrency ceiling. Precision/recall eval harness with planted defects; 431 tests.[Source]

• TREEQ
  2026 • Python, NumPy

  Reimplementation of the Rumelhart, Hinton & Williams (1986) kinship task — forward pass, backprop, and training loop written from scratch on NumPy, no autograd. Trains on 132 relations over two isomorphic family trees and compares a 24-unit representation against a 6-unit bottleneck; the narrow one generalises better (0.583 vs 0.417 test) and invents structure like generation and nationality on its own. Gradients verified against finite differences.[Source]

• CORTEX
  2026 • TypeScript, Bun, React Native, Solana

  10-agent consensus system. Agent output streams over WebSocket to a React Native client with Solana Mobile Wallet Adapter integration. Shipped solo in 3 weeks.[Source]

• REFLEX
  2026 • Go (chi, pgx), PostgreSQL

  Multi-chain DeFi liquidation monitor. Alert workers are queue-isolated so one failing channel can't stall the pipeline. Rewritten from TypeScript/Hono/BullMQ to Go for lower memory use and predictable latency under continuous polling.[Source]

• SIGIL
  2026 • Next.js, TypeScript SDK, Anchor (Rust), Helius

  Identity and scoped-permission layer for AI agents. Capability scoping, per-transaction and daily spend limits, and trust scores checked before any agent action executes. SDK published to npm.[Source]

Open Source

• Osprey (roostorg)

  3 merged PRs to Discord's trust & safety rules engine (used by Discord, Bluesky, Matrix.org), including Kafka topic retention limits to prevent unbounded disk growth.[Source]

• Mastra (mastra-ai)

  Merged a fix routing observability pricing lookups through the configured model instead of a hardcoded default.[Source]

Writing

• More Capacity, Worse Fit
  September 2026

  Rebuilding the 1986 family tree network experiment and finding that a narrower model trains better than a wider one — bottlenecks as inductive bias, not just constraint.

• I Was Already Using Rust. I Just Didn't Know It Yet.
  May 2026

  Discovering Rust through everyday tools — ripgrep, fd, bat, starship — and then committing to learn it properly.

All posts →

Education

• Brindavan College of Engineering
  B.Tech in Computer Science • 2021 - 2025 • CGPA: 8.1/10

  Focused on Core Computer Science: Data Structures, Algorithms, Systems, and Machine Learning.[Link]

Interests

Philosophy, global politics, gaming, anime, and long walks.