# Karanveer Singh Shaktawat — Full Stack Engineer & Infrastructure Architect

> Full Stack Engineer & Infrastructure Architect. Building at scale across web, mobile, and AI systems.
> Contact: karan@dharmicdev.in

## About

- [Bio & Career Arc](https://yourportfolio.example/about): Building portfolio, contributing to open source, and seeking remote full-time roles with significant technical ownership.
- [Now](https://yourportfolio.example/now): What Karanveer is currently working on and thinking about.
- [Working With Me](https://yourportfolio.example/working-with-me): Collaboration style, deep-work hours, and async preferences.
- [Resume](https://yourportfolio.example/api/resume/pdf): Latest resume PDF.

## Flagship Projects

- [Prachyam Sangam](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/prachyam-sangam): Ground-up rewrite of a broken 18-developer OTT codebase into a 21-package Nx TypeScript monorepo targeting 9 platforms: Next.js web, React Native iOS/Android, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Tizen, webOS, and Tauri desktop admin. Solo build.
- [Prachyam Infrastructure](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/prachyam-infra): Deployed and managed self-hosted Mailcow, NextCloud, and Tailscale mesh VPN — handling 18M emails across 12 domains, saving lakhs annually.
- [HeyBeautiful](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/heybeautiful): Built a full-stack SaaS platform where anyone can create a cinematic, scroll-driven personalised page for their crush and share a link — solo, from zero to live production in 41 days with 207/207 roadmap items completed.

## All Projects

- [Prachyam Sangam](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/prachyam-sangam): Ground-up rewrite of a broken 18-developer OTT codebase into a 21-package Nx TypeScript monorepo targeting 9 platforms: Next.js web, React Native iOS/Android, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Tizen, webOS, and Tauri desktop admin. Solo build.
- [Prachyam Infrastructure](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/prachyam-infra): Deployed and managed self-hosted Mailcow, NextCloud, and Tailscale mesh VPN — handling 18M emails across 12 domains, saving lakhs annually.
- [HeyBeautiful](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/heybeautiful): Built a full-stack SaaS platform where anyone can create a cinematic, scroll-driven personalised page for their crush and share a link — solo, from zero to live production in 41 days with 207/207 roadmap items completed.
- [Self-Hosted Cloud Storage](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/prachyam-cloud-storage): Replaced Google Workspace and LucidLink for a 22-person two-office studio with a self-hosted Nextcloud instance on RackNerd, backed by a 5 TB pCloud lifetime plan via async rclone sync, cutting $9,585/year in SaaS spend to $65/year after a 25-day payback.
- [Local AI Inference Mesh](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/prachyam-local-ai): Turned an idle Pune office GPU workstation into a private AI inference server — running Flux image generation, Kokoro TTS, Parrot audio dubbing, and Whisper transcription — shared over a Tailscale mesh to a second office, eliminating all cloud AI API spend.
- [Karmpath](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/karmpath): Architected a scalable blogging platform with AI-powered content recommendations, deployed with Docker and Kubernetes in a microservices setup.
- [Self-Hosted Mail Stack](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/prachyam-mailcow): Replaced Mailchimp and per-seat email SaaS for a 20-person studio by deploying Mailcow across 6 RackNerd VPS servers and 12 domains, delivering ~20 million outbound marketing emails at ~$151/year versus a $300,000 enterprise Mailchimp estimate.
- [Docsee](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/docsee): Cross-platform Docker management tool with a Tauri desktop GUI and Rust terminal TUI, achieving sub-50ms response times for container operations.
- [Local Infra](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/local-infra): A personal production-parity development mesh — 116 Docker containers, 97 HTTPS service routes, and 19 profile categories — that eliminated per-project infrastructure duplication across 6 active projects, built in 105 minutes in a single evening.
- [Custom MCP Servers](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/mcp-servers): Built 10 purpose-built Model Context Protocol servers in TypeScript that collapsed Claude Code's context overhead by 69% while giving the AI live access to every service layer of a 9-platform OTT monorepo.
- [Prachyam Sangam](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/ott-platform): Full-stack OTT streaming platform built solo in 5 months — a 21-package Nx TypeScript monorepo targeting web, iOS, Android, four TV OSes, and a desktop admin, with HLS streaming, creator monetisation, watch parties, and live TV.
- [Sutradhaar](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/sutradhaar): Built a full-stack AI director and screenplay suite for Indian TV production — TipTap screenplay editor, RAG-backed scene generation from legendary writer corpora, Navarasa-aware shot planning, and a complete pre-production management system — in a single day.
- [Claude 2x — Cross-Platform Timer Overlay](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/claude-2x): A cross-platform floating timer overlay shipping on macOS (Swift/SwiftUI), Linux (Tauri/Rust), and KDE (QML) — with chrono-tz timezone math, objc2 FFI for macOS-native window behaviour, and a GitHub Actions multi-platform CI pipeline.
- [DocSee Popup — Raycast-Style Docker HUD](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/docsee-popup): A Raycast-style global-hotkey popup for Docker — built with Tauri v2 and Rust, using Bollard for Docker API access, frecency-ranked container search, ref-counted infra management, and Unix socket IPC between the app and a background daemon.
- [Rice Docs — macOS Developer Environment](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/rice-docs): Complete, living documentation for a keyboard-first macOS development environment — X-Type custom layout at 213 WPM, OmniWM tiling WM with 5 workspaces, SketchyBar scripted status bar, Karabiner-Elements 4-layer key architecture, and an event-driven Neovim mode indicator.
- [X-Type Android Keyboard](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/x-type-android): The first native Android app — a custom Input Method Editor that brought the X-Type keyboard layout to a personal Android phone, built at 16 by learning Android Java development from tutorials.
- [Hotel Elegent](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/elegent-resort): White-label hotel management system with an XState v5 finite-state booking engine, restaurant POS, guest CRM, digital check-in, and revenue analytics — production-deployed to a real hotel and packaged for ThemeForest.
- [SingleClickBlog — Faust.js + WordPress](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/singleclickblog-faust): A full-featured headless WordPress publishing platform using Faust.js and WPGraphQL, with Apollo Client, Redux Toolkit state management, a Tiptap rich-text editor, and automated GraphQL type generation — deployed on self-hosted Coolify.
- [Earning Point — App Landing Page](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/earning-point-homepage): A set of four static HTML pages satisfying Google Play Store policy requirements for the Earning Point rewards app — privacy policy, terms of service, data deletion, and a support contact page.
- [TinkerUI — Local Generative UI Playground](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/tinker-ui): A split-pane chat-plus-preview app that streams Tailwind HTML from a local Ollama LLM into a sandboxed iframe — built in one day with React 19, Vite 7, and Tauri v2, including a complete QLoRA fine-tuning pipeline for Qwen 2.5 Coder 1.5B.
- [Xecute — Productivity Command Center](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/xecute): A single PgDn keypress summons a transparent always-on-top productivity HUD with 34 tool panels — Kanban, Pomodoro, Notes with wikilinks, Time Tracker, Finance, Flashcards with SM-2, Mind Map, and more — built with Tauri v2, Svelte 5, and objc2 NSApplication activation.
- [Prachyam Dev Mesh](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/prachyam-dev-mesh): A 3-machine Tailscale mesh with dnsmasq and Caddy that made a 9-platform OTT monorepo buildable on a 16 GB M1 iMac by offloading all Docker services to companion machines, plus 10 custom MCP servers that cut AI assistant context load by 69%.
- [OTT Component Library](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/ott-components): A 4-platform atomic design system for a production OTT platform — 273 web components, 158 mobile components, 128 admin components, and a 27-module Drizzle ORM database schema — built solo in 5 days across Next.js, React Native, and TV surfaces.
- [Stack Breadth Sandbox — 14+ Frameworks](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/stack-breadth-sandbox): A multi-year sandbox of real hello-world-to-functional projects across 14+ frameworks — Astro, Remix, SolidJS, SvelteKit, TanStack Start, Vue, Nuxt, Expo, Flutter, Tauri, Electron, Elysia, Hono, Bun, Deno, NestJS — to build genuine breadth rather than surface-level familiarity.
- [Claude Usage — macOS Menu Bar Tracker](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/claude-usage): A native macOS menu bar app that tracks Claude API token consumption — using reverse-engineered internal Claude endpoints, WidgetKit for desktop widgets, AppIntents for Siri and Shortcuts integration, and Combine for reactive data flow.
- [DocSee Systray — macOS Docker System Tray](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/docsee-systray): A macOS system-tray app for Docker management built with Tauri 2, Rust, and React 19 — featuring a force-directed canvas graph of container relationships, NSVisualEffectView blur via ObjC FFI, Tailwind CSS 4, and shadcn/ui.
- [Next.js Blog — Sanity CMS](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/nextjsblog): An early personal blog built with Next.js 9 and React 16, using Sanity as the headless CMS, SWR for client-side data fetching with infinite pagination, and Bootstrap 4 for styling.
- [Astro Coming-Soon — Prachyam Relaunch Page](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/astro-coming-soon): A high-performance coming-soon page for the Prachyam platform relaunch — built with Astro SSR, OGL WebGL/GLSL shaders, Supabase Realtime waitlist capture, and self-hosted Nodemailer SMTP confirmation emails.
- [Kanishka Creations — Fashion E-commerce](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/kanishka-creations): A fashion e-commerce platform built in a Turborepo monorepo — React Native with React Native Skia GPU canvas, a Next.js admin dashboard, an Express/Drizzle API, Meilisearch product search, rembg AI background removal, and Razorpay + Shiprocket fulfilment.
- [Personal Blog — 2014](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/personal-blog-2014): A CMS-managed personal blog built in Webflow at age 14 — using Webflow's newly launched CMS feature, tawk.to live chat, and a custom UI design from scratch — the product that spawned the Trianglify plugin and the unified logo system still in use a decade later.
- [Satta Matka — Live Results App](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/satta-matka): A live-results React Native app built on Expo SDK 55 and React Native 0.83.2, with Reanimated 4 animations including a custom OdometerText number roller, self-hosted Supabase on Coolify for real-time data, and Victory Native charts.
- [Gamezop Integration — Prachyam HTML5 Games](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/gamezop-integration): Integrated the Gamezop HTML5 game platform into Prachyam's mobile and web surfaces using Flutter WebView and a React embed, enabling a revenue-share casual-gaming layer for subscribers with zero custom game development.
- [Rishi Talks Mobile](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/rishi-talks): A production-ready React Native / Expo WebView wrapper for the Rishi Talks astrology WordPress site, with typed offline detection, Android back-button handling, and a Gamezop revenue integration — built and shipped to both platforms in a single session.
- [X-Type Keyboard Layout](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/x-type-layout): A data-driven keyboard layout built from a custom Hindi/Hinglish/English corpus, beating QWERTY, Dvorak, Colemak, and Workman on the Patorjk analyzer — cross-shipped to Android, Windows, Linux, and macOS, reaching 213 WPM after 11 years of daily use.
- [Hygraph CMS Blog](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/hygraph-cms-blog): A monetised blog built with Next.js 11 and Hygraph GraphQL, featuring a hand-rolled AST-to-JSX content renderer, AdSense integration, and deployment to Vercel — built in four days.
- [Travelore — Travel Companion App](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/travelore): A full-stack travel companion built with React Native Expo and a Next.js/Hono backend, featuring itinerary planning, offline maps, TanStack Query data fetching, MSW mock layer for test isolation, and Docker-orchestrated infrastructure.
- [3D RAD Car Racing Game](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/3d-rad-car-racing): A playable car-racing game built at age 9 in 3D RAD — with skybox, water-crossing track, textured terrain, and enemy AI cars — to make a social bluff true, and the project that named the Xczer identity still in use 17 years later.
- [Trianglify — jQuery Low-Poly Background Plugin](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/trianglify): A jQuery plugin that generates animated low-poly triangle-mesh canvas backgrounds — built from scratch at age 15 and published on eager.io, a curated plugin platform later acquired by Cloudflare Apps.
- [MetriX — Developer Infra Monitoring HUD](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/metrix): A keyboard-triggered transparent macOS HUD with 33 tool panels — system metrics, Docker management, service health, config editing, API testing, CI monitoring, and more — built with Tauri v2, Svelte 5, Rust sysinfo, and a CORS-free reqwest HTTP client.
- [Akku Healthcare — Clinic Website](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/akku-healthcare): A production-ready healthcare clinic website built with Next.js 16 and React 19, featuring Schema.org JSON-LD structured data, SEO metadata utilities, and a component architecture optimised for Core Web Vitals.
- [Madhur — Flutter App](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/madhur-flutter): A Flutter mobile app with GetX state management, Appwrite as the backend-as-a-service, GetStorage for offline-first caching, and Lottie animations — built in nine days across 19 commits.
- [CheaXheet — Keyboard Shortcut Overlay](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/cheaxheet): A macOS shortcut-reference overlay built in Tauri v2 and Svelte 5 — press F19 from any app and a frosted-glass panel shows 80+ X-Type WM bindings across six tabs, with Fuse.js character-level fuzzy search, a live SVG keyboard diagram, and session-persistent window position.
- [First Team — Building a 7-Person Crew](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/first-team): Self-initiated and self-funded attempt to build a 7-person specialised team from scratch in 2024 — personally teaching video editing, backend development, AI/ML, and marketing to raw beginners, then making the call to dissolve cleanly when the fundamentals did not hold.
- [Digital Agency — Next.js 13 Marketing Site](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/digital-agency): A data-driven digital agency marketing site built with Next.js 13 Pages Router, where all content lives in JSON and Markdown files processed by gray-matter and remark — no CMS required — with Splitting.js character animations and ScrollOut scroll-triggered effects.
- [Portfolio — Karanveer Singh Shaktawat](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/portfolio): A production-grade Next.js 15 portfolio and admin CMS with AI chat, RAG, 3D scenes, real-time presence, Stripe, and a complete ThemeForest-ready template — zero hardcoded data, Lighthouse 100/100/100.
- [DocSee TUI — Terminal Docker Manager](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/docsee-tui): A terminal UI for managing Docker containers, images, and networks — built in Rust with Ratatui for the TUI rendering, Bollard for the Docker API, Tokio for async I/O, and GitHub Actions for multi-platform CI.
- [Sanity Blog — Content Studio](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/sanity-blog): A Sanity v2 Content Studio configured with a custom schema for a structured blog — document types for posts, authors, categories, and rich-text blocks — shipped as a standalone studio deployment.
- [Earning Point](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/earning-point): Android earn-and-redeem app where users accumulate points through videos, tasks, and offerwall surveys, backed by a full Laravel admin panel — first external freelance delivery, shipped as a turnkey client package.
- [Blender Animation Series — 2021](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/blender-2021): A series of original low-poly 3D animations made entirely from imagination in Blender 2.9x during college Year 2 — no tutorials, no copied assets — published on Instagram @ddr4_karanveer, and the creative project that triggered the full-stack coding career.
- [Madhur — React Native App](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/madhur-react-native): A React Native prototype built on Expo SDK 50 and expo-router, using Tamagui for cross-platform UI components, NativeWind for Tailwind-in-React-Native styling, Zustand for state management, and Reanimated 3 for physics-based animations.
- [KDE Plasma Widgets](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/hyprland-chatbot): Three native KDE Plasma 6 applets in QML — a glassmorphic Pomodoro timer with a full two-page configuration UI, a plain-theme variant, and a CPU/RAM system monitor — written against the Plasma 6 API at a time when most community examples were still targeting Plasma 5.
- [Unified Logo System](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/unified-logo-system): A scalable logo system designed at 14 by reverse-engineering Adobe's cross-product visual identity approach — a single master mark with a derivation rule that produces per-product variants, still powering project identities over ten years later.
- [Prachyam Legacy — OTT Platform Stabilisation](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/prachyam-legacy): Took ownership of a production OTT streaming platform, stabilised a codebase spanning Node.js, Strapi CMS, Flutter mobile, and Go microservices, then extended it with multi-currency payments, gamification, and a multi-platform TV rollout.
- [SwarSadhna — Indian Classical Music Practice Tool](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/swarsadhna): A Progressive Web App for Indian classical music practice — real-time microphone pitch detection via pitchy, a Tone.js tanpura drone engine, and structured raga exercises, wrapped as a fully offline-capable PWA.
- [Hotel Elegent](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/hotel-elegent): White-label hotel management system with an XState v5 finite-state booking engine, restaurant POS, guest CRM, digital check-in, and revenue analytics — production-deployed to a real hotel and packaged for ThemeForest.
- [ConfigPilot — macOS Dev Infra Config Manager](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/config-pilot): A macOS menu bar app that replaces manual config-file editing and service restarts for dnsmasq, Caddy, AeroSpace, and SketchyBar — built with Tauri 2, Rust, and React 19 in two days across 47 commits, with nom parser-combinator grammars, a 9-check diagnostics engine, and 63 passing tests.
- [Unity AI Agents](https://yourportfolio.example/projects/ai-game-agents): Five distinct AI agents built from scratch in Unity 3D using six AI/ML techniques — Q-Learning, A*, waypoint steering, PPO neural networks, Imitation Learning, and Reinforcement Learning — culminating in a hybrid IL+PPO self-driving car agent written in C#.

## Writing

- [I Built a Five-Layer AI Assistant Into My Portfolio Site. Here's Every Layer.](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/portfolio-ai-assistant-five-layers): Tool calls, visitor memory, real-time analytics, an LLM eval harness, and full-duplex voice — wired into a Next.js portfolio over six sessions. The decisions, the wrong turns, and the bugs that took longer to find than to fix.
- [Running 116 Containers on My Laptop: Building a Personal Cloud from Scratch](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/116-containers-personal-cloud): How I turned a single MacBook into a private cloud — AI inference, media server, dev services, wildcard HTTPS — all managed as code across 19 Docker Compose profiles.
- [20 Million Emails, One Priority Queue: Fixing a Race Condition in Production Mailcow](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/mailcow-race-condition-priority-queue): How a bulk marketing campaign starved transactional email at Prachyam Studios — and how I fixed it by understanding Postfix queue internals and building a priority queue on top of Mailcow.
- [9 Platforms, 1 Monorepo: Building an OTT Platform Solo in 5 Months](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/prachyam-sangam-9-platforms): How I architected a full-stack OTT streaming platform for web, mobile, four TV OSes, and a desktop admin panel — solo, in one Nx TypeScript monorepo — and what I'd do differently.
- [Why I Designed a Keyboard Layout at 15 (and Still Use It at 213 WPM)](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/x-type-keyboard-layout): In 2015, at 15, I designed my own keyboard layout because QWERTY felt structurally wrong. Eleven years later I'm at 213 WPM and still use it every day. Here's the story and what it taught me about design.
- [TIL: impl Trait vs dyn Trait in Rust](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-rust-impl-vs-dyn-trait): The difference between static dispatch (impl Trait) and dynamic dispatch (dyn Trait) — not just syntax, but a real tradeoff.
- [TIL: Postfix Queue Management Under Load](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-postfix-queue-management): How Postfix queues work, why they pile up, and the exact commands to drain, inspect, and recover them when things go sideways.
- [Running a Complete Local AI Stack on M1 Max: What Actually Works](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/local-ai-stack-m1-max): Llama 70B, Flux image generation, Kokoro TTS, Whisper STT — all running locally on an M1 Max with 64GB unified memory. The practical setup, benchmarks, and honest assessment of what's ready and what isn't.
- [TIL: Rust Lifetime Elision Rules](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-rust-lifetime-elision): The three rules Rust uses to infer lifetimes automatically, so you understand when you need to annotate and when the compiler handles it for you.
- [TIL: inotify on Linux vs FSEvents on macOS](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-linux-inotify-fsevent): How file system event APIs differ between Linux and macOS, and why it matters for cross-platform tooling.
- [Building Mail Infrastructure for 20 Million Emails: What Nobody Tells You](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/prachyam-mail-infra-deep-dive): The full story of building a self-hosted email stack across 12 domains and 6 servers at Prachyam Studios — the architecture, the hard lessons, and why I'd do it again.
- [TIL: Tauri IPC — invoke() vs Commands vs Events](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-tauri-ipc-invoke): The three ways the frontend talks to the Rust backend in Tauri, when to use each, and the one gotcha that wasted an afternoon.
- [TIL: Nextcloud Chunked Upload via WebDAV](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-nextcloud-chunked-upload): How Nextcloud handles large file uploads under the hood, and how to implement chunked uploads manually when the desktop client isn't an option.
- [TIL: The RSC Client Boundary Is Not a File Boundary](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-nextjs-rsc-client-boundary): A common Next.js App Router misconception: 'use client' doesn't make a file client-only — it marks the boundary where the client tree starts.
- [TIL: XState Final States and Done Events](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-xstate-final-states): How XState's final states work, what done() events are, and the pattern for composing machines that signal completion to a parent.
- [Architecting an OTT Platform for 8 Platforms in a Single Monorepo](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/ott-monorepo-8-platforms): How I designed the code structure for a streaming platform targeting Next.js web, React Native iOS/Android, tvOS, Android TV, and Tauri desktop — shared business logic, platform-specific UI, one repo.
- [TIL: git rerere — Reuse Recorded Resolution](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-git-rerere): git rerere remembers how you resolved a merge conflict and automatically applies the same resolution next time. Useful for long-lived feature branches.
- [TIL: Drizzle Migrations Are Just SQL Files](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-drizzle-migrations-sql): What Drizzle's migration system actually generates, why that's better than magic ORM migrations, and how to handle the edge cases.
- [TIL: Git Worktrees Let You Check Out Multiple Branches Simultaneously](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-git-worktrees): git worktree lets you have multiple working trees from one repo — no stashing, no switching, no friction.
- [TIL: Docker Layer Cache Invalidation Is Sequential](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-docker-layer-cache): One changed line in a Dockerfile invalidates every layer after it. Ordering your Dockerfile with this in mind cuts rebuild times dramatically.
- [TIL: DKIM, SPF, and DMARC Alignment Are Not the Same Thing](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-dkim-spf-alignment): Passing SPF and DKIM doesn't mean DMARC passes. Alignment is a separate check — and missing it is why your authenticated emails still land in spam.
- [Why I Self-Host Everything (And What It's Actually Cost Me)](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/self-hosting-philosophy): Self-hosting is not about being cheap or contrarian. It's about understanding your stack, owning your data, and building a certain kind of engineering judgment that you can't get any other way.
- [TIL: Multi-Stage Docker Builds for Rust Cut Image Size by 20x](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-docker-multistage-rust): How to use Docker multi-stage builds to go from a 2GB Rust build image to a 12MB production image.
- [TIL: PgBouncer Transaction Mode vs Session Mode](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-pgbouncer-connection-pooling): The difference between PgBouncer's pooling modes, why transaction mode breaks prepared statements, and which to use for Next.js apps.
- [TIL: Nginx upstream keepalive Cuts Latency on Internal Services](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/til-nginx-upstream-keepalive): Without keepalive on Nginx upstream blocks, every proxied request opens a new TCP connection to your backend. One directive fixes this.
- [How I Vibe Code: Building Software with AI as a Co-Pilot](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/vibe-coding): What 'vibe coding' actually means in practice — my AI toolkit, when it helps, when it hurts, and the meta angle of building this portfolio with Claude.
- [How I Beat Procrastination (And How It Almost Beat Me)](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/beating-procrastination): Not productivity hacks — the real psychological battle of shipping code when your brain would rather do anything else.
- [Why I Wrote a Docker Tool in Rust](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/why-i-wrote-docsee-in-rust): Building Docsee — a cross-platform Docker management tool with a Tauri GUI and terminal TUI, and why Rust was the right choice.
- [How I Managed 18 Million Emails with Self-Hosted Mailcow](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/self-hosted-mailcow-18m-emails): Running a self-hosted email server across 12 domains for a media company — the architecture, challenges, and why I'd do it again.
- [Building for 12+ Platforms from a Single Codebase with Nx](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/nx-monorepo-12-platforms): How I architected an OTT streaming platform that ships to web, mobile, TV, and desktop from one Nx monorepo.
- [23 MCP Servers: How I Built AI-Powered Developer Tooling](https://yourportfolio.example/blog/23-mcp-servers-ai-tooling): Building custom Model Context Protocol servers for semantic code search, automated workflows, and integrating AI into daily development.

## Connect

- [GitHub](https://github.com/xczer)
- [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/karanveersinghshaktawat)
- [RSS](https://yourportfolio.example/feed.xml)
- [Sitemap](https://yourportfolio.example/sitemap.xml)