I am JunaidI build software people use. Most of it is open source.
So far that means an AI money coach on the App Store, a desktop app for running coding agents, an API that blocks throwaway email signups, a Chrome extension, and a few npm packages. Eight things, across macOS, iOS, npm and the web. The ones I count are the ones with users who are not me.
Last summer I was a Google Summer of Code contributor with the Apache Software Foundation. I built a Kafka Streams runner for Apache Beam, so a Beam data pipeline can run on Kafka without standing up a separate cluster for it. After that I joined the Kubernetes release team, watching CI across the project so a broken build does not turn into a release. blyn, an AI money coach, is live on the App Store.
I care about design more than most engineers do. I redraw layouts for fun and pay attention to type. Taste is the slow part, so I keep making things and throwing most of them out.
I run things offline too. Qwen is Alibaba's family of open-weight models, and I am one of their ambassadors. I started the local community from an empty page. In August I emailed RevenueCat asking to host Shipaton, their annual build-and-ship hackathon, and ran the first one the country has had.
Things I built
Every one of these is live somewhere you can reach it. A store listing, a repo, or a working site.
blyniOS app
App StoreAn AI money coach that runs on your phone instead of someone else's server. It reads your spending, holds category limits, and tells you what is left. The data never leaves the device.
Live on the App Store
DivisioDesktop app
DownloadClaude Code, Codex, Cursor and Grok in a single window. Each agent gets its own git worktree, and nothing lands until you read the diff. It exists because I had too many terminal tabs open.
Open source, MIT
isDisposableAPI
WebsiteThrowaway email detection. 160,000 domains, live DNS checks, a risk score. There is an API, and offline packages for npm and PyPI when you cannot make a network call.
160k+ domains indexed
reqcraftnpm package
GitHubA 3kb HTTP client on native fetch with the axios API. Interceptors, retries, typed errors, no dependencies. I wrote it the week the axios supply chain attack landed.
Zero dependencies
Community
Writing code is one way to be useful. The other is getting people who would not otherwise meet into the same room. So I start local chapters, book venues, chase sponsors, and take the mic when nobody else wants it.
Qwen AmbassadorFounder, Qwen Pakistan
2026, ongoingQwen is Alibaba's family of open-weight models, the main open alternative to the closed frontier labs. Their team made me an ambassador, and I started the Pakistan community from an empty page. It passed 3,000 LinkedIn followers and 250,000 impressions in the first week. Then we ran an AI Buildathon: people walked in having never downloaded a model weight and walked out with something running.
OrganiserRevenueCat Shipaton IRL, Pakistan
August 2026Shipaton is RevenueCat's annual hackathon, where developers build and ship an app inside a month. It had never had an in-person event here, so I emailed them and asked to run one. They said yes. I found a venue, ran the promotion, and hosted it. 43 signed up and about 30 walked in.
Campus LeaderNotion Campus Club
One yearNotion runs a student ambassador programme on university campuses. I led mine for a year: workshops, templates, and a lot of patient arguing that the notes app you fight with every day is a system you are allowed to design.
Mentor and community organiserDev Weekends
OngoingDev Weekends runs fellowships and mentorship programmes for developers early in their careers. I mentor there and help organise, including a weekly cohort of about 40 working through open source and AI engineering together.
Receipts
Google Summer of Code 2026, completed with the Apache Software Foundation. May 25 to August 24.
Winner, Cognee AI PR hackathon
Cognee is an open-source memory layer for AI agents. I won their contribution hackathon.
2nd place, InsForge PR hackathon
InsForge is a YC-backed backend-as-a-service. I placed second in their hackathon and stayed on as a contributor, with 12 PRs merged into the core, the SDKs and the dashboard.
Google Summer of Code 2026
Completed with the Apache Software Foundation, summer 2026. Certificate above.
Linux Foundation LFD103
The Linux Foundation's kernel development course. I built and booted mainline on ARM64 and sent patches over email, which is still how the kernel takes them.
Open source
I contribute to projects I actually run. None of the numbers below are typed by hand. They are pulled from GitHub every day, so if a PR goes stale you will see it before I do.
Talawa Admin
PalisadoesFoundation, 6 merged PRsI refactored the codebase, built the i18n components, and turned tree-shaking on. The bundle got 30% smaller.
Linux Kernel
Kernel 6.19.0-rc6, January 2026Built and booted mainline on ARM64, then sent patches with git format-patch and git send-email.
Where I have been
Ended Aug 2026
Release Signal ShadowKubernetes Release Team
I tracked CI signal, flaky tests, and release blockers across SIGs for the v1.37 cycle. Volunteer work, upstream, and less glamorous than it sounds. The cycle closed in August.
May to Aug 2026
Google Summer of CodeApache Software Foundation, Apache Beam
I wrote a portable Kafka Streams runner. Beam pipeline protos go in, Kafka Streams topologies come out, and it targets the Fn API so pipelines written in any Beam SDK run on it. About 175 hours.
Jul to Dec 2025
AI Reasoning EngineerTuring
I wrote the hard problems that train frontier models. Maths and algorithms, with production C and C++ solutions and complexity analysis attached.
2024 to 2025
Freelance developerSelf-employed
Backends for teams that needed one. Node, Express, Python and PostgreSQL, running on EC2, S3 and RDS.
2023 to 2027
BS Computer ScienceUniversity of Education
Data structures, operating systems, networks, databases. Still running in the background.
What I reach for
AI engineering
Languages
Backend and data
Infrastructure
Writing
I write when I work out something I wish someone had told me a month earlier. Mostly LLM tooling, agents, and what the work actually feels like from inside it.
GitHub
Say hi
Email or X. I am happy to talk about AI tooling, open source, devtools, design, or an event you want to run.
Send the actual thing. Context, links, constraints, the rough shape of the problem. The more specific it is, the better an answer you get back.
see you around, Junaid
