Ajay Viswanathan

Just need a puzzle to solve and life throws plenty at me | @agoda @IITKGP

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

People with coding skills or deep domain expertise are semiconductors: a small boost turns them into powerful conductors.

People already building become superconductors.

But without curiosity or foundational understanding, most remain resistors. The current hits, but little flows.

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

We have been building small huts for all these years. Using AI, building skyscrapers just got easier. Regular software of the near future will rival the complexity of linux kernels of today. Does it need to be? That is a whole different debate

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

Pre-AI, we capped Slack ticket forms at ~25 categories. More meant unmaintainable code. Now AI classifies into 200+, each with resolution steps in the first reply. Regression tests keep it honest.

AI didn’t just replace the form, it removed the constraint that shaped the system.

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

The layoffs are a temporary inconvenience but better for humanity in the longer term. Engineers are problem solvers. For long, engineers from all domains flocked to software jobs, which slowed down progress in other domains. Layoffs are an acceptable price to pay if it means that this leads to a migration of talented engineers moving out of software to other industries.

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

Context bloat is accounted for in the plugin instructions. I’m still working on a test harness for evaluating performance with different models and different size of the graphs. Up to 500k triples the performance is still good. Need to test beyond that. Thus far, haiku models have proven to be quite effective.

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

Shipped cortex — a Claude Code plugin that gives Claude persistent memory across sessions.

You explain a concept once to Claude, it handles the rest. It auto-extracts facts from your conversations into a knowledge graph and silently surfaces relevant ones on every new prompt.

Learn more about it here
https://t.co/H8txNneIHQ

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

And yes. Memory plugins are an oversaturated market at the moment. But we still don’t have a good way for second brains to be shared across universally. RDF graphs feel like the best standard we have for this and frankly I’m keen on seeing how far a strictly logical system takes me. It might be restrictive, but if it is accurate in specialized domains, I’ll take it as a validation of the idea.

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

You are right. Ensuring freshness of data is next in the pipeline. It’s a very open problem space - Compaction by finding redundant patterns, assigning importance/tier levels to nodes, Hebbian learning, or simply a page rank are the approaches I’ve considered so far. I want to iron out the ingestion layer first.

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

https://t.co/nvxLs2b4Wk

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

Claude Code + Apache Jena Fuseki is an underrated combo to build your second brain

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

The Library of Babel contains every possible book, yet meaning only appears when you search. AI feels similar. Infinite outputs exist, but what you see is shaped by your prompt. The limit isn’t the machine… it’s how far human curiosity dares to ask.

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

@preshtalwalkar A or B or C = T, since given that exactly one is true
Since C = !A,
A or !A or B = T => T or B = T
Hence B is definitely F
!B implies box 2 contains the car

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

An engineer is trained to find applications of what they know. As a software engineer, I can tell you how each of those “superfluous” subjects have helped me do my job

I’ll ignore the remark about “Why Math?” as a misguided statement.

Software was never about just coding. It also involves pattern finding, logic, calculations that a lifetime of Math trains you for

Science taught me the methodical way to approach my tasks and investigations

Physics taught me how to design experiments to test out my hypothesis

Chemistry taught me how to deal with the complexity of rules and exceptions that are replete in a large enough organization

Engineering drawing gave a sense of aesthetics of design that converts into better ways of explaining systems or building UI

Biology - I refined my debugging skills watching House MD. Taxonomy is the most underrated skill in a large organization.

I can go on.

Even English is useful. Writing clear documentation, RFC, Design reviews, communicating with stakeholders

History is also useful. Working with a large legacy codebase got me thinking like an archaeologist - finding ruins left by people years ago. Why did they write it this way? Why didn’t they do this instead? Why couldn’t they use this way then? Are all ways of thinking you wouldn’t do if you were not exposed to history.

Give it time. A good engineer will find ways to use everything is their toolkit eventually

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

Every choice is valid, I would just like to show you the other side for consideration

Having a kid has given a motivation boost at work for me, precisely because I no longer am working for myself.

When you’re young, there are 100s of path life could take. It’s exciting. In your 30s, some of those paths have closed, but you’re still contemplating too many paths. Having a kid gave me clarity and focus by narrowing it down to fewer paths. It’s a neat filtering mechanism in the brain. I’m now chasing fewer goals but I know these are quality goals that survived even after many rounds of elimination

On the contrary, you have a lot of time left in life.
Now is the time to those things in your list, but there will come a day where you grow tired of them. Just be open to the idea of change. Know that every thing is transient, so that you don’t get attached to anything so strongly that you fail to see what else life has to offer

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

Travel with a kid is an upgrade.

You are the #1 travel influencer for your kid - why wouldn’t you want to pass on your love of something you’re passionate about. In your 60s, the roles will reverse - your kid will be the one influencing you, discovering new places to take you along

You unlock a previously untapped list of things to do on trips - Even in places you’ve been to before. Also, kids are the ultimate icebreakers. It’s become easier to strike up conversations on trips now

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

Vibe coded an app so that I can provide accompaniment for my mom’s Carnatic singing classes https://t.co/FRc60ZYqV1

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

@GabbbarSingh India is playing 4D chess. By losing to USA, there is a scenario where Pakistan could be eliminated. Even if Pakistan beats USA, they lose heavily on NRR due to forfeiture of the India match.

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

Every past instance of dealing with form submissions has been a nightmare for me either running around to find a printer for this and that or finding a gazetted officer on the streets. There is always an edge case that is never mentioned online

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

Is anybody building an AI that can validate your application forms and documents before you submit them to Indian government offices?

[Ajay Viswanathan @MonadicNomad]

Dirt cheap quirky items from Chinatown, BKK being sold at insane margins in India. (100THB is Rs. 265)

Even accounting for import duty on both borders, I’d still estimate a margin of 250% easily.