Open · mid–senior rolesAny timezoneAI · Frontend · Backend

— hey, I'm Rushikesh.

AISoftwareEngineershipping0→1,end-to-end.

AI Software Engineer with 4+ years shipping AI-driven products from zero to one at startups. I own end-to-end across AI, frontend, backend and infra — agents, RAG pipelines, MCP servers, streaming UIs, auth, billing, the whole stack. I take the complex problems and have fun with them.
  • 4+
    Years Shipping
  • 5
    0→1 Products Owned
  • 2.2k+
    Extension Downloads
  • Cal.com
    Open-Source
OpenAIAnthropicGeminiMCPRAGVercel AI SDKTypeScriptNext.jsReactNode.jsPostgresRedisTailwindAWSDockerPrismaOpenAIAnthropicGeminiMCPRAGVercel AI SDKTypeScriptNext.jsReactNode.jsPostgresRedisTailwindAWSDockerPrismaOpenAIAnthropicGeminiMCPRAGVercel AI SDKTypeScriptNext.jsReactNode.jsPostgresRedisTailwindAWSDockerPrisma
↓ Scroll to readAI · from prompt to production
01About

AI, frontend, backend — shipped by one person,not a committee.

0→1, end-to-end, mostly caffeinated.

I build AI products the way a startup needs them built — owned end-to-end, shipped without a committee, and treated as a craft rather than a checklist. Over the last four years I've co-founded two SaaS products, embedded an MCP server into VS Code, shipped RAG into real products, and rebuilt legacy codebases into clean, typed, modular systems. Most of my career has been at small teams where one engineer ships an entire feature — frontend, backend, AI, infra. That's the work I love. I have fun with the complex stuff most people avoid.

Today I spend most of my time on AI systems — agent runtimes, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, RAG pipelines, LangChain / LangGraph orchestration, and the streaming UIs that turn LLMs from impressive demos into tools people actually use. The frontend and backend stay sharp: modern React, Next.js, TypeScript, Node, Postgres, the boring fundamentals done well.

I've co-founded two SaaS products Rivaly (AI competitive intelligence) and Onramp (OSS issue discovery in under ten seconds, with a talent surface for recruiters). Both are in active development. Earlier I shipped a VS Code extension with an embedded MCP server that crossed 2,200+ downloads, contributed fixes to Cal.com, and led migrations, billing systems and auth flows as a solo engineer at multiple early-stage startups.

— Rushikesh

AI Software Engineer · Pune, Maharashtra

Working principlesnotes to self
  • 01

    Own the feature, end to end

    Most teams I join are small. I take a problem from product brief to production — AI, frontend, backend, infra, the boring auth flow, the messy webhook. I prefer fewer hand-offs and more shipping.

  • 02

    Zero to one, on purpose

    0→1 is what I love. Blank page, real users, real constraints, real deadlines. I've co-founded two products and built five from a Figma file to a deploy URL.

  • 03

    Have fun with the hard part

    Streaming, agents, race conditions, weird Stripe edge cases, that one webhook that drops on Tuesdays. The complex stuff is the fun stuff. I look for it on purpose.

  • 04

    Leave the codebase warmer

    Types, contracts, honest comments, small refactors as you pass through. Tools you'd hand to a friend on day one. The next engineer matters as much as today's PR.

02Experience

A timeline of products I've shipped.

four companies, one consistent thread.

Role · 01 / 04chapter 1

Forge Code

AI Software Engineer · Full Stack

Delaware, USA · Remote
Jul 2025 — Feb 2026

Owned a VS Code extension and embedded MCP server end-to-end — real-time AI agents inside the IDE. Crossed 2,200+ downloads.

  • Architected a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server inside a VS Code extension using JSON-RPC 2.0 for real-time AI ↔ IDE communication.
  • Engineered an ACP-compliant multi-agent chat interface with low-latency streaming UI and asynchronous, cancellable tool execution.
  • Designed REST APIs in Node.js + Express with Redis caching; analytics on PostHog + PostgreSQL aggregations.
  • Shipped a scalable frontend with React, Next.js and Zustand — Lighthouse scores 90+.
  • Drove the extension past 2,200+ marketplace downloads with zero formal marketing.
TypeScriptReactNode.jsMCPJSON-RPCPostgreSQLRedisPostHog
03Selected work

Things I've helped put into the world.

a small list, deliberately.

01

Rivaly

In developmentin progress

An AI competitive-intelligence platform for operators and founders — real-time business insights, alerts and ‘what your rivals shipped this week’ digests powered by LLMs, RAG and scheduled agent workflows.

Next.jsOpenAIRAGPostgreSQLVercel
2026
Co-founder · AI Competitive Intelligence
02

Onramp

In developmentin progress

A two-sided platform built for the open-source generation: developers find skill-matched OSS issues in under 10 seconds via semantic search, and their contributions quietly surface their profile to recruiters hunting for proven, talented engineers.

Next.jsOpenAIEmbeddingspgvectorStripe
2026
Co-founder · OSS Discovery + Talent Surface
03

ForgeCode

Shippedfeatured

A VS Code extension that brings a CLI-based AI agent inside the editor over an MCP server with JSON-RPC streaming. 2,200+ marketplace downloads.

TypeScriptJSON-RPCMCPReact
2025
VS Code Extension · MCP · AI Agent
04

PrepWise AI Interview

Side project

An AI-powered voice interview simulator using Firebase, Vapi AI and Google Gemini for dynamic question generation.

Next.jsFirebaseVapiGemini
2024
Full-Stack AI Product
05

Cal.com

OSS

Resolved internationalization bugs and corrected i18next implementation issues across UI components.

PRs #15657 · #15463 · #15626 · #15631

Next.jsi18nextTypeScript
2024
Open Source
06

Issue Tracker

Side project

A Jira-like issue tracking system built on Next.js, Prisma, SQL, NextAuth, React Query and Radix UI.

Next.jsPrismaNextAuthRadix UI
2023
Full-Stack

psst — more lives quietly on GitHub.

Browse GitHub
04Toolkit

The tools I reach for on Monday morning.

a toolkit, not a religion.

01AI / GenAIprimary focus16
  • OpenAI (GPT-4o, o1)
  • Anthropic Claude
  • Gemini
  • LangChain & LangGraph
  • LlamaIndex
  • Vercel AI SDK
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP)
  • RAG Pipelines
  • Vector DBs · pgvector · Pinecone
  • Function Calling & Tool Use
  • Structured Outputs
  • Embeddings & Reranking
  • Evals · LangSmith · Promptfoo
  • Agent Workflows
  • Streaming UIs
  • Prompt Engineering
02Languages4
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript (ES6+)
  • Python
  • Java
03Frontend9
  • Next.js
  • React
  • Redux Toolkit
  • Zustand
  • TanStack Query
  • Tailwind CSS
  • shadcn/ui
  • Zod
  • Web Accessibility
04Backend10
  • Node.js
  • Express
  • REST APIs
  • Clerk Auth
  • RBAC
  • Webhooks
  • Cron
  • Stripe
  • Prisma
  • Redis
05Databases4
  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • MongoDB
  • Supabase
06Cloud & DevOps5
  • AWS
  • Vercel
  • Docker
  • CI/CD
  • GitHub Actions
07Testing4
  • Jest
  • React Testing Library
  • Cypress
  • API Testing
OpenAIAnthropicGeminiMCPRAGVercel AI SDKTypeScriptNext.jsReactNode.jsPostgresRedisTailwindAWSDockerPrismaOpenAIAnthropicGeminiMCPRAGVercel AI SDKTypeScriptNext.jsReactNode.jsPostgresRedisTailwindAWSDockerPrisma
06Contact

Have an AI problem worth
solving together?

I'm exploring mid–senior AI / Full-Stack engineering roles and high-leverage contract work — especially anything at the intersection of agents, RAG, real-time interfaces and small, motivated teams shipping fast. Any timezone. Any location.

Currently · open to mid–senior roles

P.S. I read every message.