About
My Story
louisiana → seattle
I didn't come from a traditional engineering background. Most of what I know came from curiosity, rebuilding broken systems, and spending years figuring out how infrastructure works beneath the surface.
I was born in Ukraine, raised in Louisiana, and eventually made my way to Seattle. Along the way, technology became less of a hobby and more of a way to create stability — systems that were understandable, reliable, and fully mine to operate.
That mindset shaped everything I build now. From AI infrastructure like Jemma to self-hosted automation systems and reverse-proxy environments, I care less about trends and more about durability. I like systems that are observable, maintainable, and still make sense six months later.
Most of my work sits somewhere between infrastructure engineering, automation, and operational tooling. I'm especially interested in local-first systems, resilient architecture, and reducing complexity without reducing capability.
My guiding principle is simple: clarity over complexity.
How I think about systems
working principles
- ›Clarity over complexity. The system you can't explain to your future self in six months is the system that's going to bite you.
- ›Boring beats clever. Predictable infrastructure beats impressive infrastructure. The stack I trust is the one nobody has to notice.
- ›Local-first by default. If a system needs the cloud to keep working, it's renting its own behavior from someone else's policy.
- ›Observability before features. A feature you can't debug isn't a feature; it's a future incident.
- ›Ship what's real. Aspirational architecture is fine when labeled as such. Lying about what works is how systems rot.
// nicholas
// currently available
Open to roles in systems, automation, and AI tooling. Let's talk about building simple, durable software together.
// right now
- ›Building Jemma's tool-calling layer
- ›Scaling the hosting platform from 7 to 15 sites by year-end
- ›Finishing an Associate's, prepping Bachelor's coursework
// at a glance
- Timezone
- Pacific (UTC-8)
- Replies
- Async, within a day
- Studying
- Associate's → Bachelor's
- Open to
- Systems, automation, AI tooling
// how i learned
Everything on this site was built before I'd taken a single college class.
YouTube. Python 3 For Dummies. C++ For Dummies. The llama.cpp source code. A lot of pair-programming with AI assistants when it sped things up, and a lot of stubbornly debugging by hand when it didn't.
I'm finishing an Associate's degree now and working toward a Bachelor's — not because what I build today required the credential, but because I want to formalize what I already know.
If anyone tells you that real systems require a CS degree, this site is the counterexample.
// mission
“Practical solutions for everyday challenges. I challenge the idea that programming requires advanced education by creating accessible, functional tools designed to solve real-world problems with clarity and efficiency.”
Outside of work
// pixels
Website creation & design
// play
Gaming + streaming
// outdoors
Exploring Seattle with Luna