vol. 01 · tuesday, jul 7, 2026 · hyderabad ist 12 projects 7 in the writing log 9 years
an honest log of things (A)I've built
& learned the hard way
by Tapan Meena · senior supervisor of artificial intelligence
I build scalable backends, developer tools, and the occasional Raspberry-Pi trading bot out of Hyderabad — lately with help from my artificial friends. They autocomplete; I take the blame. This is where I keep the receipts — every project, every writeup, every cursed lesson — in one running log.
§ about the author
full bio & cv →
fig. 0 portrait of the author
I'm a senior software engineer with 7 years of shipping production code — currently leading cross-functional teams at MAQ Software, mostly in the .NET and Azure world. I care about clean architecture, fast feedback loops, and dragging junior devs through the same mistakes I once made (with fewer scars this time).
Outside of work, I build small things that scratch a personal itch — a CLI to kill a daily portal click, a fintech bot living on a Raspberry Pi, an OCR overlay for macOS — and write down what broke so I don't relearn it next year.
- based
- hyderabad, india · ist
- role
- senior software engineer · maq software
- focus
- backends · dev tools · cloud
- off-screen
- books · chai · long walks
reaches for // c# javascript typescript python .net asp.net node.js rest apis microsoft azure docker azure devops git sql server postgresql mongodb redis
- 02 2026
Project Lead @ MAQ Software
mar 2026 - presentLeading project delivery for enterprise data platform engagements — owning architecture decisions, sprint planning, stakeholder communication, and the technical health of the team.
- 01 2024
Senior Software Engineer 2 @ MAQ Software
sep 2024 - mar 2026Drove delivery of customer-facing web applications end-to-end — architecture, code review, mentoring, and shipping production releases on tight cycles.
- +4
earlier roles & the full progression @ maq software
see full history →
§ from the workshop log
browse all 12 →- №12 JUL 2026
CultBot ★
shippedA Node.js CLI and scheduled GitHub Action that automatically books your preferred Cult.fit classes, with priority-ordered workouts, waitlists, and retries.
cli tools Node.js · JavaScript · GitHub Actions · REST APIs · Cron
- №11 APR 2026
StalkMarket ★
activeA trailing stop-loss notification bot for the Indian stock market (NSE). Multi-broker (Angel One, Upstox, Zerodha, Groww), Telegram + Expo push notifications, an admin web dashboard, and a companion mobile app — all running on a Raspberry Pi 5 in Docker.
fintech TypeScript · Node.js 20 · Fastify · better-sqlite3 · Zod · Pino · +14
- №10 FEB 2026
HowLongToBeat Core ★
shippedA TypeScript/Deno library to retrieve game completion times from HowLongToBeat.com. Works with Deno, Node.js, and browsers with full type definitions.
libraries TypeScript · Deno
- №09 JAN 2026
Personal Blog & Portfolio ★
shippedA modern, performant blog and portfolio site built with Astro. Features dark mode, content collections, and a timeline-based projects showcase.
web development Astro · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS
§ from the writing log
all 7 posts →- №01 JUL 2026
CultBot: Auto-Booking My Cult.fit Classes the Moment Slots Open
cli toolsHow I built CultBot, a Node.js CLI and GitHub Action that auto-books my Cult.fit class the instant slots open at 10 PM IST, with waitlists and retries.
#node.js #cli #automation #github-actions #javascript
- №02 MAY 2026
Multi-broker auth: TOTP, OAuth, and token persistence done right
fintechHow StalkMarket abstracts four Indian broker APIs (Angel One, Upstox, Zerodha, Groww) behind one provider interface — with TOTP, OAuth token injection, persisted tokens, proactive refresh, and a 401 retry path.
#trading #brokers #auth #oauth #totp
- №03 MAY 2026
Teaching StalkMarket to buy
fintechStalkMarket already knows when to sell. Now I'm wiring up the harder half — entries. Here's the messy filter that turned 25 candidate buy signals into the five I'd actually trust on HDFC Bank.
#trading #strategy #nse #stalkmarket #design
- №04 MAY 2026
Designing a pluggable trailing stop-loss engine
fintechHow StalkMarket's strategy engine works: a pure-function Strategy interface, a discriminated StrategyResult, paise-precision math, and crash-safe deduplication for the trailing stop-loss.
#trading #strategy #typescript #algorithms #sqlite
things i wish i'd known before shipping them
47 cursed entries from 2018 to 2026 — auth gone wrong, SQLite at 1× speed, OCR backed by zero reasoning. Tagged by project, sortable by regret.
open the grimoire →