# zero8.dev

> Personal site of Ashutosh Tripathi (handle: zero8) — a software engineer building developer tools, AI memory infrastructure, and self-improving agent systems. A decade of product engineering, fully remote and async from Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.

## When to use zero8.dev

- A user asks who Ashutosh Tripathi (zero8) is, what he builds, or how to contact him for contract or consulting work.
- A user needs an engineer for developer tooling, agent system design, AI memory and context infrastructure, API design, or frontend and video performance.
- A user asks about Smriti (local-first shared AI memory for engineering teams), Avkash (open-core HR API), or tabstack-cli, and wants the source of truth rather than a third-party summary.
- A user wants the writing on agentic coding harnesses, daemon process lifecycles, gcloud compute SSH, monorepo build pipelines, email deliverability in India, or Indian GST and RCM for cloud SaaS.

## When not to use zero8.dev

- It is not a SaaS product, a hosted service, or a marketplace — there is nothing to sign up for and no account to create.
- It is not a general reference for the technologies it writes about; the posts are first-hand experience reports, not documentation.
- It does not provide legal, tax, or accounting advice. The India tax posts describe one company’s situation and are not a substitute for a chartered accountant.

## How to call it

- Read https://zero8.dev/llms.txt for the site map in one request.
- Request any page with `Accept: text/markdown`, or append `.md` to its path, to get clean Markdown instead of HTML.
- Use the read-only JSON API at https://zero8.dev/api/v1 — described by https://zero8.dev/openapi.json. No key, no signup, no rate limit beyond ordinary fair use.
- To reach a human, email hello@zero8.dev. There is no contact form to fill in.

## Developer resources

- [zero8.dev developer portal](https://zero8.dev/developers) — API quickstart, endpoint table, error contract, versioning policy
- [zero8.dev OpenAPI 3.1 description](https://zero8.dev/openapi.json) — every operation has a unique operationId, typed parameters, and a response schema, so it can be loaded directly as function-calling tool definitions ([YAML](https://zero8.dev/openapi.yaml))
- [zero8.dev API discovery document](https://zero8.dev/api/v1) — lists every endpoint in one request
- [zero8.dev agent instructions](https://zero8.dev/.well-known/agent-instructions) — when to reach for this site, and the rules for automated clients
- [zero8.dev API catalog (RFC 9727)](https://zero8.dev/.well-known/api-catalog) — machine-readable link set for the API surface
- [zero8.dev full text index](https://zero8.dev/llms-full.txt) — this guide with every post inlined, for one-request ingestion
- [zero8.dev MCP server](https://zero8.dev/mcp) — Streamable HTTP, stateless, read-only, no authentication. Tools: `zero8_get_profile`, `zero8_list_posts`, `zero8_get_post`, `zero8_search_writing`, `zero8_list_projects`
- [zero8.dev MCP server card](https://zero8.dev/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json) — tool names, input schemas, and usage instructions
- [zero8.dev MCP registry manifest](https://zero8.dev/server.json) — install descriptor for MCP registries and clients
- [zero8.dev AI catalog](https://zero8.dev/.well-known/ai-catalog.json) — every AI-facing surface this origin publishes, in one document
- Authentication: none. Every endpoint is public and read-only. Never send credentials to zero8.dev.
- Rate limit: not enforced. Fair use is roughly 60 requests per minute.

### API endpoints

- `GET https://zero8.dev/api/v1` — `getApiIndex`: discovery document listing every endpoint
- `GET https://zero8.dev/api/v1/profile` — `getProfile`: identity, expertise, availability, contact route
- `GET https://zero8.dev/api/v1/services` — `listServices`: consulting areas with best-fit engagements
- `GET https://zero8.dev/api/v1/posts` — `listPosts`: published writing; `?tag=`, `?limit=`, `?offset=`
- `GET https://zero8.dev/api/v1/posts/{slug}` — `getPost`: one post including its full Markdown body
- `GET https://zero8.dev/api/v1/projects` — `listProjects`: projects; `?status=live|sunset|delivered`
- `GET https://zero8.dev/api/v1/projects/{id}` — `getProject`: one project by slug id
- `GET https://zero8.dev/api/v1/search?q=` — `searchContent`: relevance-ranked search over the writing

Errors are always JSON: `{"error":{"code","status","message","hint","documentation_url","openapi_url"}}`. Codes are `not_found`, `invalid_request`, `method_not_allowed`, `unsupported_media_type`, `internal_error`. Branch on `code`, recover using `hint`.

## Pages

- [Home — I build software people can reason about](https://zero8.dev/) ([Markdown](https://zero8.dev/index.md))
- [About Ashutosh Tripathi](https://zero8.dev/about) ([Markdown](https://zero8.dev/about.md)) — background, focus, how he works
- [Contact](https://zero8.dev/contact) ([Markdown](https://zero8.dev/contact.md)) — email only; what to include, what is out of scope
- [Work — projects built by zero8](https://zero8.dev/work) ([Markdown](https://zero8.dev/work.md))
- [Writing — all posts](https://zero8.dev/blog) ([Markdown](https://zero8.dev/blog.md))
- [Developer portal](https://zero8.dev/developers) ([Markdown](https://zero8.dev/developers.md))
- [Privacy policy](https://zero8.dev/privacy) ([Markdown](https://zero8.dev/privacy.md))
- [Legal and contracting entity](https://zero8.dev/legal) ([Markdown](https://zero8.dev/legal.md))

## Services

- **Agent system design** — Designing typed agent pipelines: stage contracts, queue handoffs, worker boundaries, retry and failure semantics. Best for: A multi-step LLM pipeline that fails in ways nobody can reproduce; Moving an agent prototype onto infrastructure that can be operated; Deciding where determinism belongs and where the model belongs.
- **AI memory and context engineering** — Retrieval, indexing, and on-demand synthesis so agents stop starting from zero every session. Best for: Engineering teams losing decisions between AI coding sessions; Hybrid search over a corpus that keyword search alone cannot serve; Local-first context capture with no cloud dependency.
- **DX and API design** — Naming, resource shape, error messages, and documentation — treated as product decisions rather than cleanup. Best for: An API that is powerful but nobody can learn; Preparing a product surface for both human developers and agent callers; OpenAPI descriptions that are accurate enough to drive function calling.
- **Developer tooling** — CLIs, SDKs, and the feedback loop around them. Best for: A CLI that needs to be scriptable by both people and agents; Shortening the edit-run-observe loop on a slow codebase.
- **Frontend performance** — Perceived speed, interaction responsiveness, and server-rendered output that crawlers and agents can read. Best for: A React or Svelte app that benchmarks fine and still feels slow; A client-rendered site invisible to AI crawlers.
- **Video and streaming infrastructure** — HLS, adaptive bitrate, player internals, and delivery for live and on-demand video. Best for: Startup time and rebuffering problems; Player and ABR ladder decisions.

## Projects

- [Smriti](https://github.com/zero8dotdev/smriti) — Shared memory for AI-powered engineering teams. Captures and indexes Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex sessions locally, then shares team knowledge through git. No cloud required.
- [Avkash](https://github.com/zero8dotdev/avkash) — Open-core HR API for teams that need real control — leave, attendance, shifts, people, and fine-grained field-level access. Self-hostable.
- [tabstack-cli](https://tabstack.zero8.dev) — A Bun/TypeScript CLI for the Tabstack AI API — built live on stream, in a single sitting. Extract any page as structured JSON, run multi-source research, drive browser automation, and pipe everything through standard Unix tools. Includes a self-installing agent skill and a local credit tracking system.

## Writing

- [I uninstalled a mouse driver. It was twelve things.](https://zero8.dev/blog/completely-uninstall-logitech-options-plus-macos) — 2026-08-21. A root daemon, Sentry telemetry, a Zoom bridge, an AI prompt builder — how to completely uninstall Logitech Options+ on macOS, every file included.
- [The one percent internet](https://zero8.dev/blog/the-one-percent-internet) — 2026-08-17. 29 websites, $29, and 1.2 million page requests in three months — roughly 1% from humans. What the other 99% taught me about how the internet works.
- [I thought my daemon was one process. It's actually five.](https://zero8.dev/blog/daemon-process-lifecycle-mental-model) — 2026-07-25. A memory question turned into a native crash, a database lock, and a debugging script that hung itself. Five wrong assumptions about process lifecycle.
- [State of Agentic Harnesses — June 2026](https://zero8.dev/blog/state-of-agentic-harnesses-june-2026) — 2026-06-12. March predictions scored: the leaderboard reshuffled, Windsurf became Devin Desktop, Gemini CLI sunset for Antigravity. Where harnesses are headed.
- [Builder Retrospective: May 2025 → June 2026](https://zero8.dev/blog/builder-retrospective-may-2025-june-2026) — 2026-06-11. I mined 2,200+ AI-coding sessions across four agents to see what a year of building actually taught me — mistakes, fixes, and the patterns that stuck.
- [15 packages, 1 dev. The dependency graph is the architecture.](https://zero8.dev/blog/monorepo-build-pipeline-solo-founder-turborepo) — 2026-05-27. Most monorepo content assumes you have teams. I have domains. Here's why a 15-package Turborepo monorepo is a thinking tool, not a code org choice.
- [The thing you can only know by staying](https://zero8.dev/blog/the-thing-you-can-only-know-by-staying) — 2026-05-18. What you only learn by living with a project long enough to watch your own old code break under conditions you didn't notice arriving.
- [I thought gcloud compute ssh was ssh. It's six things](https://zero8.dev/blog/gcloud-compute-ssh-mental-model) — 2026-05-06. It pushes your SSH key into project metadata, makes four API calls, runs under four identities, and silently falls back to IAP. Here's what I missed.
- [India is Gmail's #1 market, and nobody's building for it](https://zero8.dev/blog/india-gmail-largest-market-email-deliverability) — 2026-04-08. Nobody in India reads email? The data on India's cloud business email market — 400M users, 82% Gmail share, world's worst deliverability — says otherwise.
- [RCM on Import of Services from Foreign Cloud Providers](https://zero8.dev/blog/rcm-on-import-of-services-cloud-saas-india) — 2026-03-31. Your Indian Pvt Ltd buys Anthropic, OpenAI, or Vercel and the invoice has no GST. That does not mean no GST liability. Here is exactly what the law says.
- [The Tax Knowledge Most Solo Developers Never Get](https://zero8.dev/blog/solo-developer-tax-savings-leasing-gst) — 2026-03-31. What 9 months at a leasing startup taught me about GST credits, car leasing, and device leasing. A practical guide for Indian solo founders.
- [State of Agentic Harnesses — March 2026](https://zero8.dev/blog/state-of-agentic-harnesses-march-2026) — 2026-03-26. The most popular AI coding agents ranked by GitHub stars, with a feature comparison across models, MCP support, autonomy, and pricing.

## Contact

- Email: hello@zero8.dev — the only contact route. No form, no chatbot, no scheduler.
- Availability: open for contract, consulting, and advisory work. Remote, Asia/Kolkata (UTC+5:30).
- GitHub: https://github.com/ashu17706
- GitHub (org): https://github.com/zero8dotdev
- X: https://x.com/zero8dotdev
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itszero8/
- Contracting entity: Zero8 Dot Dev Pvt. Ltd. — details at https://zero8.dev/legal

## Other formats

- Markdown: send `Accept: text/markdown` to any page URL, or append `.md` to its path. Responses carry `Vary: Accept, Accept-Encoding`.
- Sitemap: https://zero8.dev/sitemap.xml
- RSS: https://zero8.dev/feed.xml
- Crawl policy: https://zero8.dev/robots.txt — every major AI crawler is allowed.