# Akshat Kushwaha

> building things that didn't get permission to exist. cto @ bits&bytes. Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer at bits&bytes, Advisory Board Member at Boardy, former Jr. Research Engineer at jhana, and previously founded Lexana.

Last updated: 2026-09-23

Note: blog posts on this site are drafted with an LLM and reviewed and edited by Akshat before publishing.

## Overview
Akshat Kushwaha (also known as a3ro, aero, Akshat Singh Kushwaha) is an Indian AI systems engineer, product builder, and technology executive. He builds production AI architectures, low-latency retrieval pipelines, semantic caching infrastructures, and distributed builder communities.

## Current Roles
- **Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer** at [bits&bytes](https://gobitsnbytes.org) (Registered Section 8 foundation with 12+ active city forks across India).
- **Advisory Board Member** at [Boardy](https://boardy.ai) (Advising on Boardy Pro and product systems for builders).

## Technical Core Competencies
- **Large Language Models & LLMOps**: Audio evaluation pipelines, speech-model benchmarks, context window managers for long drafts, latency reduction (60%+ TTFT improvement), agentic orchestration.
- **Backend & Systems**: Rust, Async FastAPI, Python, Docker, Redis, PostgreSQL, WebSockets, real-time collaboration engines, circuit breakers, and semantic caching.
- **Retrieval & Vector Databases**: Embedded vector search (Rust, AVX2 SIMD, wgpu GPU compute, immutable WAL), hybrid vector + graph search (FAISS HNSW, Okapi BM25, NetworkX, RRF fusion k=60), SQLite WAL, time-aware indexing.
- **Frontend & Product**: Next.js (App Router), React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion.
- **Community Systems**: Decentralized builder networks, section 8 governance, hackathon infrastructure, automated AI evaluation pipelines.

## Selected Production Builds & Systems
- [Qenlo Embedded Vector Database](https://github.com/a3ro-dev/qenlo): Embedded vector-search library and durable database core in Rust. Features runtime-detected AVX2 SIMD kernels, optional wgpu GPU acceleration (DX12/Vulkan, IVF-Flat/SQ8), USearch HNSW integration, compound user/time filters, immutable WAL durability, and native C/JNI mobile shells.
- [HybridMind Retrieval Engine](https://github.com/a3ro-dev/hybridmind): Time-aware local hybrid retrieval engine combining FAISS HNSW, Okapi BM25s, NetworkX directed multigraph, and SQLite WAL with RRF (k=60) fusion and Python SDK.
- [Luna Companion](https://github.com/a3ro-dev/luna): AI-native menstrual cycle companion with NLP chat logging, adaptive exponential smoothing with population priors, Supermemory v4 persistent memory, and OpenUI cards (Next.js 16, Drizzle ORM, Neon Postgres, Vercel AI SDK).

## Quick answers
### who is Akshat Kushwaha?
Akshat Kushwaha (a3ro) is an Indian AI systems engineer from Prayagraj and the co-founder and CTO of bits&bytes. he sits on the advisory board at Boardy, worked as a Jr. Research Engineer at jhana, and founded Lexana. he started building at twelve and mostly works on low-latency AI backends and retrieval systems.

### what is bits&bytes?
bits&bytes (gobitsnbytes.org) is a registered Section 8 foundation in India that runs a permissionless builder network. Akshat co-founded it in November 2025 and leads the technical side. it has 12+ active city forks, and each one runs its own hackathons, workshops, and hacker houses without waiting for an institution to sign off.

### what has Akshat Kushwaha built?
his main builds are Qenlo, an embedded vector database in Rust; HybridMind, a local hybrid retrieval engine; and Luna, an AI menstrual cycle companion. at jhana he built the audio evaluation pipeline for Steno and a GPT-4o-mini harness that cut time-to-first-token by 60%+.

### what is Qenlo?
Qenlo is an embedded vector-search library and durable database core written in Rust by Akshat Kushwaha. it uses runtime-detected AVX2 SIMD kernels, optional wgpu GPU compute, and USearch HNSW indexing with user and timestamp filters. writes go through a checksummed immutable WAL, and it ships C and JNI shells so it can run inside mobile apps.

### how do i contact Akshat Kushwaha?
email akshatsingh14372@outlook.com, or akshat@gobitsnbytes.org for anything about bits&bytes. you can book a call at calendly.com/a3ro-dev/let-s-talk, or find him as a3ro-dev on GitHub, @a3rodev on X, and Akshat Singh Kushwaha on LinkedIn. he's based in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, India, so replies land on IST.

## Builds compared
| build | what it is | stack | status | key number |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Qenlo | embedded vector database | Rust, AVX2 SIMD, wgpu, USearch HNSW | active | checksummed immutable WAL + atomic snapshots |
| HybridMind | local hybrid retrieval engine | Python, FAISS HNSW, BM25s, NetworkX, SQLite WAL | wip | RRF fusion at k=60 over dense, lexical, and graph ranks |
| Luna | AI menstrual cycle companion | Next.js 16, Neon Postgres, Drizzle, Vercel AI SDK | active | adaptive smoothing with population priors, 2.5σ outlier clamp |

## Published Notes & Essays
- [architecting motherboard: polymorphic iam, forensic digital signatures, and operations at teen-builder scale](https://a3ro.dev/blog/architecting-motherboard): when you run an independent builder network across a dozen Indian cities with hundreds of teenage hackers, off-the-shelf SaaS tools fall apa
- [why luna needs to exist: adaptive math, memory, and the problem with pink calendar apps](https://a3ro.dev/blog/why-luna-needs-to-exist): most cycle tracking apps on your phone are insulting. they fall into two categories, and both of them are built on deeply patronizing assump
- [architecting lexana at my nani's house: 4-agent swarms, 60% semantic cache hits, and sub-200ms p95 latency](https://a3ro.dev/blog/architecting-lexana-at-nanis-house): in the summer of 2025, i spent nearly two months at my nani's place in Prayagraj. there was no broadband connection. there was no ergonomic 
- [why we need hybridmind: vector search is blind, graphs are brittle, and AI memory needs local ground truth](https://a3ro.dev/blog/why-we-need-hybridmind): if you ask most engineers how they handle long-term memory for an AI agent, they will tell you: > "we embed the conversation history into Op
- [Inside an Autonomous Hackathon Screening Agent: Architecture, Scoring, and Failure Modes](https://a3ro.dev/blog/autonomous-ai-eval-cli): India Innovates 2026 had roughly 3,000 submissions, each usually a PDF or PPTX link, and a shortlist deadline. the system needed to classify
- [beautiful enough to build](https://a3ro.dev/blog/beautiful-enough-to-build): some ideas make you keep returning to them after the excitement has worn off. not because they are guaranteed to work, but because the world
- [context engineering, or: how i got consistent art out of a diffusion model without training anything](https://a3ro.dev/blog/context-engineering-consistent-art-without-training): the first few generated panels were good enough to make me optimistic and inconsistent enough to make that optimism useless. the character c
- [the machine that thinks but doesn't feel](https://a3ro.dev/blog/the-machine-that-thinks-but-doesn't-feel): i spend a lot of time building with systems that can write, reason through a bug, and occasionally surprise me. the surprising part is not t
- [how to know if you're delusional (no, really)](https://a3ro.dev/blog/reality-vs-delusion): certainty has a similar feeling whether it is earned or not. that is the uncomfortable bit. feeling sure is not evidence that you are right.
- [on b.tech, fake dreams, and the life nobody asked for](https://a3ro.dev/blog/btech-fake-dreams-life): engineering is a good path for some people. the problem starts when it becomes the answer before anyone has had time to ask the question. in
- [on adulting in india — loneliness, guilt, choices nobody trained us for](https://a3ro.dev/blog/adulting-in-india): the strange part of growing up in india is that you can be given a very detailed script for twenty years and then be expected to improvise t
- [agentic ai — the wave i didn’t ask for (but can’t ignore)](https://a3ro.dev/blog/agentic-ai-wave): the word “agentic” is now attached to almost every AI product. sometimes it means a model can use tools and retry a task. sometimes it mostl
- [love, after it stops feeling safe](https://a3ro.dev/blog/love-a-feeling-i-wish-to-never-experience-ever-again): i wrote before about finding someone who feels like home. i meant it when i wrote it. i also know now that a sentence can be true for one ve
- [on having a good partner](https://a3ro.dev/blog/finding-someone-who-feels-like-home): after a day that has taken more than it gave, a good relationship can be surprisingly ordinary: a call, a stupid meme, a message asking whet
- [burnout, comparison, and doing work you can return to](https://a3ro.dev/blog/burnout-bullshit-being-human): some days the code editor feels heavier than it should. not because the problem is impossible, but because you opened the internet first and
- [so you're thinking of learning to code?](https://a3ro.dev/blog/learning-to-code-vibe-era): the first useful thing i ever made with code was small enough to be embarrassing. it saved me from doing the same boring task by hand again.

## Canonical Links & Contact
- Website: https://a3ro.dev
- Location: Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh 211001, India
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshat-singh-kushwaha/
- GitHub: https://github.com/a3ro-dev
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/a3rodev
- Email: akshatsingh14372@outlook.com / akshat@gobitsnbytes.org
- Schedule: https://calendly.com/a3ro-dev/let-s-talk
- bits&bytes: https://gobitsnbytes.org

## Optional
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