Hi, my name is
Aakash Pahuja
I build AI-first tools for the web.
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Squarespace based in Dublin, Ireland, building an AI-first website builder where an LLM agent edits the site through typed tools. I work across the stack — React and TypeScript on the front, Bun, tRPC and PostgreSQL behind it — with a focus on accessibility, performance, and rich text editing at scale. As an Extension Developer for Chrome & Mozilla and a passionate tutor, I love sharing knowledge and building solutions that empower others.
About Me
Hello! I'm Aakash, a Senior Software Engineer at Squarespace based in Dublin, Ireland. I'm a core contributor to an AI-first website builder where an LLM agent edits the site through typed tools, and I'm leading the migration of the core rich text component from ProseMirror to Tiptap across millions of live sites. I also specified and shipped WCAG 2.1 AA compliance for the editor, ending with an axe-core gate in CI that fails the build on any violation.
As an Extension Developer for Chrome & Mozilla, I've created browser tools that enhance developer productivity. I'm also passionate about teaching and mentoring - I've tutored over 300 students in competitive programming at Coding Ninjas, helping them improve their coding skills and land their dream jobs.
Previously, at Intercom as a Product Engineer 3, I played a key role in optimizing the onboarding process, leading to a 20% increase in user activation rates. My contributions to features like AI Chatbot and Helpdesk significantly boosted the paid customer base by 12%, and our team collectively onboarded 1,000+ new logos per month.
Before moving to Dublin, I worked with BlueStacks in Gurugram, developing authentication systems handling 1M daily token exchanges. At Samsung R&D, I researched and developed an AI Editor that reduced development costs by 80% and created a JavaScript offloading utility that cut computation load by 50%.
I'm an active open-source contributor with 145+ public repositories on GitHub and a passion for building tools that developers love. I've created browser extensions for Chrome and Mozilla, built MCP servers and agentic developer tooling, contributed to various awesome lists, and written educational resources that help developers learn and grow.
I graduated with a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science from Maharishi Markandeshwar University, and began my career at Kony, where I worked on diverse projects improving CI/CD pipelines and building scalable marketplace platforms.
Coder by Heart ❤️ - I'm passionate about scalable architectures, user-centric solutions, and driving innovation through impactful digital experiences.
Technical Skills & Expertise
TypeScript
JavaScript (ES6+)
React.js
Next.js
Vite
Redux
Ember.js
Tailwind CSS
HTML5 & CSS3
Node.js
Bun
tRPC
RESTful APIs
Drizzle ORM
PostgreSQL
BullMQ
LLM Tooling & MCP
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
Docker
CI/CD (Jenkins)
Playwright
Jest & Testing
Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA)
Performance Optimization
And more technologies I'm always learning...
Where I've Worked
Senior Software Engineer 2
February 2025 - Present
- AI-first site builder (greenfield R&D): Core contributor to a pre-release website builder where an LLM agent edits the site through typed tools. Worked across a 38-package TypeScript monorepo on Bun (React, Vite, Tailwind v4, Express, tRPC, Drizzle/PostgreSQL, BullMQ), shipping 92 merged PRs and reviewing 70 more in four months
- Spec-driven development: Wrote 15 architecture and feature specs before any code (requirements, options with trade-offs, acceptance criteria, risks), then delivered each as a chain of small PRs against tracked issues — now the team's default for anything bigger than a bug fix
- Accessibility programme: Specified and shipped WCAG 2.1 AA compliance for the editor in four phases (focus and ARIA contracts, WAI-ARIA keyboard patterns, screen reader announcements), finishing with an axe-core gate in CI that fails the build on any violation
- LLM agent tooling: Designed typed tool contracts and input validation at the tool boundary for the site-building agent (Claude and Gemini via Vertex AI), plus an MCP server so a separate host app could drive the same tools
- AI review pipeline: Built a multi-persona AI pre-push review gate and a PR review bot wired into GitHub approvals, and adopted stacked PRs and mutation-verified testing as the day-to-day workflow
- Text Block migration: Leading the move of the core rich text component from ProseMirror to Tiptap with feature parity across millions of live sites
- Team leadership: Onboarded two engineering teams (7+ developers) to set up the Website Group in Dublin and established its code review and release practices
Some Things I've Built
Featured Project
Inbox Clerk
An agent that reads unread Gmail, classifies each message with an LLM, and labels it accordingly, archiving the obvious noise. It never sends, deletes, or drafts anything on its own, and Gmail's own labels double as the only state it keeps, so re-running it against an already-triaged inbox is a no-op instead of a re-classify.
Featured Project
PaperTrail
A PDF Q&A tool built from scratch to learn how retrieval-augmented generation actually works, not just to wire one up. Every citation the model produces is checked against the retrieved text before it renders, so a page number is something you can verify instead of something you have to take on faith. Ships with both a hand-rolled pipeline and a second LangChain implementation, side by side, to show what the framework buys you and what it costs.
Featured Project
nano-ffmpeg
A keyboard-driven terminal dashboard that wraps the full power of FFmpeg. No more googling obscure CLI flags—simply browse your files, configure presets, customize quality settings, and watch a live visual progress bar encode your media in real-time.
Featured Project
Engram
A local-first personal knowledge system equipped with semantic search. It integrates seamlessly with modern AI coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to provide context-aware, semantic retrieval of personal documentation.
Featured Project
Kestrel
A native macOS menu-bar utility designed for recording USB-C HDMI capture cards. Captures up to 4K60 video utilizing hardware-accelerated HEVC and saves as fragmented MP4, operating completely offline with minimal resource overhead.
Featured Project
Auraform UI
A highly customizable React UI component library focusing on modern neumorphic designs, strict accessibility, and interactive web elements. Built from scratch with vanilla CSS and TypeScript, designed to strictly adhere to WCAG accessibility guidelines.
Featured Project
Next.js LLMs Plugin
A build-time plugin for Next.js applications that automatically generates llms.txt and llms-full.txt files during the production build. Helps make your project's docs easily discoverable and parseable by modern AI coding agents and crawlers.
Featured Project
Claude Tab Watcher
A productivity Zsh plugin designed for iTerm2. It tracks running Claude Code background sessions, dynamically colors terminal tabs, and fires native OS notifications when the CLI agent is waiting for user input, streamlining multi-agent workflows.
Featured Project
Faahzsh
A Zsh command feedback plugin that plays distinct audio cues or terminal error alerts whenever a command exits with a non-zero status. It helps developer multitasking by using audio to announce command failures immediately.
Featured Project
Copy2Clip Pass - Chrome & Firefox Extension
An Extension that will copy password from password fields to clipboard without making it visible.
Featured Project
Mac-n-CSS
A pixel-perfect Macbook Pro UI recreation using only HTML and CSS - no JavaScript required! This project demonstrates advanced CSS techniques including animations, transforms, and pure CSS interactivity. A showcase of front-end skills and attention to detail in recreating Apple's iconic design language.
Featured Project
Make Your Own Resume
A nicer look at your profile and resume. Just change the data.json file and you will get your pixel-perfect react build resume live on the go.
Featured Project
Milli - The text editor
Milli is a terminal-based text editor that aims to be easy to use and intuitive. It comes as one single, batteries-included, static binary with no dependencies, and you can download and use it right now.
Featured Project
Ollama Browser Extension
A powerful browser extension that allows you to interact with Ollama's AI models directly from your browser. Built with Plasmo and TypeScript, this extension provides a seamless interface for sending prompts to locally running Ollama models and displaying their responses. Perfect for developers who want quick access to AI capabilities while browsing.
Featured Project
URL Shorten Web App
Tiny your url without any irritating ads and free of cost. URL shortening is useful for text messaging and social media. Use our URL shortener to make tiny links more manageable and gather click data.
Other Noteworthy Projects
View the archive
DS Algo Made easy with Aakash
Solutions to data structure and algorithm problems from HackerRank, GeeksforGeeks, LeetCode, CodingNinjas, Cracking the Coding Interview, and Elements of Programming Interviews, plus a separate folder for problems solved independently.
Grammar AI
An AI-powered grammar checking and correction tool. Leverages machine learning and natural language processing to help improve writing quality. Built to provide intelligent grammar suggestions and corrections in real-time.
JavaScript 30
30 days of Vanilla JavaScript coding challenges. A collection of small projects built without frameworks or libraries, focusing on JavaScript fundamentals, DOM manipulation, and modern ES6+ features. Great for learning and practicing core JavaScript concepts.
Learning Python
A comprehensive collection of Python learning resources, exercises, and projects. Covers Python fundamentals, data structures, algorithms, and best practices. Perfect for developers transitioning from JavaScript to Python or looking to strengthen their Python skills.
NPX dgr8akki
A fun interactive CLI business card built with Node.js. Run `npx dgr8akki` in your terminal to see the magic! Displays my contact information, skills, and social links in a beautifully formatted terminal interface. A creative way to share your portfolio in the command line.
Resume From JSON
An automated resume builder that generates a beautiful, professional resume from a simple JSON configuration file. Perfect for developers who want to maintain their resume as code and version control their career history. Simply update the JSON data and get a pixel-perfect React-based resume instantly.
05. What's Next?
Get In Touch
My inbox is always open. Whether you want to say hi, discuss interesting opportunities, or have a conversation on any topic, I'll try my best to answer your email!