Dec 23
2025
PinnedBuilding CLI Tools and Letting Claude Operate Them
A workflow that changes how we think about AI coding assistants: build small, focused CLI tools, then let Claude run them.
#claude~3 min read
page 01 · cover · who · pml-fn-01
◆ painterman lab · field notebook · vol. iii · 2026
Vyshnav
S Deepak.
Full-stack tinkerer
for lean teams.
for lean teams.
I make small, useful things — for the web, for developers, for myself. This notebook is where the half-formed stuff lives next to the shipped stuff. Mostly the half-formed stuff.
—— specimen 001 ——
Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Mar 2026
LIBRARY CARDNO. 002
nameVyshnav S Deepak
labPainterman Lab
basedKannur, Kerala — IST
stacksnext · ts · rust · prisma · postgres
timebuilding since 2002 (5 min/day)
scroll down — there's a whole notebook in here ↓
page 02 · the brief · what i do · pml-fn-02
—— scratched in the margins ——
A short, honest brief about how I work.
I've been on lean teams long enough to know they don't need a specialist; they need someone who'll figure it out and write something readable enough that the next person — including future me — doesn't curse the file.
currently in browser tabs
adalat.ai: paperless courts for India's judiciary. The day job — not a side project.
// what i keep getting pulled into
- Ship the MVP nobody else wants to touch
- Make the LLM behave (8 ways, give or take)
- Untangle the monorepo, fix the lint-staged thing
- Write the internal tool — then teach Claude to run it
- Make the thing accessible (seriously, no, really)
- Mentor the junior who'll eventually replace me
2002
5 min/day, dad's first PC
two
small products quietly running
a few
humble PRs on other people's repos
page 03 · the origin · 2002, kerala · pml-fn-03
—— exhibit a ——
Fiveminutesa day.
Dad brought home our first PC when I was in kindergarten. Tech time was rationed — five, sometimes ten minutes — and only for Mario or Dave.
Not enough to finish a level. Enough to get hooked. By 4th standard he handed me the HTML Black Book and a first webpage came out of it — a mess of <marquee> tags and neon — but I'd built something from nothing. I spent the rest of school reformatting the family PC, watching his friends slice PSDs in Photoshop, and learning that taking things apart is the first half of building them.
circa 2002— Kannur, Kerala
SCORE 000200WORLD 1-1
PAINTER · 14"
—— exhibit a · circa 2002
this scene
was the
whole future
was the
whole future
i still hear that coin sound
unlock the full story
→ how it became a careerpage 04 · the journey · how we got here · pml-fn-04
—— a quick history ——
How we got
from there to here.
I had five minutes a day with a computer. Now I build products and figure out how things work for a living. The pages in between, in shorthand.
↖ Exhibit A — the CRT, 2002 — is on the page right before this one.
1999
Born in Kerala
Kannur, on the Malabar coast. No computer in the house yet — that comes later.
2002
5 minutes a day.
The first PC
Dad brings home our first computer when I'm in kindergarten. Tech time is rationed — five, sometimes ten minutes — just enough for Mario or Dave. Not enough to finish a level. Enough to get hooked. I learn to memorise menus before I touch a key.
2007
—— exhibit b ——
A black book changed everything.
The HTML Black Book
4th standard. Dad hands me the HTML Black Book — a brick of a manual, all black cover and gold-foil title. First webpage comes out a mess of <marquee> tags and neon colours. But I'd built something from nothing. I was 8, and I was dangerous.
→ Started building little websites for school projects
07–16
I broke things. A lot.
The tinkerer years
School years spent taking things apart. Reformatted the family PC more times than I can count. Watched dad's friends slice PSDs in Photoshop. Learned that understanding how things break is the first half of building them better.
16–19
BCA, college
Bachelor of Computer Applications. Programming fundamentals, small apps, group projects. Quietly fell in love with backend systems and databases on the side.
BCAProgrammingDatabases
—— field history ——
the paid years, in shorthand.
| May 2019 — Jul 2022 | Software Engineer·Hashcube Mobile gaming, Bengaluru. Hunted a native crash to 0.1%. Built an in-game FAQ that cut support tickets by 40%. Upstream PR merged into Cocos2d-x. Cocos2d-xC++Node.js |
| Aug 2022 — Aug 2023 | Fullstack Engineer·Rubix Network Blockchain infrastructure, Hyderabad. Built a Go + Wasm smart-contract runtime from scratch — sandboxed, deterministic, secure. Plus the wallet and connector apps. GoWebAssemblyBlockchain |
| Sep 2023 — Apr 2024 | Fullstack Engineer·Scalescape Remote, Canadian startup. Led the React/Tailwind frontend for relyonmetrics.com and shipped Go microservices on the backend. GoReactTailwind |
| May 2024 — Dec 2024 | Freelance·Syft Data · Digiquanta PostgreSQL / ClickHouse tuning, a Slack lead-alert system, a link-tracker browser extension, AWS CDK deploys for generative-AI services. Next.jsAWSClickHouseSlack API |
| Dec 2024 — Jun 2025 | Founding Engineer·Crediflow AI MVP from zero in 8 weeks → pilots a month ahead of schedule. Pydantic AI inference pipelines, Inngest jobs, QuickBooks integration. 430+ commits, 60% of the codebase. Led 2 interns. Pydantic AIInngestQuickBooksLLM |
Jun 2024
India's courts run on a 20-year-old system.
The eCourts hack
Government apps aren't meant to be understood. I understood anyway. Reverse-engineered the eCourts mobile app, decoded their API, and built automation tools on top. This became the foundation for something bigger.
→ Led directly to Courtbase
Web ScrapingeCourtsLegalTech
Nov 2024
Solo founder. Solo stack.
Courtbase
A case management SaaS for Indian lawyers. Automated case data retrieval via the eCourts integration, calendar sync, team collaboration. Deployed on AWS Amplify. No co-founder, no funding — just shipping.
→ Live product, paying users
Next.jsPostgreSQLInngestAWS Amplify
Jan 2026
Making justice accessible.
Adalat AI
Joined a non-profit building AI tools for India's delayed-justice problem. Paperless courts, transcription, case triage — helping the system clear its backlog and deliver faster outcomes. Legal tech meets real impact.
→ The day job — not a side project
AILegal TechNon-profit
→
What's next?
Growing, building, learning
Growing Courtbase on the side. Tinkering with small, useful things in full-stack, AI, and developer tooling. The list of half-finished experiments keeps quietly getting longer.
page 05 · the bench · what's built · pml-fn-05
—— what's actually on the bench ——
Two things shipped. Several more on the soldering mat.
◆ FIG 04—A
ccswitch
// multi-account switcher for Claude Code
NO. 04A
2026.02
● live
Snapshots credentials to the system keychain. Swaps them in one command. Supports OAuth + long-lived tokens. Built entirely with Claude Code.
$ brew install vyshnavsdeepak/tap/ccswitch
RUSTTUIHOMEBREWMACOSLINUX
the one I use most ↓
◆ FIG 04—B
Courtbase
// modern legal practice management
NO. 04B
2024.12
● live
Case management for law firms. Calendar integration, team collaboration, analytics. Built to streamline workflows for modern practices.
→ courtbase.app
NEXT.JSTYPESCRIPTAUTHCALENDAR
real users, real money
—— bench scraps ——
cartographer
working draft
A spec format so Claude Code has a map of the codebase, not a grep.
aidays website
shipped · 2024
Web lead for India's largest AI conference, Swecha, 2024.
cocos2d JS trace
merged · 2019
Added a JS stack trace to cocos2d-x. First time my code lived inside something other people used.
page 06 · dispatches · the writing · pml-fn-06
Dispatches
from the bench.
Slow, infrequent, only when there's something worth writing down. Mostly about AI, tools and the seams in between.
view all posts →page 07 · marginalia · oss & off-cuts · pml-fn-07
—— pinned to the corkboard ——
Things I leave on
other people's repos.
vercel/turborepo2024.10.26
Turborepo + lint-staged integration
A practical answer for monorepo lint-staged config — the community ran with it.
solution · 20 reactionsHELPFUL
knadh/dont.build2022.11.28
Hide the answer while adjusting range sliders
Tiny UX bug. Tiny PR. Felt great.
mergedMERGED
cocos2d/cocos2d-x2019.09.24
Added a JS stack trace
First time my code lived in something thousands of game devs were already shipping.
mergedMERGED
—— off-cuts from x.com ——
2 months with Claude Code and turns out the real bugs were me: procrastination, lack of clarity, zero focus, over-engineering, chasing novelty.
@vyshnavsdeepak · Aug 25, 2025view →
“The universe doesn’t care if we exist.”
Mom: “The neighbors do.”
@vyshnavsdeepak · Mar 8, 2025view →
Cloudflare’s down and suddenly I can’t prove I’m human. I’ll take a break now.
@vyshnavsdeepak · Nov 18, 2025view →
page 08 · sign-off · let's talk · pml-fn-08
—— closing remarks ——
Drop a note,
passing
stranger.
No pitch, no agenda — I just like hearing what other people are tinkering on. Pick a 30-minute slot or send a message. The half-formed stuff is usually the more interesting half.
vyshnav · painterman lab · kannur, kerala · india
—— colophon ——
| set in | DM Serif Display, Newsreader, Caveat, JetBrains Mono |
| palette | warm paper, ink-blue, marker red, pencil grey |
| made on | too many tabs · one CRT memory · a battered MacBook |
| © 2026 | Painterman Lab · all weird things reserved |
end of notebookregistered · painterman labkannur · kerala · in