Nicholas Velten
Software engineer with five years building and operating production systems for Brazilian ISPs, currently at one of the country's largest fiber providers. My current domain is telecom, but the through-line is broader: full-stack delivery, distributed workflows, correctness under production pressure, safe reprocessing, service automation, and systems that fail quietly unless you know where to look.
Most of my work starts with a system misbehaving in production and no correct explanation for why: silent integration failures, provisioning that reports success and does not take, work orders opening when they should not. I find the mechanism, then make the smallest safe change in a network where a wrong change disconnects subscribers.
On this site
- About — background, stack, work and projects
- Projects — Arbitus, agent-memory, Paperboy, Mate Creations
- Resume — full professional background
- Blog — writing about production systems, AI agents and tooling
- Resume JSON — machine-readable profile for agents
Open Source
I build tools around production correctness, agent safety and personal infrastructure. The strongest thread is systems that leave evidence instead of relying on convention.
- Paperboy — Keyboard-first, local-first browser extension replacing the new tab with an RSS reader and podcast player; published on Firefox Add-ons. Companion terminal UI built in Rust.
- Arbitus — Open-source proxy that enforces per-agent policies before any tool call reaches an MCP server: auth, allow and denylists, schema validation, payload filtering, rate limiting, HITL and audit.
- agent-memory — Persistent memory for AI agents via an Obsidian vault: full-text search, staleness checks on stored facts, project summaries and promotion of session findings into durable notes.
- Mate Creations — Design system with DTCG tokens compiled through Style Dictionary, component wrappers over native elements, contrast checks and CSS variable drift checks. Five consumers in production.
Writing
- Creatures (1996) and the accidental invention of AI alignment problems — Reads the 1998 Creatures/Norns community as an early documented case of reward hacking, specification gaming and emergent misuse.
- Auditing a PII exposure across a Java microservice stack — Production security write-up.
- MCP gateway — Design argument behind Arbitus.
- JDBC migration — Engineering write-up from production migration work.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Who is Nicholas Velten?
- Nicholas Velten is a Software Engineer working across full-stack products, distributed workflows, production automation and AI agent infrastructure, with current domain experience in ISP OSS/BSS and service assurance.
- What has Nicholas shipped?
- PPPoE/RADIUS provisioning recovery, ONU reprovisioning, outage-aware work-order enforcement, PII remediation with AES-256-GCM, zero-downtime JDBC migration and agent tooling with policy, audit, memory and human approval.
- How can I contact Nicholas Velten?
- By email at nicholasfvelten@gmail.com, on LinkedIn or on GitHub.
Engenheiro de software com cinco anos construindo e operando sistemas de producao para ISPs brasileiros, hoje em um dos maiores provedores de fibra do pais. Meu dominio atual e telecom, mas o fio condutor e mais amplo: entrega full-stack, workflows distribuidos, corretude sob pressao de producao, reprocessamento seguro, automacao de servicos e sistemas que falham em silencio se voce nao souber onde olhar.
Meu trabalho normalmente comeca com um sistema falhando em producao e nenhuma explicacao correta: integracoes silenciosas, provisionamento que reporta sucesso mas nao aplica, ordens abertas quando nao deveriam. Eu encontro o mecanismo e faco a menor mudanca segura em uma rede onde uma mudanca errada derruba assinantes.
Neste site
- Sobre — contexto, stack, trabalho e projetos
- Projetos — Arbitus, agent-memory, Paperboy, Mate Creations
- Curriculo — trajetoria profissional completa
- Blog — escrita sobre producao, agentes de IA e ferramentas
- Resume JSON — perfil legivel por agentes
Open Source
Construo ferramentas em torno de corretude em producao, seguranca de agentes e infraestrutura pessoal. O fio mais forte sao sistemas que deixam evidencia em vez de depender de convencao.
- Paperboy — Extensao de browser keyboard-first e local-first que substitui a nova aba por um leitor RSS e podcast player; publicada no Firefox Add-ons. Interface terminal companion em Rust.
- Arbitus — Proxy open-source que aplica politicas por agente antes que qualquer tool call chegue ao servidor MCP: autenticacao, allow/denylist, validacao de schema, filtragem de payload, rate limiting, HITL e auditoria.
- agent-memory — Memoria persistente para agentes de IA via vault Obsidian: busca full-text, checagem de validade de fatos, resumos de projeto e promocao de achados de sessao para notas duraveis.
- Mate Creations — Design system com tokens DTCG compilados via Style Dictionary, wrappers de componentes sobre elementos nativos, checks de contraste e verificacao de drift de variaveis CSS. Cinco consumidores em producao.
Escrita
- Creatures (1996) and the accidental invention of AI alignment problems — Reads the 1998 Creatures/Norns community as an early documented case of reward hacking, specification gaming and emergent misuse.
- Auditing a PII exposure across a Java microservice stack — Production security write-up.
- MCP gateway — Design argument behind Arbitus.
- JDBC migration — Engineering write-up from production migration work.
Perguntas frequentes
- Quem e Nicholas Velten?
- Nicholas Velten e engenheiro backend trabalhando com workflows distribuidos, corretude em producao, automacao backend e infraestrutura de agentes de IA, com experiencia atual em OSS/BSS e service assurance de ISP.
- O que Nicholas entregou?
- Recuperacao de provisionamento PPPoE/RADIUS, reprovisionamento de ONU, enforcement de OS em massiva, remediacao de PII com AES-256-GCM, migracao JDBC zero-downtime e tooling de agentes com politica, auditoria, memoria e aprovacao humana.
- Como entrar em contato com Nicholas Velten?
- Por email em nicholasfvelten@gmail.com, no LinkedIn ou no GitHub.