Sean Tuyokov · Software engineer · NYC
Production fintech by day.
Indie products on the side.
Software engineer at Open Lending. I ship indie iOS and web products on the side with agentic AI workflows. I love hearing about what other people are building.
605 contributions · last 26 weeks
@shahtuyakovBuilder log
Highlights
Milestone
May 12
Dad Co-Pilot at 237 downloads
Cumulative downloads to real new dads from launch through May 12. Free, no paywall, no upsell — just the app I wanted to exist when my kid was born.
Shipped · Clipwise
May 10
Clipwise photo-mode publishing live
Wired sharp into the carousel upload pipeline — TikTok's photo-mode posting now runs end-to-end through the Open API v2 client.
Next.js 16FastAPI + CeleryTikTok Open API v2async SQLAlchemy + asyncpgShipped · Pinit
May 2
Pinit iOS in invite-only TestFlight
Native iOS app with system-share-sheet capture deployed to private TestFlight for final pre-launch testing. Save a TikTok in two taps, get a pin on the map.
Next.js 16Drizzle + Neon (pgvector)Modal WorkersMapbox GLShipped · VidSTG
Mar 28
VidSTG Telegram bot live
Public early access on Telegram as @vidstg_bot. Paste a YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram URL — get a transcript, an LLM summary, and embeddings indexed for natural-language search. Whisper + pgvector + Modal under the hood.
Next.js 16PythonModalPostgres + pgvectorMilestone
Feb 28
Clipwise test account at 1.1M views
1.1M post views, 45K likes, 28K shares from one test account in two months — 99% from TikTok's For You feed. Full auto-publish loop running end-to-end: AI carousel generation → ML scoring → TikTok Open API.
Milestone
Jan 26
Thaloop on the App Store
Anti-procrastination app for my wife. Shipped with full analytics + monster-state machine across nine screens.
Milestone
Jan 15
Dad Co-Pilot on the App Store
Baby tracker built for dads — approved on first review. Free, no paywall, no upsell. Built after we had our baby and the existing trackers weren't right for fathers.
Products
3 live · 3 shipping · tap to expand
Drop a social URL — TikTok, YouTube, Instagram — and Pinit downloads it, transcribes it, extracts every place mentioned, and pins them on a Mapbox globe for trip planning. Three surfaces: web app, native iOS (currently in invite-only TestFlight), and the backend that does the heavy lifting.
Hard part
Dual-LLM location extraction — GPT-5 nano function-calling cross-checked against Gemini with Google-Search grounding before geocoding. Modal workers handle the end-to-end pipeline serverlessly.
Next.js 16Drizzle + Neon (pgvector)Modal WorkersMapbox GLWhisperUpstash QStashA two-surface platform for indie creators. Clipwise (the web app at clipwise.tech) handles posting — full TikTok Open API v2 integration for videos and photo carousels. Underneath, the Carousel framework generates AI-scored content and predicts performance before publishing, then backfills the real TikTok analytics back into the scoring model. One test account ran the auto-publish loop end-to-end and hit 1.1M post views, 45K likes, and 28K shares over two months — 99% from TikTok's For You feed.
Hard part
1.1M post views, 45K likes, 28K shares — 99% from TikTok's For You feed, generated by one test account running the full auto-publish loop over two months. Pre-publish ML scoring predicts carousel performance before posting; post-publish analytics feed back into the model. Per-tenant A/B testing across Claude and OpenAI runs in parallel.
Next.js 16FastAPI + CeleryTikTok Open API v2async SQLAlchemy + asyncpgStripeAnthropic + OpenAIRailway + Neon + R2iOS app for tracking feeds, diapers, sleep, and milestones — built after my wife and I had our baby and the existing apps weren't right for fathers. Offline-first SwiftData store, home-screen widget, designed around one-handed use at 3am. 237 downloads from real new dads, no paywall.
Hard part
237 downloads to real new dads. Approved on first App Store review. The hard part isn't the tech — it's the product: every interaction tuned for sleep-deprived parents holding a baby in one hand.
SwiftSwiftUICore DataWidgetKitNext.js (landing)iOS focus-timer app I built for my wife. A fun monster character + gamified deadline mechanic make staying on task feel less like a chore and more like a game.
Hard part
State-machine navigation across nine game-like screens — built without NavigationStack. Custom Router + state stores orchestrate every transition; a named-asset loader swaps monster emotion artwork in sync with the timer state.
SwiftSwiftUICombinePaste a YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram URL. The system transcribes it with Whisper, summarizes with an LLM, embeds via pgvector, and indexes it for natural-language search later. Currently in early access via a Telegram bot, with a web app and iOS port in progress.
Hard part
Modal-based pipeline that survives YouTube's JavaScript challenge — a Deno-based solver inside the worker image handles the player JS the standard transcript libraries break on. Telegram Stars payments run alongside iOS App Store IAP for a dual-payment path.
Next.js 16PythonModalPostgres + pgvectorWhisperpython-telegram-botPython service watching Polymarket trade flow and Polygon-chain wallet-creation events in near-real-time. Profiles wallet behavior, scores manipulation suspicion on a 5-dimension index, and packages on-chain evidence with tx hashes.
Hard part
Inspired by the March 2026 Iran-ceasefire insider-trading pattern on Polymarket — surfaces wallet anomalies that human analysts spot retrospectively, in near-real-time. Four-layer surveillance: trade ingest, wallet event watcher, behavioral profiler, evidence packager.
Python 3.11FastAPIweb3.pyasyncpgPolymarket CLOB APIPydantic v2
Day job
Open Lending · 2022–present
Owning
Apr 2026
JDPower / Carfax / NADA valuation service
The valuation step in Open Lending's loan-decision pipeline — pulls live data from three vendor APIs across the dealer network and feeds the underwriting engine. Thousands of valuations a day.
Wrote
Aug 2025
Internal AI-augmented dev playbook
Authored at management's request. Documents Claude Code and Cursor workflows the engineering org now uses daily.
Promoted
Jan 2025
Frontend Engineer → Software Engineer
Started rotating across teams; backend work in Java. Internal frontend authority consulted on architecture and component patterns.
Shipped
Jan 2024
80-page Angular → modern migration
Single-handedly migrated the customer-facing platform from legacy Angular + custom CSS to a modern stack with a new in-house component library. A year of work, solo, before AI coding tools were what they are today.
Joined
May 2022
Open Lending · Frontend Engineer
NYC-based fintech in auto lending and loan insurance. Joined after App Academy and a stretch of Upwork freelance work.
About
Software engineer in New York. By day I work at Open Lending, writing Java, TypeScript, and Angular across teams that own real auto-loan decisioning. By night I ship iOS and web products solo using agentic AI — Claude Code, Cursor, MCP — as a daily part of how I plan and build.
Background
Landed in the US in 2018 at 24 years old. $800 in my pocket, no friends, no family waiting. My first year I worked as a laundromat cashier — that's where I learned English, one receipt at a time.
Once the language started clicking, I moved to Silicon Valley to study C and systems fundamentals at 42. Applied. Failed the first round. I rented a car and lived in it for six months while I prepared to reapply. Second try, I got in.
After 42, I went through App Academy's full-stack program (sub-3% acceptance, 1,400 hours), freelanced on Upwork for a stretch with a 95–100% Job Success score, and joined Open Lending in May 2022 — where I'm still shipping today.
I'm a husband and a dad. A lot of my indie products come from problems I've actually hit — Dad Co-Pilot exists because the existing baby trackers weren't built for fathers; Thaloop exists because my wife wanted something fun to help her stop procrastinating. Building useful things for people I love is the most rewarding part of this work.
The bet I'm making: a single engineer with the right AI tooling can now move faster than most product teams. That's the work I'm doing every day, on both sides of the day/night line.
Open source
My Claude Code setup and agent orchestration patterns are public on GitHub at shahtuyakov/claude-setup. Take it, fork it, ship faster.
Open to
Founding or early-engineer roles at AI-forward companies, interesting projects, or just nerding out about agentic workflows. NYC or fully remote.