# Reza Jafar

> Platform engineer and independent builder. Shipped an open-source platform to 490K+ monthly users, ran LLMs in production at scale, and led SRE for crypto trading systems. Now building AI developer tools and open-source infrastructure.

Reza Jafar (handle: creativerezz) is a platform engineer focused on AI infrastructure and open source, working independently from US Pacific Time. His background spans Cloud Support Engineering at AWS, Site Reliability Engineering at ApexCrypto and Bakkt in regulated crypto finance, and LLM Observability at DigitizedLLC (deploying and monitoring Claude and Llama via AWS Bedrock).

This site is his personal portfolio and blog: writing on platform engineering, LLM observability, scaling, and lean/solo software, plus live UI experiments built with real, interactive React components (Next.js App Router, React, MDX). He is currently building AutomateHub.dev and maintaining PeakofEloquence.org (490K+ monthly active users). Open to founder partnerships, forward-deployed and solutions engineering at AI-infrastructure and developer-tool companies, and technical advisory.

## Writing

- [The Oldest Trick](https://rezajafar.com/writing/the-oldest-trick): Notes from a My First Million episode on Cargill, family systems, AI abundance, and the procrastination trap of over-preparing instead of solving the problem.
- [Incident Reviews That Change the Code](https://rezajafar.com/writing/incident-reviews-that-change-code): Postmortems that end in action items nobody ships are theater. How to run reviews that leave the system safer.
- [The Platform You Build for an Audience of One](https://rezajafar.com/writing/platform-for-an-audience-of-one): Solo builders still need platforms — just smaller ones. How I decide what to automate when there is no platform team.
- [Eval Harnesses Before Prompt Tweaking](https://rezajafar.com/writing/agent-evals-before-prompts): Stop shipping prompt diffs on vibes — a minimal eval loop that catches regressions before users do.
- [Building in Public as a Platform Engineer](https://rezajafar.com/writing/building-in-public-as-a-platform-engineer): Why I write experiments alongside essays — and how publishing rough work changed how I ship.
- [SRE Lessons from Regulated Crypto](https://rezajafar.com/writing/sre-lessons-from-crypto): Trading systems don't forgive ambiguity — lessons from regulated finance reliability engineering.
- [An Edge Stack for Half a Million Users](https://rezajafar.com/writing/edge-stack-half-million-users): How PeakofEloquence serves 490K+ monthly users on a sub-$50/mo bill — and what I'd do differently today.
- [LLM Observability in Production](https://rezajafar.com/writing/llm-observability-in-production): What to measure when your product is a model call chain — traces, tokens, cost, and the failures that only show up under load.
- [Hello, World](https://rezajafar.com/writing/hello-world): Why this site exists and what to expect from it.

## Experiments

- [Retry & Backoff Playground](https://rezajafar.com/experiments/retry-backoff): SRE primitives — exponential backoff, jitter, and circuit breakers — applied to flaky LLM API calls. Tune the failure rate and watch each strategy adapt.
- [List Transitions](https://rezajafar.com/experiments/list-transitions): Adding and removing list items without things jumping — AnimatePresence, popLayout, and exit symmetry.
- [Spring vs. Ease](https://rezajafar.com/experiments/spring-vs-ease): The same motion under a spring and an ease-in-out curve — and when each one is right.
- [Tactile Buttons](https://rezajafar.com/experiments/tactile-buttons): Why a button needs a pressed state, and how 0.97 scale changes the feel.
- [Formatting Syntax](https://rezajafar.com/experiments/formatting-syntax)
- [Component Showcase](https://rezajafar.com/experiments/component-showcase)

## Apps

- [Drift](https://rezajafar.com/apps/drift): Top-down drifting with tire marks and lap timing.
- [20 Questions](https://rezajafar.com/apps/twenty-questions): The site's agent tries to guess what you're thinking.
- [Draw](https://rezajafar.com/apps/draw): A little drawing canvas — pen, eraser, undo, PNG export.

## Skills

- Install all: `npx skills add creativerezz/agent-skills`
- [GTM Engineer](https://rezajafar.com/skills): Build measurable revenue systems — enrichment, ICP scoring, CRM routing, signals, and outreach. — `npx skills add creativerezz/agent-skills@gtm-engineer`

## Projects

- [AutomateHub](https://automatehub.dev): Done-for-you AI automation for solo founders and small businesses.
- [PromptBrowser](https://promptbrowser.cc): Searchable archive of system prompts and tool schemas from 32 AI coding tools.
- [YouTubeSummaries](https://youtubesummaries.cc): AI transcripts and summaries for any YouTube video — 12K+ summarized.
- [LeanAI News](https://leanai.news): Tracking hyper-lean, AI-native companies and revenue-per-employee.
- [PeakofEloquence](https://peakofeloquence.org): Open-source Islamic education platform — 490K+ monthly users on a sub-$50/mo edge stack.

## Contact

- [Email](mailto:admin@rezajafar.com): admin@rezajafar.com
- [Book a call](https://cal.com/rezajafar/chat): schedule time via Cal.com
- [GitHub](https://github.com/creativerezz): open-source projects and code
- [X](https://x.com/creativerezz): updates and notes
- [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/rezajafar): work history and background

## Optional

- [Home](https://rezajafar.com/): site landing page
- [All writing](https://rezajafar.com/writing): full index of blog posts
- [All experiments](https://rezajafar.com/experiments): full index of UI experiments
- [All apps](https://rezajafar.com/apps): interactive mini games and browser apps
- [All skills](https://rezajafar.com/skills): installable agent skills via npx skills
- [RSS](https://rezajafar.com/rss.xml): RSS feed of writing posts