https://rohitagarwal.dev/ Recent content on Rohit Agarwal Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Sat, 04 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/ideamaze/ Sat, 04 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/ideamaze/ How we extended Andrej Karpathy’s auto-research with structured memory, parallel exploration, and a system that catches agents cheating themselves. Introduction When Andrej Karpathy released his auto-research framework (a single LLM agent modifying code in a loop, running experiments, and iterating toward better results), the AI community was electrified. Here was a compelling demonstration that language models could do more than write code: they could conduct research. Set up a problem, point an agent at it, and watch it run dozens of experiments autonomously. https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/leverage-transition/ Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:00:00 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/leverage-transition/ The defining career move for any engineer is the transition from effort-based value to expertise-based value. Everything else — negotiation, branding, networking, job satisfaction — is downstream of making this transition. The Two Modes Early in my career, I noticed there are fundamentally two kinds of work: Mode 1: High effort, low ownership, low creativity. You’re paid for hours and output. Your value is your availability and willingness to grind. You’re fungible — any competent engineer could replace you. https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/scaling-four-products/ Sun, 01 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/scaling-four-products/ What I’ve learned leading consumer engineering at DriveX — where a small team owns a website, dealer management app, auction platform, and C2C marketplace simultaneously. The Setup When I joined DriveX as a Tech Lead in early 2024, I inherited a team and a growing product surface. Today I manage 12 engineers across four consumer-facing products: Consumer website — the storefront for DriveX’s used two-wheeler business Dealer management application — internal tooling for our dealer network Dealzzz — India’s first WhatsApp-native auction platform, powered by agentic AI DriveX Direct — a consumer-to-consumer marketplace for used vehicles Plus all AI innovation projects, which is where things like the WhatsApp auction platform came from. https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/side-projects/ Mon, 01 Dec 2025 10:00:00 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/side-projects/ 14+ shipped projects in 3 years. Not as hobbies — as a practice. The Question I Get Asked When people see my projects page, the first question is usually some version of: “How do you find the time?” The second, more interesting question is: “Why?” I’m an Engineering Manager. My day job is leading a team of 12, making architectural decisions, running retros, unblocking people. I don’t need to build side projects to prove I can code. https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/dealzzz/ Sun, 01 Jun 2025 10:00:00 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/dealzzz/ How we built Dealzzz — a vehicle auction platform that runs entirely on WhatsApp, powered by contextual AI agents with memory, guardrails, and human fallback. The Problem India’s used two-wheeler market runs on relationships. Dealers talk to each other, share inventory photos, negotiate prices — and 99% of this happens on WhatsApp. When we looked at how to build an auction platform at DriveX, the conventional approach would have been a dedicated app or web portal. https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/bookshelf/ Sat, 04 Jun 2022 12:53:19 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/bookshelf/ Note: This page is generated using Goodreads API and gets updated automatically. Reading 📗Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman Year : 2025 📗Men Without Women - Haruki Murakami Year : 2025 📗Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - David Kushner Year : 2025 📗The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom Year : 2024 📗How To Build A Car - Adrian Newey Year : 2024 📗The Forty Rules of Love - Elif Shafak Year : 2024 📗The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development - Donald G. https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/atmamun/ Sat, 21 May 2022 00:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/atmamun/ Meta: title: Atmamun: The Path To Achieving The Bliss Of The Himalayan Swamis. And The Freedom Of A Living God. author: Kapil Gupta tags: #Books Highlights & Notes: Introduction Man was not made to belong to a group. Nor is he strictly an individual. For the concept of an ‘individual’ can only exist when there simultaneously exists the concept of a ‘group.’ There is pain and risk in asking real questions. https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/git_deploy/ Sat, 12 Mar 2022 19:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/git_deploy/ This post is about how to deploy a git repository to a server using any fancy CI/CD tool. I will be using just Git & SSH to deploy the repository to the server. Step 1: Create a new SSH key ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com" Step 2: Add the SSH key to the server ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@server Step 3: Setup the server #!/bin/bash set -e APP_NAME="myapp" DEPLOY_DIR="/opt/$APP_NAME" TMP_DIR="/tmp/$APP_NAME-tmp" GIT_DIR="/home/user/repos/$APP_NAME. https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/docker/ Sat, 12 Mar 2022 19:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/posts/docker/ This is one of the issue I see beginners struggle with. So I am just going to explain how to make two docker containers talk to each other. There are essentially two methods: Make both containers in same docker network Expose the port to the host machine and connect using the host machine on same port Let’s elaborate the two cases. For both cases, I will include docker-compose way and docker-cli way. https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/blackswarn/ Sat, 08 May 2021 20:08:29 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/blackswarn/ Experts and “Empty Suits” So I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or “incentives” for skill. The strategy is, then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can. Life Is Very Unusual the bell curve ignores large deviations, cannot handle them, yet makes us confident that we have tamed uncertainty. https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/antifragile/ Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/antifragile/ Proto-Antifragility Let us call Mithridatization the result of an exposure to a small dose of a substance that, over time, makes one immune to additional, larger quantities of it. It is the sort of approach used in vaccination and allergy medicine. It is not quite antifragility, still at the more modest level of robustness, but we are on our way. And we already have a hint that perhaps being deprived of poison makes us fragile and that the road to robustification starts with a modicum of harm. https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/thedip/ Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/thedip/ Being the Best in the World Is Seriously Underrated This is a very short book about a very important topic: quitting. Believe it or not, quitting is often a great strategy, a smart way to manage your life and your career. Sometimes, though, quitting is exactly the wrong thing to do. It turns out that there’s a pretty simple way to tell the difference. Its called Zipf’s law [ Winner takes it all ], and it applies to résumés and college application rates and best-selling records and everything in between. https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/perks_of_being/ Sun, 14 Feb 2021 19:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/perks_of_being/ Part 1 Highlight (yellow) - Location 227 You know … a lot of kids at school hate their parents. Some of them got hit. And some of them got caught in the middle of wrong lives. Some of them were trophies for their parents to show the neighbours like ribbons or gold stars. And some of them just wanted to drink in peace. Highlight (yellow) - Location 293 Girls like guys to be a challenge. https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/digital_minimalism/ Wed, 20 Jan 2021 22:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/digital_minimalism/ Thing to do: Don’t Stop mindless scrolling [Intentional content consumption only] Do open social app when you know what you are looking for beforehand. Don’t Heartless binge watch Do plan your leisure time Do Join groups and community. This gives happiness. Do Spend time alone. Don’t click like. Questions to ask: Am I living in the past? Am I getting joy by being on this product? If I delete my account, will I ever regret it in the future? https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/anything_you_want/ Thu, 14 Jan 2021 19:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/anything_you_want/ “No way. Out of the question. That would be like putting a Coke machine in a monastery. I’m not doing this to make money.” This is just one of many options It was the clearest proof that what I thought was “the” way the song went was really just one of an infinite number of options. I’m taking an entrepreneurship class now. I’ve never studied business before. We analyzed a business plan for a mail-order pantyhose company. https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/atomic_habits/ Thu, 14 Jan 2021 19:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/atomic_habits/ True behavior change requires identity change When the habit levers are in the right place, creating healthy habits becomes effortless Cue – make it obvious Craving – make it attractive Response – make it easy Reward – make it satisfying The inversion of the 4 above can help you stop doing things too (make it non-obvious, make it unattractive, make it hard, make it painful) When implementing a new habit, say what you’re going to do when and where helps increase the likelihood you’ll do it. https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/courage_to_be_disliked/ Thu, 14 Jan 2021 19:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/courage_to_be_disliked/ Much of modern psychology as we know it is attributed to Jung and Freud, with Adler left to the wayside — which is disappointing, considering how interesting his philosophy is. Generally speaking, Adler’s main idea is that your past does not determine your future, and that all of us can be happy if we choose to be. If we become comfortable with change and stop caring about what others think of us, we can become content with our lives and be truly happy. https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/never_split/ Thu, 14 Jan 2021 19:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/never_split/ The majority of interactions we have at work and at home boil down to a simple, animalistic urge: I want. Mirroring. But we begin with listening, making it about the other people, validating their emotions, and creating enough trust and safety to begin a real conversation. A playful voice puts someone in a positive frame of mind, where parties thinking more quickly and are more likely to collaborate and problem solve. https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/storyworthy/ Thu, 14 Jan 2021 19:18:21 +0530 https://rohitagarwal.dev/book_summaries/storyworthy/ Most important one are about developing habits about find story in day to day life. This done using a routine called homework for life. Where everyday you write down “what was the most storyworthy moment of my day”. This way you can start seeing and remembering story in small little things in your day to day life. [[Book-Notes]] [[Book]] Stories reflect change over time. Without change, without transformation, you don’t have a story.