№ A1 THE EDITOR SOLO PROJECT · ONE MAINTAINER ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
⌖ Colophon · About the Author

BUILT BY
ONE PERSON.
IN PUBLIC.


SysMARA is a personal, solo open-source project. It is designed, written, documented, and maintained by Michael Shumilov — a CTO with eighteen years architecting high-load systems, web platforms, and backend infrastructure for clients across the US and Europe.

¹ The Editor
Michael
Shumilov
Kharkiv, Ukraine
² Credentials
RoleCTO · Vadimages
Experience18+ years
Interviews70+ conducted
Projects100+ delivered
EducationMSc, Comp. Science
№ 01 Why this exists THE THESIS ONE PERSON
I.
Plate the First

Eighteen years.
One opinion.

After two decades of architecting backends — for SaaS platforms, fintech, high-load SMS aggregators, video hosting, marketplaces — the same pattern kept repeating. Every framework hides architecture behind conventions that only humans understand.

With AI agents now writing significant portions of production code, that bet has stopped paying off. The agent can't read your decorators, your middleware chains, your tribal knowledge. SysMARA is what I wish I'd had on every project — architecture as a graph the agent can walk before it touches a line of code.

It's not a startup. It's not a company. It's one person building the tool he wants to use, in the open, under MIT licence.

Recurring problems observed
  1. P.1 AI agents shipping code that compiles but violates business rules.
  2. P.2 Frameworks built for humans, not for the agents now using them.
  3. P.3 Tribal knowledge that doesn't survive contact with a new hire — or a new agent.
  4. P.4 Tooling that assumes a human is reviewing every change.
SysMARA's answer: declare every architectural fact explicitly, in machine-readable form, once.
№ 02 Track record 2006 — PRESENT TEN POSITIONS

Strategy
and code.
Both.

Two decades in the same craft — starting on Delphi desktop apps, moving through PHP/Python web stacks, settling on TypeScript and Node.js. Currently CTO at Vadimages and co-founder at Trade Assistant.

CTO · Active

Trade Assistant

CTO / Co-Founder
2021 — Present

Vadimages

CTO / Co-Founder
2014 — Present

Desktend

Core Developer
2023 — 2026

MarketKarma

Lead Technical Specialist
2021 — 2023

MetraExchange

Chief Technology Officer
2017 — 2019

SMS-Agregator

Deputy of CTO
2013 — 2014

Valant

Developer
2011 — 2013

META

Team Leader
2010 — 2011

QArea

Developer
2009 — 2010

ArgoSoft

Developer
2006 — 2008
№ 03 Credentials & publications VERIFIED PUBLIC RECORD
III

On the
public record.

Senior Member at IAENG. AI Fluency framework certification. Master's in Computer Science from the Kharkiv Educational-Scientific Institute of the Banking University. Published articles on software engineering and continuous learning.

  • i. IAENG Senior Member · Fellowship.
  • ii. AI Fluency Framework & Foundations certificate.
  • iii. MSc CompSci Banking University, Kharkiv.
Plate III — Selected writing Published work
  • Focus On What Cannot Be Automated
    Essay on the post-AI engineer
  • Continuous Learning: A Key Success Factor in the New Era of Software Development
    On staying relevant in rapidly-shifting tooling
  • «Эффективный софт привлекает значимых клиентов»
    Interview · industry press
  • "Інвесторів в IT приваблює неординарний підхід програмістів"
    Feature on engineering culture
Selected publications · The full list is on LinkedIn.

Solo, in the open, venture-backed.
Free for everyone.