// the digital futurist · est. 2020 · chennai, india

Thomas Cherickal

Thomas Cherickal

Generative AI Consultant · Generative AI Engineer · SLM Engineer · Rust AI Engineer · Independent Research Blogger

Open Source Developer Technical Content Writer Rustacean Pythonista Gopher AI Mentor Website Builder Online Brand Builder

I build at the bleeding edge of Generative AI, AI systems engineering, cross-domain expertise, SLM deployment, and technical research storytelling. From engineering local LLM stacks to writing 10,000-word deep dives on frontier models: I turn complexity into clarity and code into production value. My mission: make Generative AI, Blockchain AI, Quantum AI, and Local AI accessible to everyone. I believe Rust is the future of AI and programming, and I want to be an early adopter and work as a Rust AI Engineer, and I dream of rewriting the AI stack and the Generative AI stack in Rust. I am also fluent in Claude Code and Google Antigravity.

500+
Articles Published
8+
Years in Tech
10+
Platforms
8+
Languages
2000+
GitHub Repos

Roles & Capabilities

I operate across multiple disciplines — from deep technical development to strategic content and AI mentoring.

🏢

Generative AI Consultant

Delivering end-to-end AI transformation: office process automation with Python, website creation, custom AI app development, SEO/AEO/GEO strategy, and individual AI upskilling programs.

⚙️

Generative AI Engineer

Designing, building, and deploying intelligent Generative AI systems, LLM-powered applications, and custom agentic workflows. Using AI Tools to optimize workflows programmatically.

🧠

Rust AI Engineer

Building high-performance, memory-safe AI systems and systems tooling in Rust — from writing optimized tokenizers and tensor operations to developing blazing-fast local LLM runtimes, custom Python/Mojo bindings, and SIMD-accelerated libraries.

SLM Engineer

Optimizing Small Language Models for local inference on constrained hardware. Experienced with LM Studio, Ollama, llama.cpp, Gemma 4 E4B, and Qwen — tuning quantized models for CPU-only environments with minimal VRAM.

💻

Open Source Developer

Building production-ready intelligent systems in Rust, Python, and Golang — including local LLM orchestration pipelines, AI agent frameworks, and SLM inference engines optimized for constrained hardware.

🤖

AI Mentor & Trainer

Working 1-on-1 with individuals and teams to accelerate adoption of frontier AI tools — prompt engineering, local LLM setup, agentic workflows, AI career development, and online brand building.

🔬

Independent Research Blogger

Investigating the latest in LLM benchmarks, agentic frameworks, quantum AI intersections, open-source tooling, and hardware acceleration under the brand The Digital Futurist.

✍️

Technical Content Writer

Crafting meticulously researched long-form articles, developer tutorials, comparison deep-dives, and strategic technology playbooks across HackerNoon, Medium, Substack, Hashnode, Dev.to, and Differ. Working on the book RECRUITED.

🌐

Website Builder

Designing and deploying professional websites across every major platform — WordPress (thomascherickal.com), Wix, Framer, SITE123, GitHub Pages, and more. From landing pages to full personal brand sites with SEO, AEO, and GEO baked in.

🌍

Online Brand Builder

Building digital visibility for professionals and students across LinkedIn, HackerNoon, Substack, GitHub, and personal sites — from zero to recognized voice in their niche.

Tech Stack & Domains

⚙️ Languages

RustPythonGolangMojoJavaScriptHTML/CSSSQLBashCC++C#JuliaJavaDart & Flutter

🤖 AI & ML

Generative AILocal LLMsAI AgentsSLM EngineeringAgentic AI AssistantsPrompt EngineeringLangChainLlamaIndex

🛠️ Local AI Stack

LM StudioOllamaOpenRouterllama.cppOpen WebUISearXNGGemma 4 E4B

🗄️ Data & Storage

Vector DBsLanceDBChromaSQLitePostgreSQLRedis

📚 Domains

Quantum ComputingBlockchainQAIDeFiWeb3CybersecurityAlgorithmsMetaheuristics

🧰 AI Tools

Google AI StudioClaude ProNotebookLMGoogle Gemini ProCode WikiPerplexityChatGPT PlusNightCafe StudioKimiDeepSeekMiniMaxMuse Spark

🔧 Dev & Infra

LinuxGit / GitHubTauri 2.0GitLabDockerGitHub PagesWordPressZorin OS

🌐 Web Dev

HTML / CSSSEOAEOGEOJSON-LDOpen GraphResponsive DesignTailwind CSSWixFramerSITE123Carrd

✍️ Content

HackerNoonMediumSubstackHashnodeDev.toDifferBloggerLinkedIn ArticlesMarkdownLong-form WritingTechnical Docs

🚀 Deployment

GitHub PagesVercelNetlifyCloudflare PagesRenderRailwayFly.ioHugging Face SpacesReplitGlitchKoyebDeno Deploy

Developer Showcase

Building at the intersection of AI, systems programming, and developer tooling. Upcoming repos.

slm_agent.rs
// Local SLM agent with tool-calling & streaming
use openfang::agent::{Agent, Config};
use lm_studio::client::LMClient;

async fn run_local_agent() -> Result<()> {
  let config = Config {
    model: "gemma-4-e4b-it".into(),
    provider: "lm_studio".into(),
    stream: false,        // stable on 2GB VRAM
    max_iterations: 100,
    ..Default::default()
  };

  let agent = Agent::new(config).await?;
  agent.run("Summarise today's AI news").await
}
llm_bench.py
# Benchmark local SLMs on constrained hardware
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
  base_url="http://localhost:1234/v1",
  api_key="lm-studio"
)

def benchmark_model(model_id: str, prompts: list):
  results = []
  for p in prompts:
    resp = client.chat.completions.create(
      model=model_id,
      messages=[{"role":"user","content":p}],
      stream=False
    )
    results.append(resp.choices[0].message.content)
  return results
llm_gateway.go
// OpenAI-compatible gateway with multi-tenant auth
package main

import (
  "net/http"
  "net/http/httputil"
)

func ProxyHandler(w http.ResponseWriter,
                      r *http.Request) {
  tenant := r.Header.Get("X-Tenant-ID")
  model  := resolveModel(tenant, r)
  r.Header.Set("X-Model-Override", model)

  proxy := &httputil.ReverseProxy{
    Director: buildDirector(tenant),
  }
  proxy.ServeHTTP(w, r)
}
tensor_ops.mojo
# Fused matmul kernel — MAX Engine target
from tensor import Tensor, TensorShape
from algorithm import vectorize, parallelize

fn fused_matmul[dtype: DType](
  a: Tensor[dtype], b: Tensor[dtype]
) -> Tensor[dtype]:
  var out = Tensor[dtype](TensorShape(
    a.shape()[0], b.shape()[1]))
  parallelize[compute_row](a.shape()[0])
  return out
vector_forge.rs
// SIMD cosine similarity over f32 embeddings
use std::arch::x86_64::*;

pub fn cosine_sim(a: &[f32], b: &[f32]) -> f32 {
  let (dot, na, nb) = a
    .chunks_exact(8)
    .zip(b.chunks_exact(8))
    .fold((0.0, 0.0, 0.0), |acc, (xa, xb)| {
      unsafe { avx_dot_step(acc, xa, xb) }
    });
  dot / (na.sqrt() * nb.sqrt())
}
🦀

thomascherickal / slm-inference-engine

High-performance Rust library for local SLM inference on CPU-only hardware. Optimized for 2–8 GB RAM targets with streaming support.

RustLocal AIUpcoming Repo
🐍

thomascherickal / ai-career-toolkit

Python scripts, prompts, and automation tools accompanying the RECRUITED book — NotebookLM workflows, resume AI analysis, LinkedIn audit scripts.

PythonGenAIUpcoming Repo
⚛️

thomascherickal / quantum-ai-experiments

Research notebooks exploring QAI intersections — Qiskit, Q#, Quantinuum stack experiments, and quantum threat modeling for blockchain systems.

PythonQAIUpcoming Repo
🌐

thomascherickal / digital-futurist-site

Open-source GitHub Pages site with JSON-LD schema, SEO metadata, dark-mode design, and cross-platform social integration. The page you're reading now.

HTML/CSSSEOOpen Source Repo
🦀

thomascherickal / rust-llm-router

Zero-latency request router for multi-provider LLM APIs with automatic failover, rate-limit awareness, and cost-optimized model selection across OpenRouter, Ollama, and LM Studio.

RustLLM InfraUpcoming Repo
🦀

thomascherickal / vector-forge

High-performance SIMD-accelerated vector operations library for embedding pipelines — cosine similarity, HNSW indexing, and ANN search at native speed for RAG workloads.

RustVector DBUpcoming Repo
🦀

thomascherickal / ai-cli

Terminal-native AI assistant built in Rust — streaming completions, tool-calling, local model support via llama.cpp bindings, and a plugin architecture for custom commands.

RustCLI ToolUpcoming Repo
🐍

thomascherickal / neural-bench

Automated benchmarking suite for local LLM inference — latency, throughput, TTFT, and quality metrics with auto hardware detection and interactive leaderboard dashboard.

PythonBenchmarksUpcoming Repo
🐍

thomascherickal / agent-memory-kit

Long-term episodic and semantic memory layer for AI agents using LanceDB and Nomic embeddings — pluggable into LangChain, LlamaIndex, or any agentic framework.

PythonAgentsUpcoming Repo
🐍

thomascherickal / mojo-python-bridge

Seamless Python ↔ Mojo interop toolkit — call Mojo kernels from Python notebooks, share NumPy-compatible buffers, and hot-swap critical inference paths for 10–50× speedups.

PythonMojoUpcoming Repo
🐹

thomascherickal / llm-gateway

Production-grade OpenAI-compatible API gateway in Go — multi-tenant auth, request logging, model aliasing, streaming proxying, and Prometheus metrics out of the box.

GoAPI GatewayUpcoming Repo
🐹

thomascherickal / go-agent-sdk

Lightweight Go SDK for building tool-calling AI agents — structured outputs, parallel tool execution, retry logic, and first-class support for OpenRouter and Ollama backends.

GoAgentsUpcoming Repo
🔥

thomascherickal / mojo-tensor-ops

GPU-accelerated tensor operations library written in Mojo — fused matmul, flash attention kernels, and BFloat16 support targeting MAX Engine and NVIDIA consumer GPUs.

MojoML KernelsUpcoming Repo
🔥

thomascherickal / mojo-llm-kernels

Hand-tuned Mojo implementations of LLM attention, KV-cache, and RoPE embeddings — designed as drop-in replacements for CUDA ops on Modular MAX, with hardware-adaptive dispatch.

MojoLLM OpsUpcoming Repo

Published Articles

Long-form technical content published on HackerNoon, Medium, Substack, Hashnode, LinkedIn, and more.

Read on HackerNoon → Read on Medium → Subscribe on Substack →

Books & Long-Form

From 8,000-word deep dives to full-length career playbooks — substantive work for serious readers.

PRE-ORDER

RECRUITED

The AI-Powered
Career Playbook
for 2026

Thomas Cherickal

📚 Working on the book RECRUITED

RECRUITED

The AI-Powered Career Playbook for Professionals Who Refuse to Be Left Behind

A comprehensive transformation system showing professionals how to use frontier AI tools — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, NotebookLM, Perplexity — to accelerate their job search, rebuild their brand, and land roles that actually match their ambition. Real frameworks. Real tools. Real results.

🎗 Pre-Order on Patreon

// New Digital Products Released Every Week

Collaboration Services

Open to meaningful partnerships across writing, development, and AI education. Reach out on LinkedIn for a free connect, chat, and consultation.

✍️
Technical WritingLong-form articles, tutorials, developer guides, and whitepapers. HackerNoon-grade depth.
🤝
Sponsored ContentAuthentic, deeply researched sponsored articles and product deep dives for AI/dev tools.
🏢
AI ConsultingAI strategy, SLM implementation, AI agentic tools, and contract-based AI development and deployment.
🌐
Website DevelopmentCustom website design and deployment across major platforms, with SEO, AEO, and GEO built in from the ground up.
👤
AI Upskilling · Individuals1-on-1 mentoring to master frontier AI tools, build a personal AI stack, and accelerate your career.
🏋️
AI Mentoring · All LevelsFrom complete beginners to senior engineers — structured mentoring to unlock real AI productivity.
💼
LinkedIn Free ConsultConnect on LinkedIn for a free chat and consultation — fast reply guaranteed. No obligation.

Online Sales & Digital Products