Personal site · self-hosted on a Raspberry Pi

Hi, I'm Shanmukhan.

I build software products, end to end, alone — idea, backend, app, and the Raspberry Pi this very page is served from. This is my home base: a quiet place to point people to, away from the noise of a product page.

Explore what I've built → Read my story
6 Live products
1 Solo builder
100% Self-hosted
— People who've stopped by
About

Building things, one problem at a time.

I care more about whether something is genuinely useful than whether it's technically impressive. Every product I've shipped started the same way — noticing a real, specific annoyance and deciding to just go fix it.

I design, code, and ship everything myself — from the idea to the backend to the app in your hand — and I run the infrastructure myself too. Nothing here sits behind a big cloud provider; it's all served from a small computer at home, which I like precisely because it forces everything to stay simple and honest.

Journey

How this came together.

  • The starting point

    Started building solo.

    Decided to build products end-to-end myself rather than wait for the "right team" — idea, code, design, and ship.

  • Shipping

    Turned ideas into six live products.

    SparkCards, EllieEats, Nirvana, VaultZero, NexaLink, and more — each one built around a real problem, not a technology looking for a use.

  • Infrastructure

    Brought it all home — literally.

    Moved hosting onto a Raspberry Pi at home: Apache, TLS, reverse proxies, systemd services, all self-managed instead of rented.

  • Today

    This page.

    A small personal home base at lahari.org — not another product, just a place that's simply, quietly mine.

Philosophy

How I think about building.

🎯

Start with a real problem.

The product comes after the problem, never before it.

🧩

Keep it simple.

Software should remove complexity, not add to it.

🔁

Build, test, improve.

Working software teaches you more than a plan ever will.

🍓

Own what you can.

This whole site runs from a Raspberry Pi at home — no rented cloud in between.

Now

What I'm building.

A quick look at the products this same hands-on approach has produced so far.

SparkCards EllieEats Nirvana VaultZero NexaLink See all →
Visitors

You're part of this page's story too.

—

Thanks for stopping by.

That number is a real, running count of page loads on this site — served straight from the same Raspberry Pi, no analytics platform involved.

No cookies. No tracking. Just an honest counter.

"Ideas are cheap. Working software is what actually teaches you anything."
— a rule I try to build by