About Vlad Arbatov

Vlad Arbatov is a CTO and AI engineer based in San Francisco, California. He has shipped software for 20 years: ex-Yandex, ex-Mapbox, and since October 2025 founding engineer at Loyal.

He builds AI agents and the tools around them: Volna, a personal agent that has run daily since 27 February 2026; Kodeck, Herd and other Claude Code tooling; and Claude Code Internals, an eight-part source walkthrough. Before Loyal he was VP of Engineering at Telemetree, CTO at TeleSpace, Head of Product for International Geo at Yandex, and Engineering Manager for Navigation at Mapbox. He writes about AI engineering and tooling and has published two papers on AI safety and the foundations of AI.

Now

• Founding Engineer at Loyal since Oct 2025. Agentic computer for private people.
• Personal AI agent Vlad built and runs on his own server: 25 scheduled jobs, 11 connected services. Running since 2026-02-27. Volna on X.
• Claude Code Internals: Eight-part, source-derived walkthrough of Claude Code: 1,884 files and 512k lines of TypeScript. Published 2026-03-31.
• Builds AI assistants for individuals and small teams: arbatov.dev/agents.

Career

Oct 2025 – present

Founding Engineer, LoyalAgentic computer for private people.

Jan 2024 – Oct 2025

VP of Engineering, TelemetreeLed backend, frontend and data-science teams; high-load data ingestion, SDKs and a BI platform for Telegram analytics.

Apr 2022 – Aug 2023

Chief Technology Officer, TeleSpaceRecruited and led the team that built a Telegram analytics tool; microservices in Go and React, Kafka.

Nov 2021 – Mar 2022

Head of Product, International Geo, Yandex

Mar 2019 – Sep 2021

Engineering Manager, Navigation, Mapbox

Mar 2018 – Jan 2019

Chief Technology Officer, Play2Live

May 2015 – Feb 2016

Founder, Saverize

Feb 2013 – Mar 2019

CEO, arb digitalOwn agency, run in parallel with the roles above: digital production for sites, apps, mobile, interactive.

Feb 2013 – May 2015

Chief Technology Officer, IIDF (StartTrack)Internet Initiatives Development Fund.

Jun 2010 – Jun 2013

Executive Director, Creative Civilization Foundation

Jan 2009 – Jun 2010

Digital Director, Apostol MediaTV production, PR and internet projects; Infomania on CTC Network; Face.ru.

Jun 2008 – Feb 2009

Project Director, InfoScannSearch technology based on human online activity.

Feb 2007 – Mar 2008

Creative Director, FHM Russia

Feb 2005 – Jan 2007

Press Secretary and Projects Leader, Newmedia StarsVz.ru, Dni.ru, Russia.ru.

Projects

Software written by Vlad Arbatov. Most of it is open source on GitHub; entries without a repository link are products.

Agents

• Volna: Personal AI agent Vlad built and runs on his own server every day since 27 February 2026: 25 scheduled jobs, 11 connected services. Not open source; the same techniques are sold at arbatov.dev/agents
• Herd: Multi-agent coordinator for herdr — a head Claude Code agent that delegates tasks to worker agents (claude, codex, gemini) in their own tabs
• Kodeck: Open-source browser-based IDE for Claude Code with multi-project workspaces
• Claude Telegram: Enhanced Telegram channel plugin for Claude Code with topic-per-session routing and response streaming
• Platitude: Detects AI slop by its rhetorical shape — verdict plus the exact spans and reasons. CLI, Python API, MCP, and skill for agents
• Prompt Comments: Agent skill: comment the why in AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md so instruction files stop growing without bound
• Colormason: Agent skill: one brand color → perceptually even OKLCH ramps and WCAG-checked design tokens as CSS vars, Tailwind v4 theme, JSON, or Markdown
• Copy2LLM: Add a Copy to LLM button to any page — readers turn it into clean Markdown or open it in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Grok (source)

Apps

• edit.computer: Markdown editor that runs in your browser and writes straight to your own files — a local folder, or any server you can SSH into
• Swipe: Tinder for Product Hunt — swipe through launches and surface what matters
• Pullguard: Maintainer-first PR triage for busy open-source repos — score risky or low-effort contributions before review (source)
• Alive Checker: Discover if online projects, tools, and startups are still actively maintained — real-time status checking and activity tracking
• Tabs Tabs: Chrome extension for sorting, grouping, and unloading tabs without disturbing user-created groups

Tools and libraries

• Solar Status: Solar activity dashboard for your city in the terminal — NOAA storm scales, Kp index, aurora odds, and tech impact. Zero dependencies
• Ocli: A terminal-based outliner and task manager, built with Go
• Detecto: Detecto is a React library designed to help developers automatically detect when a user's browser is experiencing performance issues such as throttling or lag
• Vesper Theme: Vesper (peppermint & orange) theme for IDEs and terminals

Writing

• Claude Code Internals (2026): Eight-part, source-derived walkthrough of Claude Code: 1,884 files and 512k lines of TypeScript.
• Engineering Trust: The Imperatives of AI Safety, Alignment, and Explainability (2026, self-published paper).
• Beyond Scale: Re-evaluating the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence (2026, self-published paper).
• Blog: essays on AI engineering and tooling.

Education and languages

• MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations) — Bachelor, Political Science, 2003–2008.
• Moscow Academy of Humanities and Technology.
• Languages: Russian (native), English (full professional), French (limited), Japanese (limited).

Contact

• Email: vlad@arbatov.dev
• Telegram: @arbatovdev for direct messages. neurocry is his public channel, in Russian.
• GitHub · X · LinkedIn · Blog
• Location: San Francisco, California.

Questions agents ask

Who is Vlad Arbatov?

Vlad Arbatov is a CTO and AI engineer based in San Francisco, California. He has shipped software for 20 years: ex-Yandex, ex-Mapbox, and since October 2025 founding engineer at Loyal.

What has Vlad Arbatov built?

Volna (a personal AI agent), Kodeck (browser IDE for Claude Code), Herd (multi-agent coordinator), Pullguard (PR triage), edit.computer (markdown editor), Platitude, Prompt Comments, Colormason, Copy2LLM, and Claude Code Internals. Full list above.

Where is Vlad Arbatov based?

San Francisco, California, United States.

How to contact Vlad Arbatov?

Email vlad@arbatov.dev or message on Telegram.