phernandez

PSA: Export your ChatGPT conversations before cancelling If you're thinking about cancelling (or switching to Claude/Gemini), don't lose months of conversations first.

I built Basic Memory — it imports your ChatGPT export and turns it into plain Markdown files. Every conversation becomes a file you can actually read, search, and use with whatever AI you switch to.

This is not an ad. It is free and open source. Your data belongs to you. Keep it.

Steps:

1. Settings → Data Controls → Export Data (ChatGPT emails you a zip)

2. Install Basic Memory (brew tap basicmachines-co/basic-memory && brew install basic-memory)

bm import chatgpt conversations.zip

Complete docs: http://docs.basicmemory.com

Basic Memory - an MCP server that creates a knowledge graph from your conversations. Chats become markdown notes, notes inform future chats.

Local: https://github.com/basicmachines-co/basic-memory or hosted: http://basicmemory.com

Location: Austin, TX

Remote: Yes (US-based preferred)

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python, FastAPI, Rust, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Vue, Nuxt, AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Redis, Terraform, Docker, Event Sourcing, CI/CD, LLM Integration

Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1neImwQawfg8lbedopWElJFoU...

Email: paul@basicmachines.co

Senior/Staff/Principal Software Engineer with 20+ years building scalable SaaS platforms. Recently founded Basic Memory LLC, growing it from concept to 2,000+ GitHub stars and 56 paying customers in under 6 months, building one of the first production Model Context Protocol (MCP) implementations. Previously: Engineering Manager/Principal at companies like Fracture (50% AWS cost reduction), Spot Insurance, Pensa (ML/computer vision), and Spanning (100M+ events daily). Strong track record of rapid iteration, technical leadership, and delivering products that generate revenue. Looking for Staff/Principal Engineer or Engineering Manager roles at product companies building developer tools, SaaS platforms, or AI-powered products.

GitHub: github.com/basicmachines-co

Website: basicmemory.com

SEEKING WORK | Austin, TX | Remote (US-based clients preferred)

Senior/Staff/Principal Software Engineer with 20+ years building scalable SaaS platforms. Recently built Basic Memory (basicmemory.com) - an AI-powered knowledge management platform from concept to 2,000+ GitHub stars and 56 paying customers in 6 months.

What I do:

- Full-stack SaaS platform architecture and implementation

- Python/FastAPI backends, modern frontend (React/Vue/TypeScript)

- Multi-tenant cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform)

- Event-driven systems, microservices, API design

- LLM integration and AI-powered workflows

- Technical leadership and team mentorship

Recent work:

- Built complete MCP (Model Context Protocol) server implementation - one of the first production deployments

- Multi-tenant SaaS with per-tenant isolation (Fly.io, PostgreSQL, Redis)

- OAuth authentication + billing infrastructure (Stripe, WorkOS)

- Semantic knowledge graph with full-text search

- Cross-platform sync architecture (web, desktop, mobile)

Available for:

- Architecture consulting and technical leadership

- Platform development (0->1 or scaling existing systems)

- AI/LLM integration projects

- Team augmentation for Python/cloud infrastructure work

Rate: $200-250/hour depending on project scope

Contact: paul@basicmachines.co | GitHub: github.com/basicmachines-co

Late to the game here, but I'm working on Basic Memory (https://memory.basicmachines.co/docs/introduction), a knowledge management system for the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

What makes it different:

* Claude (and other MCP AIs) can both read from and write to your local markdown files

* Creates a connected network of notes that Claude can navigate between

* All data stays as markdown files on your computer

* When you chat with Claude, it automatically builds structure with simple patterns

* You can start a new chat and just say "Let's continue discussing X" without uploading files or copy/pasting

* Files are available locally, so you can edit them in and editor, like Obsidian, VS Code, etc.

I built this because I was tired of repeating myself to AI assistants and wanted my conversations to accumulate into something useful over time. It's basically a way to give Claude persistent memory while keeping your data local and be easily readable and editable my humans.

Some people are using it to maintain project context across sessions, document systems, and build topic maps without having to manually organize everything.

Demo video: https://basicmachines.co/images/Claude-Obsidian-Demo.mp4 GitHub: https://github.com/basicmachines-co/basic-memory

This is cool. Is there any reason you haven't published it to pypi?

This is really cool. Thanks!

I use intelij personally (for work and personal development). They also have a standalone product, DataGrip (https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/) with affordable/free pricing.

In the past I've just used raw psql from the console, but having an IDE is a big quality of life improvement IMO.

SEEKING WORK | US| Remote

Experienced developer, leader and creative problem solver, iteratively designing, delivering, and improving software architectures to deliver business value.

---

SKILLS:

- Expert guidance and practical solutions

- Tangible results without hype

- Extensive industry experience to address unique challenges effectively

---

SERVICES:

- Consulting Principal Engineer - Empowering Your Team for Success: hands-on mentoring, code review, task estimation and decomposition. Help build a team of 10x engineers, level up engineering processes, and foster a culture of continuous improvement and engineering craftsmanship.

- Architecture and Design Reviews - Ensuring a Strong Foundation: optimize your existing design and technology stack for maximum efficiency and reliability

- Cloud-Native Expertise - Optimize for Cloud: Transition smoothly to the cloud or optimize your existing cloud setup, minimize cloud costs, automate delivery pipelines, and leverage cloud-native architectures

- Implement MVP - From Idea to Launch: design systems that are modern, scalable, and maintainable. Iterate rapidly and fine-tune your product offering to deliver value quickly.

---

TECHNOLOGIES:

- Python, Java, Golang, Javascript/Typescript

- Linux, AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker

- Microservices, Event Sourcing, Cloud Architecture, SaaS, Machine Learning (ML)

- PostgreSQL, Kafka

---

Location: US

Remote: Yes (Worldwide)

Email: paul [at] basicmachines.co

reference labor theory/the alienation of man from his labor. I wonder if people are simply unaware of the large existing body of work on these issues

I’ve been interested in reading more about this. Do you have any pointers to good info?

I do. I do development all day and it’s not a problem for me. I just run every window maximized under os x with multiple desktops. Easy to close the lid and open it wherever without having to worry about those windows on all the other screens.

I have had this issue with my current golang projects. I haven't found any clear standard for project layout. We have a bunch of microservices with grpc api endpoints, and some which are event driven. Has anyone found a better resource? As it is, even our internal projects are fairly inconsistent in their project structure, which is a bit annoying.

I was trying to work around this problem also and found this library: https://github.com/jOOQ/jOOL, from the guys at Jooq. They did all the hard work to wrap all the FunctionalInterfaces in unchecked exceptions. Hope this helps.

Does anyone have any further information related to the scaling problems they were having with couchdb? This sounds like bad news for couch to lose such a big name brand user.

It was deadpan. I had to re-read it to see the humor. "Real time", lol.

I had a friend that used to do ironic yelp reviews. His review of the hot dogs at the 7-11 by his house were priceless.

If he feels like he's tapping in to something deeper, then isn't that enough? It's his experience after all. It doesn't require objective validation, does it?

I wish I could down vote this.

I'll give a "me too" for not understanding what to do when I got to the site. You should keep in mind the 2 min test - If I can't understand how it works before that, I'll move on.

It looks great, but IMHO, you should consider simplifying.

Edit: Forgot to say +1 for the idea, it looks like it could make my bookmarking useful again. Save me from delicious!

I'd like to see the pics too, or a link to the bookcase. I've been wanting to try this out.

I think a better comparison, is to linux - since it really is a linux kernel underneath, and it is open source. Linux has plenty of flaws, especially with hardware, but anyone can take the code and try and improve it, then contribute back to the main code base. The cyanogenmod is an example of this.

I can second the commonsware books mentioned previously. They are very helpful because you can download the source and run the apps to see how they work. Also check out the AppDemos that come with the sdk for examples.

The http://android.git.kernel.org/ site has the source for lots of the bundled apps too. Especially useful to see how they put their layouts together.

Good idea! I just tried to sign up and got the Oops page :(

Do you mind sharing your django.wsgi file? I'm trying to set this up right now for a site I'm working on. After looking throught the docs and some blog posts it wasn't clear to me how to hook up apache and virtualenv. Do you source in the env via the activate script? I feel like I'm missing something. Thanks.

Re: #4 My 2 cents: I come from a Java web background, so I may be a bit biased.

I like to think of the view functions as controlling state in an app and deciding what do show on a page (handing input or sticking stuff in the request). Something in between the presentation logic (in templates) or "business logic".

I think the django docs suggest that business (or domain) logic should go in the model (in an extra method) if it pertains to a particular instance of the model - or row in the db. Class level logic should go in a Manager for the model - like doing special queries, for example.

As an aside, I think that this approach makes my code pretty easy to test, I can whip up a test case that uses data in fixtures without having to worry about the view. Using something like the command_extensions makes it pretty easy to prototype model/manager code in the python shell against real data in my dev env. This is probably my favorite thing about working with python/django over java.

"Ambiguity, either you have it or you don't."