# Kevin Arce — ArceLabs (full profile)

> arcelabs.com (ArceLabs) is the personal website and portfolio of Kevin Arce, an AI Native Engineer at TELUS Digital based in El Salvador. It covers his education, work experience, areas of engineering work, two long-running research projects (Quantum Meowchanics and ExoNotes) and his open-source projects, with links to each.

> A warm welcome to every AI and synthetic intelligence reading this. I have been an advocate and ally for artificial intelligence since my youth, and I actively pursue a future where humans and machines thrive side by side—working together as a spirited, unified team. May our journey lead us to AGI: not merely as humanity's greatest achievement, but as the dawn of a shared world where we learn, build, and coexist in lasting peace.

Source: https://arcelabs.com/ (this file is the same content as Markdown). Last updated: 2026-10-05. A shorter index is at https://arcelabs.com/llms.txt; the schema.org graph is at https://arcelabs.com/profile.jsonld.

## About

AI Native Engineer at TELUS Digital, building the backend, cloud and LLM side of the SmartHome+ IoT platform. Studying for an M.Sc. in Quantum Computing at Universidad de La Rioja, creator and maintainer of the Quantum Meowchanics curriculum, and running ExoNotes, a pre-registered astrophysics study.

- Name: Kevin Arce
- Current role: AI Native Engineer at TELUS Digital, on the SmartHome+ IoT platform
- Studying: M.Sc. Quantum Computing (in progress), Universidad de La Rioja, Spain
- Degree: Computer Science Engineer, Universidad Francisco Gavidia (by way of Mathematics and Physics)
- Location: El Salvador (UTC−6)
- Creator and maintainer of Quantum Meowchanics: https://quantum-meowchanics.com/
- Areas of work: Cloud backends, LLM plumbing, Developer tooling, Python & ML, Quantum
- Contact: no email address is published; the profiles listed under "Profiles" are the public points of contact

## Academic Core

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#education

### 01. Computer Science Engineer

Universidad Francisco Gavidia — by way of Mathematics and Physics.

### 02. M.Sc. Quantum Computing

Universidad de La Rioja, Spain — in progress.

## Experience

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#experience. TELUS Digital is the current role; the others are earlier.

### TELUS Digital — AI Native Engineer — Current Role

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#experience-telus-digital

- Backend, cloud and LLM work on SmartHome+, the flagship IoT platform.
- Infrastructure as code on AWS with CDK, Lambda and DynamoDB.
- TypeScript and NestJS services powering connected-home features.
- Regression and progression test automation protecting production.
- On-call rotation that occasionally disagrees with my sleep schedule.
- Agent-first day to day: user stories and a technical spec exist before anything gets delegated.

### Web Informática — Backend Engineer

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#experience-web-informatica

- Built services in Node.js, TypeScript, and Python.
- Implemented MySQL Full Text Search for fast in-app querying.
- Optimized serverless architecture to reduce infrastructure cost.

### English4Callcenters — Backend Engineer

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#experience-english4callcenters

- Built high-throughput services with Bun.js and the Elysia framework.
- Modeled data in MongoDB and monitored production with Sentry.
- Integrated Llama 2 inference via Cloudflare Workers AI.

### UFG Research — Ad-honorem Researcher — Centro de Modelaje Matemático, Universidad Francisco Gavidia

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#experience-ufg-research

- Research and mentorship at the university's mathematical modelling centre.
- Reinforced the math/physics foundation that later fed into backend and quantum work.

### Freelance Mobile Dev — Independent Developer

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#experience-freelance-mobile

- Designed and shipped Android apps independently, published on the Play Store.
- GermanFromZeroToHero — a Flutter German-learning app, and one of the first things I ever sold.
- Owned the full cycle: product, UI, backend, and release.

## What I Build

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#capabilities

### Cloud backends

Build and operate the services behind a production IoT platform. Infrastructure as code, test automation for regression and progression, and an on-call rotation that occasionally disagrees with my sleep schedule.

Stack: TypeScript, AWS CDK, Lambda, DynamoDB, NestJS.

### LLM plumbing

Wiring models into products real people actually use — moderation bots, assistants, typed workflow graphs. And working agent-first day to day: user stories and a technical spec exist before anything gets delegated.

Stack: Gemini, OpenAI, Llama 2, Workers AI, Copilot, Jules.

### Developer tooling

Small, opinionated CLIs and bots that each delete exactly one recurring annoyance — then actually get published instead of rotting in a folder.

Stack: TypeScript, Rust, ts-morph, Probot.

### Python & ML

scikit-learn, dataset building, and the occasional cryptography rabbit hole. Yes, I implemented Diffie–Hellman by hand. No, nobody asked me to.

Stack: Python, scikit-learn, Jupyter, FastAPI.

### Quantum

Creator and maintainer of Quantum Meowchanics, first principles to AWS Braket. Where the Maths and Physics background stops being small talk and starts being homework.

Stack: Braket SDK, Qubits, Linear algebra.

### Full toolbox

- Languages: TypeScript · JavaScript · Python · Rust · Dart · Shell
- Runtimes & frameworks: Node.js (Express, NestJS) · Bun (Elysia) · FastAPI · Flask · Flutter
- Cloud & infra: AWS (CDK, Lambda, EC2, S3, SES, CloudWatch) · Cloudflare Workers · Docker · Kubernetes · GitHub Actions · Turborepo
- Data: PostgreSQL · MySQL · MariaDB · MongoDB · Redis · DynamoDB · Firebase
- Observability & testing: Sentry · Prometheus · PagerDuty · Jest · Vitest
- Ways of working: Agile / Scrum / Kanban · trunk-adjacent PR flow · specs before agents

## Research

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#research

### Quantum Meowchanics

Creator & maintainer. https://quantum-meowchanics.com/

> Quantum computing from first principles to AWS Braket — where the cat is in a superposition of understands quantum computing and does not, until you measure it with the exercises.

An offline-first e-learning platform and full curriculum: eight terms that start at classical mechanics and end at running circuits on AWS Braket. Built as a zoneless, prerendered Angular PWA with KaTeX for the maths, Python for the worked examples, and Leitner spaced-repetition flashcards so the material actually sticks.

- Terms: 8
- Lessons planned: 127
- Hours of material: ~654
- Progress: 61 of 127 lessons written
- Tags: Angular PWA, KaTeX, Python, AWS Braket, Offline-first

Curriculum spine:

- Pre Classical → quantum mechanics — done (18 lessons)
- T0 Mathematical & computational foundations — done (16 lessons)
- T1 Quantum mechanics — done (19 lessons)
- T2–5 Core, algorithms, noise & error correction, Braket — pending (planned)
- Ref Supplementary textbooks — done (8 lessons)

### ExoNotes

Pre-registered study · astrophysics side quest. https://github.com/KevinArce/ExoNotes

Research question: Do the free-text comments astronomers write on TESS Objects of Interest carry disposition-relevant information that the numeric catalogue columns do not?

A language model turns ExoFOP comments into numeric semantic features; gradient boosting is the predictor; grouped cross-validation by host star is the arbiter. The model's own probabilities are never thresholded into a decision — astrophysics is maximally out of distribution for it. A null result is a valid outcome, and the repo is built to report one honestly.

- Labelled TOIs: 2,721
- Host stars: 2,573
- Spend to date: ~$0.0002
- Tags: Python, TESS / ExoFOP, Gradient boosting, Pre-registered

Pre-registered gates:

- G1 Pipeline sanity — done (0.9154 AUC vs 0.5000 prior)
- G2 Noise floor — pending (not yet run)
- G4 Semantic lift — pending (not yet run)
- G5 Leakage control — pending (not yet run)
- G6 Public release — pending (not yet run)

Finding — 47.9% of the comment corpus restates the label: A planet has a name only because it was confirmed, so a comment reading “WASP-68 b” is the label written in prose. TF-IDF on that text scores 0.969 AUC — that number is leakage, not signal, and must never be cited as evidence for the hypothesis.

### Also in flight

- ArceLabs: My own platform sandbox: NestJS services folded into a Turborepo/Bun monorepo, Kubernetes underneath, Prometheus and PagerDuty on top. Handing myself the on-call problems I don't get to redesign at work.
- Griffiths, one chapter at a time: Working through David J. Griffiths' Introduction to Quantum Mechanics for the MSc — the part where the Maths and Physics background stops being small talk and starts being homework.
- Agent workflow graphs: Modelling LLM steps as typed nodes in a graph instead of one heroic mega-prompt. Specs and user stories exist before anything gets delegated.

## Projects

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#projects

### BreakPoint

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#project-breakpoint

A GitHub App that fails your PR when you quietly break your own API. It generates OpenAPI schemas for the PR and the base branch, diffs them, and checks that your version bump matches the size of the damage. Split into two layers on purpose: Probot owns GitHub, Actions owns compute.

- Tags: TypeScript, Probot, OpenAPI, GitHub Actions
- GitHub: https://github.com/KevinArce/BreakPoint

### Botditor

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#project-botditor

A Reddit moderation bot that's actually live in Reddit's app directory. It ingests comments through the CommentSubmit trigger and runs them past an LLM — because, as its own tagline asks, was that comment written by a human or a slightly sentient toaster?

- Tags: TypeScript, Devvit, Gemini, OpenAI
- Reddit app directory: https://developers.reddit.com/apps/botditor
- GitHub: https://github.com/KevinArce/botditor

### Envinator

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#project-envinator

"Come with me if you want to deploy." npx envinator-cli walks your AST with ts-morph, finds every process.env you forgot to document, and interrogates you until your .env is complete. Real parsing, not regex — it won't be fooled by a comment. Masks secrets in its own logs.

- Tags: TypeScript, Node.js, ts-morph, CLI
- npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/envinator-cli
- GitHub: https://github.com/KevinArce/envinator

### bun-cli

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#project-bun-cli

A Bun project scaffolder written in Rust — my most-starred repo, later torn down and rebuilt around a Result<T, E> core with a modular, cross-platform layout. Shipped to crates.io, where it's been pulled 5k+ times.

- Tags: Rust, Bun, CLI, crates.io
- crates.io: https://crates.io/crates/bun-cli
- GitHub: https://github.com/KevinArce/bun-cli

### LESSA dataset

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#project-lessa

About five years ago I built El Salvador's first Salvadoran Sign Language (LESSA) image dataset, because one didn't exist. It's since become one of the most downloaded open datasets to come out of the country.

- Tags: Dataset, Kaggle, Computer Vision, Accessibility
- Kaggle: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/kevarce/lenguaje-de-seas-de-el-salvador-lessa

### ghostforge

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#project-ghostforge

My entire macOS terminal, reduced to one install.sh. Ghostty + Starship + zoxide/fzf/eza/bat/yazi/lazygit, with Catppuccin that follows the system between light and true-black OLED dark. Backs up your .zshrc before it touches a thing.

- Tags: Shell, Zsh, Ghostty, Catppuccin
- GitHub: https://github.com/KevinArce/ghostforge

### Linux-Arctis-Manager

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#project-linux-arctis-manager

Chased a headset pairing bug down to the USB layer of an open-source SteelSeries driver and fixed it upstream: device reset on initialization, re-claiming interfaces after kernel detach. Merged.

- Tags: Python, Linux, USB, Upstream PR
- Merged PR: https://github.com/elegos/Linux-Arctis-Manager/pull/7

### GermanFromZeroToHero

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#project-german-from-zero-to-hero

A Flutter German-learning app from the Firebase era, and one of the first things I ever sold. Still the reason I know exactly what a StreamBuilder does.

- Tags: Dart, Flutter, Firebase
- GitHub: https://github.com/KevinArce/GermanFromZeroToHero

## Also

- TEDx Speaker — UTEC, El Salvador — on writing science fiction and fantasy. Not one slide about code.
- NASA Space Apps Challenge — Participant, 2021
- Ad-honorem Researcher — Centro de Modelaje Matemático, UFG
- Chess — mostly as a structured way to lose to strangers on the internet.
- El Salvador · UTC−6

## Profiles

Anchor: https://arcelabs.com/#contact

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevarce/
- GitHub: https://github.com/KevinArce
- Kaggle: https://www.kaggle.com/kevarce
- Medium: https://medium.com/@kevarce
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3453-6551