Augusto Vespermann code since 2001 leading since 2005 PT Cobalto

Augusto Vespermann

Technology · Product · Applied AI · Operations

Working isn’t the same as being right.

I started in a trade where one mistake ruined an entire print run. Today it becomes thousands of requests, an automated decision, or a 2 a.m. incident. I’ve done the same thing since 1998: shortening the distance between those two sentences.

Innovation without governance is just a demo waiting for its first incident.

Vitória, ES · Brasil[email protected]Portuguese and English

Tracks of work · 1998–2026

Prepress and typesetting1998–2001
Software development2001–now
Technical leadership2005–now
TI Especialistas2010–now
Team coordination2018–now
AI products2024–now

Four tracks have run in parallel for over a decade. I've led teams since 2005 and never stopped writing code — TI Especialistas ran alongside a full-time job for sixteen years.

The thread

I started in prepress, in 1998. In a print workflow there's no hotfix: if the plate is wrong, the entire run is wrong. That's where I learned the difference between “it's done” and “it's right” — and that almost everyone confuses the two.

In 2001 I moved to code, and the question came with me. In 2005 I started leading, and found the bottleneck is rarely technical: it's decisions without data, priorities without criteria, and agreements nobody wrote down.

In 2010 I founded TI Especialistas to solve the collective version of that — knowledge that exists but doesn't circulate. Editing five thousand articles from fifteen hundred authors taught me to smell a weak argument, and left me an archive that years later became raw material.

When generative AI arrived, the four tracks converged. Sofia is the editorial archive turning into answers. Virtual Arena AI is provenance rigor applied to public data. KinProof is prepress all over again: old document, careful reading, human review.

Twenty-eight years later it's still the same question — except now the one answering too fast is the machine.

Services

Four systems I founded and still operate. Each declares the stage it is in — including the ones that are not ready yet.

Virtual Arena AI

Production · public beta virtualarenaai.com ↗

Collects and cross-references public signals from technology, the job market, scientific research, cybersecurity and economics. It doesn't predict the future: it shows movements, counter-signals and cross-domain relationships with the evidence chain visible.

Data snapshot Jul 2026Scale 7 domains · 224k+ job posts · 118k+ papers · 71k+ signalsSources arXiv, OpenAlex, GitHub, npm, PyPI, Stack Overflow, NVD, CISA KEVRole founder · product, architecture, code and operations

Sofia

Production · continuous evolution tiespecialistas.com.br ↗

The AI assistant of TI Especialistas. RAG with hybrid search over the editorial archive: retrieves by topic, by author and by the article currently open, keeps session state and suggests related content without inventing links.

Base 5k+ articles from 1,500+ specialistsChannels web and WhatsAppHow embeddings + pgvector, PostgreSQL, Node/TypeScript, Mastra, GeminiRole founder · RAG architecture, implementation and operations

KinProof

Early access kinproof.com ↗

Document AI for historical research: reads old records and extracts people, relationships, events, dates and places into a navigable structure. It began with my own family's genealogical research, when nothing on the market did this well.

Flow upload, processing and structured human reviewHow LLMs for entity and relationship extraction, human-in-the-loopRole founder · product, AI architecture and operations

TI Especialistas

Operating since 2010 tiespecialistas.com.br ↗

Portal, community, job board and newsletter. In practice, my long-term laboratory: content, SEO, performance and, more recently, AI over a proprietary archive.

Scale 140k+ professionals · 5k+ articles · 1,500+ specialistsFronts strategy, product, technology, content, partnerships and SEORole founder and curator

How the pieces fit

These aren't loose projects. Products sit on top; underneath is a layer that decides what may run, executes, observes and responds when something breaks.

01 · public products TI Especialistasarchive and community SofiaRAG over the archive Virtual Arena AIcross-referenced signals KinProofhistorical documents 02 · governance AI Orchestratorpolicies, gates and approvals IA Factorypipelines, models and evidence 03 · operations Operational Intelligencemetrics, logs, diagnosis, rollback OpenClawnatural-language command 04 · base Linux · Docker · PostgreSQL + pgvector · Nginx · CI/CD · Prometheus · Grafana · backup

The arrow that matters points down: no product talks straight to execution. Everything goes through the layer that can say no.

Internal layer

These aren't brands, they're the engineering behind the services. I describe them because this is where the decisions live that separate useful AI automation from dangerous automation.

IA Factory

Runs the pipelines, routes between local and external models, and returns code, content, tests and evidence of what it did.

Orchestrator

Decides what may run, by which executor and under which policies, gates and approvals. It's the layer that says no.

Operational Intelligence

Turns metrics, logs, alerts and runbooks into context, priority and diagnosis. Shadow mode, human approval, rollback and small blast radius by design.

OpenClaw

Queries state and sends operational commands in natural language, including over WhatsApp, with authentication and per-command scope.

Technical skills · where they were proven

No 1-to-10 ratings and no invented proficiency bars. Every filled cell is a real system where it was used — no cell, no entry.

Systems architectureVA SO KP AT IN
Leading engineering teamsTE AT
LLM integrationVA SO KP IN
RAG and hybrid searchSO KP
Embeddings and pgvectorVA SO
Prompt engineeringVA SO KP IN
AI execution governanceVA IN
Data pipelines and ETLVA KP IN
Node.js and TypeScriptVA SO KP IN
PHPTE AT
PythonVA IN
Front-end (Next.js, React Native)VA TE
PostgreSQLVA SO KP IN
MySQL and MariaDBTE AT
REST APIs and integrationsVA SO KP TE AT IN
Docker and ComposeVA SO KP IN
Linux, Nginx and VPSVA SO TE IN
CI/CDVA AT IN
Observability and alertingVA TE IN
Incident responseVA TE AT IN
SEO and web performanceTE
Prompt and context safetySO IN

VA Virtual Arena AI · SO Sofia · KP KinProof · TE TI Especialistas · AT Athenas 3000 · IN internal platforms. Filled cell = used in production or in a delivered system.

Leadership skills

Same rule: the bar measures years of practice, not self-assessment. Nobody should grade themselves.

Technical leadership21 yrs since 2005

Leading technical decisions and people since well before the title.

Product direction16 yrs since 2010

Deciding what ships, what waits and what will never be built.

Editorial curation16 yrs since 2010

5,000 articles reviewed, edited and published from 1,500 authors.

Technical communication16 yrs since 2010

Writing for decision-makers and for implementers — different texts.

Community building16 yrs since 2010

140,000 professionals gathered with no media budget.

Team coordination8 yrs since 2018

Priority, deadline and quality balanced in the same conversation.

Known limitations

Every honest dashboard has this section. If a system can only report success, it isn't reporting anything.

  • The numbers on this page are dated snapshots. They shift with each collection run. I'd rather have a smaller number that holds up than a big one that needs an asterisk.
  • Sofia does not search the internet. It answers from the TI Especialistas archive; when it finds no basis, it says so instead of filling the gap.
  • KinProof is in early access. It works, but it isn't a mature product yet, and I won't describe it as if it were.
  • I use AI models, I don't train them. My ground is architecture, retrieval, evaluation, cost and operations — not machine-learning research.
  • Professional English, not native. I read, write and run technical meetings; I don't sell myself as bilingual.

Changelog

2024—

Applied AI products

Virtual Arena AI, Sofia and KinProof leave the drawing board and go live, each with its stage declared.

2018—

Athenas 3000 · development coordination

I own the full cycle: priorities, architecture, quality and continuity of corporate systems.

2017

PicPay · full stack developer

A fast-growing financial product. React Native, APIs and integrations — little margin for error.

2010—

TI Especialistas

I found the community and the portal. Audience, curation, SEO and content operations at scale.

2005—

Technical leadership

I start leading technical decisions and people — thirteen years before the formal coordination title.

2001—

Software development

The turn to code. Web systems, integrations and databases — the foundation for everything after.

1998

Lettera Prepress · prepress and typesetting

Prepress and print production. Where I learned that “it worked” and “it's right” are not the same sentence.

Contact

I'm interested in technology leadership, architecture and applied AI — especially where those three have to be the same person.

Augusto Vespermann · Vitória, ES · updated July 2026

Static HTML with no framework. Uses Google Analytics and Google Fonts.

Figures verified in July 2026. Where a project isn't mature, it says so.