Colby Smith
Interfaces that wait well
Profile
I build both halves of a product: the hard systems underneath and the growth that pays for them. Lately that’s meant reverse-engineering a commercial browser-integrity stack down to its bytecode VM, rebuilding its sensor headless, then shipping a resilient cross-platform desktop app around it. On the other side, I run the technical SEO and content systems that feed a manufacturer’s government-contract lead pipeline. And I run the quiet parts too: onboarding, support, licensing, uptime, because someone has to. I like adversarial problems that reward patience over noise, and I care most about the seams where the deep work meets the person using it. Say hello. I answer.
Shipped
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Cheddah
For collectors chasing limited drops, a cross-platform desktop app that automates restock monitoring and checkout, resilient against fast-changing upstreams.
It is a full cross-platform desktop application: a multi-process Electron system with a SvelteKit interface, a Node backend that streams live restock state over SSE, and Python services, versioned and shipped for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Its checkout runs on pure HTTP, reconstructed by reverse-engineering the protocol and re-implementing the client-side crypto byte for byte, then hardened to keep standing against commercial browser-integrity systems as the upstreams shift underneath it.
A resilience engine holds it steady under load with checkpointed retries, circuit breakers, and proxy rotation; an on-device assistant answers from inside the app; licensing runs on a Cloudflare Worker; and one person designed, built, and still runs all of it.
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Calpak USA
A brand and marketing site for Calpak USA, a California electronics design-and-manufacturing shop that carries hardware from concept to production.
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Lyra Lights
A product and brand site for Lyra Lights, an American LED maker, showing its grow lights, shop fixtures, and signal towers to spec buyers.
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PokePings
A landing site for PokePings, a Pokémon TCG restock-alert community: real-time store monitors and instant alerts, joined free through Discord.
Experience
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Founder & reverse-engineering engineer
Reverse-engineers commercial browser-integrity systems to the bytecode level.
- Reverse-engineered commercial browser-integrity stacks (PerimeterX, F5 Shape, Akamai, DataDome, Imperva), decompiling one to its ~200-opcode bytecode VM and two WebAssembly modules and rebuilding its sensor headless in an isolated JS realm.
- Reconstructed multi-service HTTP protocols from captures and re-implemented a client-side crypto scheme (AES, CMAC, format-preserving) byte-for-byte.
- Took the rebuilt sensor’s acceptance from 0% to a measured ~60–73% internally, then stress-tested it with a 33-agent adversarial review.
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Full-stack & systems engineer
Designs and ships a cross-platform desktop product solo, UI to distributed backend.
- Shipped a versioned (v14.4.6) cross-platform Electron app for Win/mac/Linux: a multi-process system spanning a SvelteKit UI, a Node HTTP/SSE backend, and Python services.
- Built a distributed resilience engine: a checkpointed, typed-error-driven retry state machine, circuit breakers, proxy-fleet rotation, and reactive session recovery.
- Wrote a custom hardened release pipeline: out-of-tree builds, V8-bytecode and asar sealing, an Ed25519-signed integrity manifest, and a perf-regression gate.
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Technical SEO & growth engineer
Turns organic search into revenue with technical SEO and full-stack builds.
- Led the technical SEO strategy for Calpak, credited with generating substantial government-contract lead flow.
- Engineered Calpak’s technical SEO end-to-end: JSON-LD schema, a dynamic 50-route sitemap, and AVIF/WebP Core Web Vitals tuning across 30+ pages.
- Drove Cheddah’s content SEO: ~40 keyword-targeted posts, a multi-section guide hub, and full OG/RSS schema on a Lighthouse-audited build.
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Community & operations
Runs a paid product’s entire non-engineering stack: community to trust & safety.
- Runs a paid Discord community end-to-end with custom admin tooling: onboarding, support, patch-notes, and drop alerts.
- Designed the support loop: in-app one-click diagnostics export feeding a real triage workflow, plus self-service machine-bound licensing.
- Stood up an internal observability and abuse-monitoring dashboard on Cloudflare: KPIs, health, license-abuse detection, and an IP watchlist.
Say hello.
Whether it is a project, a role, or just to compare notes, email reaches me fastest and I answer.
Englewood, FL · Solo operator
Reach out about consulting or a contract build, a role, a general question, a second opinion, or just to say hi.
Elsewhere: Cheddah · Calpak USA · Lyra Lights · PokePings
Where I can help: reverse engineering and anti-bot systems · full-stack product builds · technical SEO and growth.
I read everything that comes in and reply myself. No forms, no auto-responders. Email is the fastest way, and I answer.