Question 1

Who is Gil Neto?

Accepted Answer

Gil Neto is a senior software engineer with 12 years' experience, based in Lisbon, Portugal. He works as a Founder-Engineer, building and operating B2B utilities solo from infrastructure to UI, and as a senior software engineer on AI products, building LLM-backed systems for other people. Currently running products on a single Hetzner VPS: Kelaro (accounting-automation SaaS), Koa (deterministic document-extraction engine), and Augur (GRC tooling for EU-regulated buyers, parked since July 2026).

Question 2

Does Gil Neto work on AI and LLM products?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Gil Neto works as a senior software engineer on AI products, building LLM-backed systems where the model handles judgment and deterministic code handles correctness. That covers LLM application architecture, retrieval-augmented generation, model evaluation and eval harnesses as release gates, agent orchestration, and document extraction. He is available for fractional CTO and advisory engagements on AI products, based in Lisbon and remote across EU timezones.

Question 3

What AI systems has Gil Neto built?

Accepted Answer

Koa, a deterministic document-extraction engine built as the deliberate alternative to vision-LLM extraction for bank statements: it forces balances to reconcile and refuses loudly rather than returning a plausible total. Kelaro's LLM-backed pipeline, running on durable Temporal workflows with the model kept out of the arithmetic. An agentic development pipeline called midas, which resolves every open decision before anything is specified, built on top of Matt Pocock's wayfinder model. An agent-run second-brain system where guarantees live in lifecycle hooks rather than in prompts. Earlier, the LLM-integration layer at Opplane between 2021 and 2026.

Question 4

What kind of work is Gil Neto open to?

Accepted Answer

Fractional CTO and advisory engagements, not full-time. Remote-first across EU timezones, based in Lisbon.

Question 5

What is Gil Neto's primary tech stack?

Accepted Answer

TypeScript, Python, and SQL as primary languages. Next.js, React, Node.js, Nest.js, Fastify, Flask, and Temporal for runtime. Docker, Nginx, Hetzner, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, BullMQ, Kafka on AWS and GCP for infrastructure. Integrations with Stripe, OAuth 2.0, Open Banking (PSD2), Brevo, and Umami.

Question 6

What is Gil Neto's technical philosophy?

Accepted Answer

Infrastructure-first: own the boundary from DNS to UI, everything containerized and reproducible. AI-augmented execution: leverage coding agents to eliminate boilerplate and focus on architecture and business logic. Scope discipline: build stateless, low-liability utilities with operational impact, and kill projects fast when market signal is wrong.

Question 7

What products has Gil Neto shipped?

Accepted Answer

Products on a single Hetzner CCX23 VPS: Kelaro (kelaro.io) — accounting-automation SaaS in closed beta with active pilots in Portugal and the Netherlands; Koa — a deterministic PDF bank-statement extraction engine powering Kelaro, built as the alternative to vision-LLM extraction; Augur (tryaugur.eu) — GRC tooling for AI governance with EU data residency, parked since July 2026. Previously: Lead Engineer at Opplane driving monolith-to-microservices migration and LLM-integration pipelines; Front-end Lead at Glartek shipping the core industrial-IoT product.

Question 8

Where is Gil Neto based and what languages does he speak?

Accepted Answer

Based in Lisbon, Portugal. Native Portuguese, proficient English, elementary Spanish. Available for fractional and advisory work across EU timezones.

WRITING

My agent had two rules and obeyed neither

Running a second brain on an LLM agent that forgets

Running 3 SaaS products on a single Hetzner CCX23