About

The short version

I'm Santthosh. I've spent 20+ years building software — from mobile SDKs to cloud platforms to ML systems — and I now spend my mornings reading LLM research papers so you don't have to.

Distilled is where I break down the most important AI and LLM research into plain-English explanations that practitioners and technical leaders can actually use.

No hype. No jargon walls. Just the papers that matter, explained through a builder's lens.

Why this exists

There are roughly 100+ new AI papers published every day. Most of them don't matter. A few of them will change how you build software next quarter.

The problem isn't access — it's signal. Knowing which papers are worth your time, and understanding what they actually mean for your work, is a full-time job.

So I turned it into a system. Three times a week, I surface the most impactful LLM research and distill it into something you can read in five minutes and apply the same day.

Who I am

I'm a Full Stack Software Architect and founder based in Sacramento. My career has taken me through companies like Mindbody, BlackLine, Ellie Mae, InMobi, and AT&T — building everything from iOS SDKs to distributed systems to SaaS platforms at scale.

I hold an M.S. in Computer Engineering from NC State, a B.E. from Coimbatore Institute of Technology, and a Professional Certificate in AI/ML from UC Berkeley. I'm an IEEE member, a KaggleX BIPOC mentor, and I maintain 80+ open source repositories on GitHub.

These days building software and hardware projects on weekends, and reading more papers than is probably healthy.

Who this is for

  • Engineers who want to stay current on LLM research without reading 30-page papers
  • Technical leaders who need to know what's coming next and what to bet on
  • Builders who care less about theory and more about "what can I do with this?"

What you get

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: A new post breaking down 1–2 significant papers — what they did, why it matters, and one concrete thing you can try.

Every Sunday: A weekly digest rounding up everything from the week, delivered to your inbox.

Get in touch

Find me on Twitter/X · LinkedIn · GitHub

Or just reply to any newsletter — I read every response.