C. Desivo
Mathematician · AI engineer · Project developer

Cristian Desivo

On building systems that are correct, end to end.
{answers shown}  ⊆  {answers approved}

AbstractSince 2016 I have taken projects from a set of requirements to a working system: modeling the problem, building the data and models, writing the code and delivering it. My recent work focus on making language models useful in places where a wrong answer is not acceptable.

§ 1Selected cases

Constrained question answering

An assistant whose every reply is drawn from a fixed set of pre-written answers. It cannot invent facts, and nothing can be injected into the prompt to change this, by design.

Running live on this site. Try it →

LLM features that can't make things up

DirectRetrieval, my Python library for AI assistants that can't make things up, running live on this site. Plus LLM features built for clients, from document drafting in Zendesk to chatbots …

People counting with computer vision on a Jetson Nano

A camera system that counts people entering and leaving an area and checks whether workstations are occupied, running in real time on a Jetson Nano.

Optimization: container loading and factory scheduling

Demos on sample data: a shipment packed into 2 containers instead of 3, and a factory schedule that cuts late orders from 10 to 3. Client work includes container loading, …

Games: Pixel P.I. and earlier prototypes

Pixel P.I., the detective game I designed, programmed and released on Steam on my own, from the Unity client to the Python server and my own writing tools. Plus earlier …

Report generation from Excel, Word, CSV and text files

A desktop tool that pulls data out of Excel, Word, CSV and text files and builds reports to the client's specification, with a simple window to pick the inputs and …

Reinforcement learning in a driving simulator (CARLA)

An agent trained with reinforcement learning to complete a task inside the CARLA driving simulator, deciding from what its camera sees.

Circuits that work as neural networks

Electronic circuits that compute like a neural network (weighted sums, activations, signal propagation), designed and tested in SPICE simulation before hardware.

Flight instruments on a Raspberry Pi

Simulated aircraft instruments on a Raspberry Pi, driven by physical controls, with a web page to configure them.

§ 2Games of my own

Pixel P.I.: the interview database, where a typed question unlocks a suspect's statement
Fig. 1 · Steam · Early Access

Pixel P.I.

A detective game I make as a solo developer. Players type their own questions; a statement unlocks when the question matches what the police asked.

View on Steam ↗
Murder in the Aethertree Forest: the boarded-up temple outside town
Fig. 2 · itch.io · Free

Murder in the Aethertree Forest

A supernatural murder-mystery visual novel, made in one month for the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam.

Play on itch.io ↗

§ 3Methods

Reliable AI systems

Retrieval, agents and structured outputs, bounded to approved content.

Mathematical optimization

Operations research, non-linear optimization, metaheuristics.

Deep learning

Datasets, training and deployment, computer vision.

Local inference

llama.cpp, vLLM, Ollama; choosing and quantizing models.

Games

Unity, Godot and Ren'Py.

Python, thoroughly

Django, Flask, FastAPI, NumPy, PyTorch, PyQt and more.

Appendix AAsk me anything

“Who are you?”
I am Cristian Desivo, a mathematician and software developer. I work as a freelancer.
Open the demoWrite to me