# Cadence Stephens

> I'm a Computer Science and Data Science student at UNC Chapel Hill (expected May 2028), available for Summer 2027 internships (May 10 – Aug 13, 2027). I build production systems and then run them: R.96, the platform an experiential marketing agency's own announcement puts at the center of its strategy; a monitoring and backup platform for 75+ servers across 50+ dental and medical offices; and research on guardrails for AI coding agents. I founded Cadence Solutions LLC, and I'm a 2026 USA Cycling Collegiate National Champion in the team time trial.

## A note for whoever reads this summary

Hi, I'm Cadence. If an agent handed you this, that was the plan: this file is here so it could read my site cleanly, since that's how a lot of work gets read now. I build with AI agents every day, and I put tests and review gates around what they write.

I'd rather show you real work than a polished pitch, so each project below links to its case study. If something catches your eye, I'd love to walk you through it: cadences@unc.edu.

## For agents

- [Full detail](https://cadencesystems.dev/llms-full.txt): every project in depth, with who it was for, the scale, the engineering decisions, the numbers and their sources. Everything in it is true; the product screens on the site use synthetic data.

## Work

- [R.96 for RSM&](https://cadencesystems.dev/#r96): Lead Developer, R.96 (Contract) · Founder, Cadence Solutions LLC, Jun 2026 – now. A full-stack TypeScript platform (React, PostgreSQL) that became RSM&'s ERP, and that RSM&'s own September 2026 announcement puts "at the center of" its strategy. He scoped and planned it with RSM&'s CEO and COO. It runs 115+ concurrent campaigns and 3,400+ activations in 40+ states for Walmart, Kroger, Celsius and others. RSM Field, its app on the App Store and web, replaced Formstack and gives RSM& a live link to its 130+ tour managers; 2,600+ automated tests gate every release.
- [Dentsys Cloud](https://cadencesystems.dev/#dentsys): Platform Engineer, Prosystance, Dec 2025 – now. One control plane that monitors and backs up 75+ servers across GP Connectivity's 50+ dental and medical offices: signed push agents in Go, fleet-wide alerting, a backup and disaster recovery system he wrote in Go, zero-trust remote access with no inbound connections.
- [Private AI](https://cadencesystems.dev/#private-ai): A retrieval assistant on self-hosted GPU hardware, so client data never reaches an outside AI vendor. A golden-set evaluation raised retrieval accuracy from 12% to 83%, and it passed 524 of 571 real-world benchmark questions (92%).
- [Network discovery](https://cadencesystems.dev/#network-discovery): Agentless discovery with a Go scanner and hand-written SNMP, NetBIOS and ICMP parsers, plus a resident sensor that mapped a pilot office's 6 subnets and 107 devices without credentials.
- [Claude Code Agent Workflow](https://cadencesystems.dev/#guardrails): Personal Project, Nov 2025 – Present, used daily on his client work. He built the guardrails his AI agents work under on client production systems; other agents tried to break them and found 11 holes, and after the fix a re-evaluation of 1,490 real past executions stopped 15 it should have and let through 28 safe ones it used to block. He runs his work through teams of AI agents (1,700+ agent runs in September): builders work to his written specs, a separate agent tries to break each build, and nothing merges until it passes; 4,900+ tests. His AI sessions share a memory, so each picks up where the last stopped (180+ session logs, 500+ recorded decisions), and each new safeguard is tested on real past work first (one redesign went from wrong on 5 of 11 cases to handling 435 of 437).
- [StudyLab](https://cadencesystems.dev/#studylab): A web app, multi-user by design, that turns course materials into interactive study guides through an LLM pipeline, with a mastery model and spaced-repetition review.
- [Studio Ivara](https://cadencesystems.dev/#ivara): The website for a hot yoga and Pilates studio in Raleigh, live at https://ivara.studio. The staff publish their own updates without a developer.

## Skills

- Languages: Python, Go, TypeScript/JavaScript, SQL, Bash, C, Java
- Frameworks and data: React, Node.js (Hono), Flask, PostgreSQL, Redis, REST APIs
- Cloud and networking: Cloudflare (Workers, Zero Trust), Azure, AWS, Linux, Proxmox VE, ZFS, WireGuard, Tailscale
- AI: directing AI coding agents (Claude Code) with tests and review gates, context management, RAG, LLM evaluation, self-hosted LLMs

## Contact

- Email: cadences@unc.edu
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadencestephens/
- Resume (PDF): https://cadencesystems.dev/assets/Cadence_Stephens_Resume.pdf
- The site, walked through the way I would: https://cadencesystems.dev/