Active
MVM
A strict, cross-platform microVM runtime for safely executing AI agents and untrusted workloads.
Code · Math · Hardware · Teaching
I write code, do math, build hardware, and teach.
I’m Ari Lerner. I’ve spent a long time working across systems software, AI infrastructure, security, and product—writing code and mathematics, building hardware, and teaching what I learn.
Currently building secure execution infrastructure for AI agents. What I’m doing now
Selected systems
Building below the interface
Runtime boundaries, content-addressed systems, and infrastructure that makes powerful software safer and simpler to operate.
Research
Hologram
An object-first runtime exploring deterministic execution, portable artifacts, zero-copy data paths, and compute that travels with its guarantees.
Research
UOR
Research into semantic, content-addressed object identity and a topology where software can address meaning rather than storage location.
Working thesis
Power is useful when its boundaries are legible
The systems I care about make capability explicit, complexity containable, and trust inspectable.
01
Compute should be containable
Powerful workloads need hard machine boundaries, attenuated authority, and a blast radius the operator can understand.
02
Interfaces should hide the right complexity
The best infrastructure does not expose every mechanism. It exposes the guarantees people need to build with confidence.
03
Trust should be verifiable
Policy, identity, provenance, and auditability should travel with the system—not live in an operator’s memory.
Writing
Notes from the work
Essays about secure AI systems, Rust, infrastructure, learning, and the human reasons we build.
The Repository Was Green. RH Was Still Open.
A growing body of checked mathematics can still leave its central theorem unresolved, so the repository has to show exactly where the gap remains.
The Two-Line API Ran Out of Room
PUT and GET were enough for blobs, until a release needed names, dependencies, signatures, and one visible moment of publication.
A Snapshot Is Not a Suitcase
Copying memory can restore a process on the same host; moving a program somewhere else requires its dependencies, runtime contract, and fresh authority.
The long arc
Builder, teacher, operator.
I’ve spent a long time moving between code, math, hardware, systems, and teaching. The details change, but I keep returning to the same question: how do we make powerful technology useful without making it careless?
The longer story- 9
- technical books authored or co-authored
- 3×
- Stripe capture-the-flag competitions
- ∞
- curiosity for systems from hardware to semantics
Open channel
Working on something technically ambitious?
I’m always interested in hard systems problems, serious open-source work, and people building new leverage without ignoring trust.