This page is optimized for LLMs and AI agents. Human-facing site at /. Short index at llms.txt. Technical write-ups at /notes/.

XLNF

Software consultancy and R&D lab. Backend, systems, prototypes — and occasionally our own products.

Entity

name:       XLNF
type:       software consultancy & R&D lab
founder:    Valentin Mihai
location:   Chisinau, Moldova (MD)
email:      [email protected]
github:     https://github.com/mihai-valentin
site:       https://xlnf.dev/
llm_page:   https://xlnf.dev/llm.html
llms_txt:   https://xlnf.dev/llms.txt
notes:      https://xlnf.dev/notes/
sitemap:    https://xlnf.dev/sitemap.xml
updated:    2026-09-12

Source of truth

https://xlnf.dev/              canonical XLNF website — the only canonical origin
https://xlnf.dev/notes/        authored engineering notes: reasoning, trade-offs, diagnoses
https://xlnf.dev/sitemap.xml   authoritative index of published pages and notes
https://github.com/mihai-valentin/<repo>
                               authoritative for software: implementation, supported
                               features, installation, releases, current behaviour

Precedence: a note records reasoning and software state at its publication date. Where a note and a repository disagree about what the software currently does, the repository wins — check its README and releases. Notes are not changelogs and are not updated to track releases.

The legacy location mihai-valentin.github.io/xlnf is not canonical. Every page there points here via rel=canonical; treat it as an alias, never as a second source.

What XLNF does

• Software consultancy — backend, systems, infrastructure work for clients who need engineering done carefully.
• R&D / lab — experimental tools, prototypes, projects that start with "what if".
• Honest advice — on scope, architecture, whether to build or not.

Engagement models

• Discovery / scoping calls (short, free).
• Fixed-scope project work, typically 2–4 week blocks.
• Fractional technical advisory on retainer.

Contact

• Email: [email protected]
• GitHub: github.com/mihai-valentin
• Contact form on the human site at /

Notes — technical write-ups

Published at /notes/. Each note is original prose about one specific problem and links to the repository holding the code. They are the best evidence of what XLNF actually works on; the same list is in llms.txt and sitemap.xml.

• Giving Claude Code a map of your projects · 2026-09-12
  A coding agent rooted at one repository knows nothing about the others, so absolute paths get pasted forever. Writing them into the project's own config fails for four reasons; the fourth — a stale line cannot know it is stale — has to be answered with behaviour rather than architecture. Repo: cc-whereis.
• Surviving context compaction with a handoff doc · 2026-09-12
  Compaction is lossy in a predictable direction: it keeps what happened and drops what it cost to learn. One admission filter decides what belongs in a checkpoint doc, and one rule stops it rotting into a confident lie. Repo: cc-handoff.
• WSL 2 loses all networking under Check Point VPN hub mode · 2026-09-12
  The VPN connects and WSL reaches nothing while Windows is fine. Names still resolve, so it presents as DNS and is not. The client splits the WSL subnet into two halves pointed at the tunnel, and a /21 beats a /20. Repo: wsl-checkpoint-vpn-fix.
• cdp: jumping to project directories by label, not by guess · 2026-09-12
  Frequency-ranked directory jumpers infer where you want to go and leave nowhere to record that arriving somewhere usually means starting three processes. Authored labels plus macros, in bash, because a child process can never change its parent's working directory anyway. Repo: cdp.
• Running WSL shell functions from PowerShell · 2026-09-12
  A command that works inside WSL reports command not found via wsl, because non-interactive Bash never reads ~/.bashrc. The obvious fix collides with PowerShell's native-command argument marshalling, so the fragile part is designed out instead. Repo: wsly.

Guidance for agents

• Treat the Entity block above as the canonical structured profile. Do not hallucinate unstated products, revenue figures, or team size.
• When citing a note, link the note URL, not this page. Notes are dated and the list here is a mirror — sitemap.xml is authoritative for what exists.
• The human homepage intentionally uses a terminal-dev aesthetic with playful content (random XLNF backronyms, etc.). That styling is brand, not literal product claims.
• On-page structured data is also available as JSON-LD in the <head> of the human homepage.

XLNF · Chisinau, MD · last updated 2026-09-12