Toto Tvalavadze

Hi, I’m Toto—software engineer, fine-art photographer, gallery curator, and independent interface researcher.

This is my working notebook exploring photography processes, handbound books, creative systems, and humane interfaces—a place to log experiments, publish essays, and ship tools.

Newsletter

The Flâneur is an even more meandering version of this website and perhaps the best way to follow me — Instagram is also a-okay too.

Projects

A few projects I’m proud of and focused on. See all 27 projects.

Plaintext Commons
Plaintext Commons – Manifesto for keeping long-form knowledge in durable, human- and agent-friendly files.
Arrowhead CLI
Arrowhead CLI – helps AI agents and command-line tools make sense of your Obsidian vault
Unbound Notebook System
Unbound Notebook System – an analog notebook system that is friendly to thinking and exploration

Notes

2026-08

  • Released Refmode CLI, a macOS command-line tool for switching Apple display reference modes from Terminal, scripts, and hardware controllers.
  • Published Ship the tool, not the agent.
  • Shipped a large redesign of ttvl.co made almost entirely of small details.
  • Spent much of the month rebuilding Hypercontext, a not-yet-public system for giving people, applications, and AI assistants a durable shared context layer.
  • Sent the remaining shipment from the Kyojima studio to Italy, finishing another practical stage of the move.
  • Spent two weeks working remotely and traveling across Bali—from Balangan through Candi Dasa and Canggu to Ubud—making a photo study of its beautiful doors and gates along the way.
  • Joined a bamboo architecture and carpentry workshop at The Kul Kul Farm, where Ludo and I each made a bamboo tray for the studio.
  • Turned a 20-hour layover into a brief visit to Chengdu before returning to Rome.
  • Continued setting up the Rome studio, including building a large worktable with a top made from birch plywood.
  • Submitted my application for an Italian residence permit.

August happened almost entirely in transit: from Tokyo through Bali and Chengdu to Rome, with another suitcase already packed for Tbilisi. Somehow, it was also a productive month. The last Kyojima shipment left Japan, Refmode became a real tool, Hypercontext moved forward, and ttvl.co received the sort of redesign where everything changed and almost nothing looks different.

The bamboo workshop was a useful counterweight to all the code, planes, and forms. Making a simple tray slowly by hand felt meditative, very similar to what I feel when bookbinding. A reminder that not every useful tool needs a command-line interface. Occasionally it can just be a piece of bamboo.

For the first time, Rome is beginning to feel like home rather than a place I am setting up between trips. The studio has a proper worktable, my tools are arriving, and even the residency paperwork has advanced from abstraction to bureaucracy, which I have decided is Italy’s way of confirming that something is becoming real.

Get in touch

Best way to reach me is via email.

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