---
title: "Nihal Kumar - Open Source Developer in Delhi | Tal"
description: "Meet Nihal Kumar, GSoC Qubes OS | Zed, Tor, Arch | Rust | Linux based in Delhi. AI stack includes antigravity, cursor, and opencode. Explore public work links including github."
image: "https://tal.club/meet/nihal-kumar/share-image"
---

# Nihal Kumar on Tal

## Headline

GSoC Qubes OS \| Zed, Tor, Arch \| Rust \| Linux

## About

Self\-starter with a strong sense of accountability\. Curious, growth\-minded, humble, and willing to admit what I do not know and learn from mistakes\. I care deeply about contributing to society, helping others grow, and building things that genuinely improve lives\. https://www\.nihalxkumar\.dev/contact

## Location

Delhi

## AI stack

antigravity

cursor

opencode

## Work experience

Open Source Developer at Qubes OS, Apr 2026 \- Present · 5 mos, Remote, Contributing across the core stack of Qubes OS, a \(the most\) security\-focused operating system used by journalists, whistleblowers and high\-threat model individuals\.

Maintainer \- Arch Linux MCP at Arch Linux, Oct 2025 \- Present · 11 mos, • Community MCP Server to the Arch Linux Ecosystem\. Total Downloads: 20k\+

Maintainer \- AUR Packages at Arch Linux, Jul 2025 \- Present · 1 yr 2 mos, Remote, • Authoring, maintaining and reviewing packages for the Arch Linux User Repository\.

Open Source Developer at The Tor Project, Nov 2025 \- Feb 2026 · 4 mos, Remote, Contributions toward fundamental infrastructure for privacy and censorship circumvention, spanning Rust systems programming, networking protocols, DevOps, and browser internals\. • Implemented SOCKS5 and HTTP CONNECT proxy support in Arti, Tor's next\-generation Rust client, directly advancing its viability as a drop\-in replacement for the legacy C implementation • Improved error observability in a production Rust networking library by surfacing structured failure timestamps and durations, cutting time\-to\-debug for connection retry failures • Reduced Docker image size by 80% \(447 MB to 89\.4 MB\) and cut build times by \~15 seconds via multi\-stage builds and dependency pruning • Fixed proxy state tracking and added a live client counter badge to the Snowflake browser extension, a censorship circumvention tool actively used in restrictive regions

Open Source Developer at Zed Industries, Oct 2025 \- May 2026 · 8 mos, Remote, Selected for the Zed Guild, a 12\-week cohort program where a small group of contributors are chosen to work on features and ship production code alongside the Zed core team\. Independently identified and drove work across the terminal, debugger, git UI, font rendering, and Linux platform layer\. • Shipped multiple features including a native Linux global menu bar, an embedded browser tab prototype, and font spacing controls • Fixed bugs across the terminal renderer, debugger, and auto\-updater, many of which I self\-identified • Triaged and reproduced open issues to unblock maintainers, not just fix assigned tickets • Ramped into a large production Rust codebase with no prior onboarding or guidance

## Education

Bachelor of Science \- BS, Computer Science, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani

K\-12, Hillwoods Academy

## Public links

- github: https://github\.com/nihalxkumar

[View the original profile](https://tal.club/meet/nihal-kumar)

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