Diego Rico
Diego Rico

hi, i'm Diego.

I'm a CS student at Rice, Colombian/Ecuadorian, and a competitive gamer at heart. I like hard problems I actually care about, so I build things around them, from a reinforcement learning bot for Omega Strikers to EZLFP, a matchmaking startup for gamers.

githublinkedinemail

leaderboard

builds

  1. 01 EZLFPMatchmaking for gamers that reads how you actually play.
    • TypeScript
    • React
    • Postgres
    • Discord
    • Riot API
    • LLMs
    Jul 2025

    A Discord bot that pulls your match history, builds a playstyle profile, and pairs you with your most compatible teammate across any server. No more scrolling LFG channels. Grew to 65 users through streamer partnerships and cash-prize playtests. Top-12 finalist at the Napier Rice Launch Challenge.

  2. 02 omega strikers rlTraining a bot to beat high-level Omega Strikers players.
    • C
    • PufferLib
    • PPO
    • Reinforcement learning
    2026

    The live game can't be used for training, so I'm building a fast 2D simulator of it in C, measuring the real physics from recorded games, then training with self-play PPO. Same playbook RocketSim used for Rocket League.

  3. 03 gh-wallpaperYour GitHub contribution heatmap as your desktop wallpaper.
    • Swift
    • macOS
    • Homebrew
    May 2026

    A native macOS app with a background daemon that redraws when your graph changes. 12 themes, a visual theme editor, Homebrew install, Linux beta. 19 stars.

  4. 04 computer-use agentTell your Mac what to do in plain English and watch it do it.
    • Python
    • Claude
    • macOS
    Jun 2026

    Claude looks at the screen, picks one action, the agent does it, repeat. Plus a record-once, replay-for-free mode that falls back to vision when the screen changes.

  5. 05 SHPE pointsThe points system Rice SHPE uses to pick who goes to nationals.
    • Supabase
    • Apps Script
    • Next.js
    Aug 2026

    Officers make a Google Form, a poller pulls sign-ins into Supabase every 15 minutes, and points flow to everyone once an officer tags the event. Runs without a developer.

  6. 06 one piece plot armorA browser extension that blurs One Piece spoilers past your episode.
    • TypeScript
    • Browser extension
    Jul 2026 ↗
  7. 07 plot armorAn ML model that blurs spoiler reviews on IMDb in real time.
    • XGBoost
    • Flask
    • Preact
    1st, Rice Datathon, Feb 2025 ↗
  8. 08 gatemateAn AI agent that assigns airport gates.
    • Python
    • Flask
    • NVIDIA NIM
    • Leaflet
    1st, NVIDIA hackathon, Jul 2025

    Takes aircraft, gate and passenger data, asks Llama 3 on NVIDIA NIM for the best assignment, and shows it all on a live map.

  9. 09 dayoneTurns boring onboarding videos into interactive AI episodes.
    • TypeScript
    • LLMs
    Sep 2026

    Feed it a company's handbooks, decks and training transcripts and it builds a short episode where the new hire is the protagonist, makes decisions, and can argue with the characters afterward.

  10. 10 stormFlood risk scores from street-level photos.
    • Mask2Former
    • React
    • Node
    Sep 2025

    Computer vision segments road surfaces, then combines them with elevation and weather data into a risk score and fixes for each spot.

  11. 11 clements class finderFinds the path to your class through Clements High School.
    • Python
    • Pathfinding
    2022, where it started

    Give it a floor plan image and two rooms and it finds the route. My first real project, built in high school.

the philosophy

Every path worth taking is going to be hard. So I might as well pick the hard one I'm actually excited about.

match history

stories

01 UCEI Invitational Flight, pitch

flew out to pitch EZLFP in person.

Booked a flight to the UC Esports Initiative (UCEI) Invitational to put EZLFP in front of players and people in the industry face to face.

02 FlyQuest Cold email → meeting

cold emailed the CEO of FlyQuest.

Got 30 minutes with him on what it actually takes to work in esports and to go pro. I was chasing a Marvel Rivals pro career at the time, so I had a lot of questions.

03 DreamHack Dallas Cold email → free ticketW

cold emailed Riot's head of global events.

Got a free ticket to DreamHack Dallas out of it. Once there I won the Marvel Rivals 1v1 bracket*

* Full honesty: the main tournament was bring-your-own-PC and mine was at home.

I also played against Team Envy's Marvel Rivals roster and got a photo with Coluge, one of the best Vanguard players in the country.

off the clock

about me

When I'm not building I'm usually competing at something. Last year that was Marvel Rivals: I peaked #291 in the world in Season 2 (top 0.01%), played on a team that went on to place top 16, then left it to intern at Google.

results

wins

placementeventnote
1stGoldman Sachs intern AI hackathonMet Goldman's head of AI with my team.
1stNVIDIA AI agents hackathon2025 (GateMate)
1stRice Datathon2025 (Plot Armor)
1stMarvel Rivals 1v1 bracket, DreamHack DallasThe asterisk is above

career

experience

  • GoogleSoftware engineering intern (Play Games desktop client)Summer 2025
  • Goldman SachsEngineering summer analyst (credit trading tech)Summer 2026
  • EZLFPFounder & CTOJul 2025 to now
  • RiceAppsTechnical product managerAug 2025 to now
  • Rice UniversityB.S. Computer Science, minor in entrepreneurshipClass of 2027