Who Made This Site
Matthew Diakonov, the Practitioner Behind vipassana.cool
A tech founder who went from zero vacations in eight years to six 10-day Vipassana courses and 950+ days of unbroken daily practice. The matching that pairs strangers into daily sitting partners on this site is not an algorithm. It is one person running a CLI tool he wrote, by hand.
Matthew Diakonov
Engineer. Six courses. 951+ days of daily practice.
Not a teacher. Not a VRI spokesperson. A practitioner who builds the site, sits every morning, and hand-matches every Practice Buddy pair himself.
TL;DR
Matthew Diakonov is the engineer and practitioner behind vipassana.cool. He has completed six Goenka 10-day courses at three California centers, sat 60 total days of residential retreat, and maintained more than 950 days of daily practice. The non-obvious part: the Practice Buddy matching program on his site is not automated. He reviews every signup, edits a BATCH array in a file called scripts/matching.mjs, and runs the pairs by hand from his terminal.
Goenka 10-day courses
at a center on the cushion
days of daily practice
of zero vacations before starting
“Vipassana is the single most important event in my life. It completely changed everything, making me from an extremely agitated, ego-centered person into someone much better and much more happy.”
Frame 1 of 4
Frame 1. Tech founder with no inside world
20+ products shipped, three hackathons won, a startup exit, and not a single day of vacation in eight years. The outside game was optimized. The inside had no tools at all.
Frame 2 of 4
Frame 2. Someone recommends a 10-day course
He almost did not go. Ten days of silence sounded like either a cult or a waste of time. Apps had failed. Weekend workshops had failed. He signed up anyway.
Frame 3 of 4
Frame 3. Four courses in the first twelve months
The first course landed. He restructured his year around the technique: four 10-day courses in twelve months, all while working full time in tech. Total by course six: 60 days on the cushion.
Frame 4 of 4
Frame 4. The site and the hand-run matching
950+ days of daily practice later, vipassana.cool is the resource he wished existed in 2022, and the Practice Buddy matching that pairs daily sitters is a Node script he runs himself.
Who is Matthew Diakonov
Matthew Diakonov is a software engineer and startup founder based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has shipped more than 20 products, won three hackathons, and had a startup exit. Publicly he writes code at m13v.com and ships on github.com/m13v. None of that is why this page exists.
This page exists because of what he does outside of work: six 10-day Goenka Vipassana courses across three California centers, a 951+ day unbroken daily practice streak, and a hand-operated matching service that pairs other practitioners into daily sitting partners. The engineering surface of vipassana.cool is a side effect of the practice, not the other way around.
He is explicit in his own disclaimer that he is not a teacher, not a VRI spokesperson, and not affiliated with dhamma.org. Every word on the site is one practitioner writing down what he wishes he had known before his first course.
The anchor fact: the matching is done by hand
The single most copied thing on Vipassana resource sites is a signup form that claims to match you with a partner. On vipassana.cool the form is the same. What happens after you submit it is not.
After submission, Matthew opens a file in his repo, scripts/matching.mjs, reads the pending students, writes compatible pairs into the BATCH array at the top of that file by name, and then runs the CLI. Five commands: stats, find, send, send-batch, verify. Here is what that looks like when he runs it.
The pairs above are real. They are in the BATCH array of scripts/matching.mjs as written, with notes next to each UUID so a human can read them. The whole matching pipeline fits in one file because it is one person.
// ——— BATCH PAIRS (edit for send-batch) ———
const BATCH = [
{ a: "66737e…", b: "0285ce…", note: "Nahïl + Greta" },
{ a: "072143…", b: "07ec73…", note: "Artur + Kimberly" },
{ a: "094c9c…", b: "8cc632…", note: "Vanditt + Chandan" },
{ a: "581235…", b: "9c253d…", note: "Akash + Jess" },
{ a: "e53e97…", b: "677ae9…", note: "Thiago + Andrés" },
];
// Usage:
// node scripts/matching.mjs stats — status snapshot
// node scripts/matching.mjs find — find viable pairs
// node scripts/matching.mjs send A B — send one pair
// node scripts/matching.mjs send-batch — send all pairs in BATCH
// node scripts/matching.mjs verify — verify recent matchesSample of named pairs from a recent run. Each notes field is hand-written.
Why this matters
The folder scripts/ in the vipassana.cool repo contains 93 scripts, 76 of them .mjs. None of them is an auto-matching cron job. The closest thing to an automation layer is the BATCH array, and editing it is a human reading names.
The journey, step by step
The trajectory from no-vacation engineer to 950+ days of daily practice did not happen gradually. Here are the actual inflection points, in order.
- 1
2014 to 2022
Zero vacations, seven days a week
Eight years with no time off. Building products, winning hackathons, shipping a startup exit. No inside-facing tools.
- 2
2022, first course
10 days, one of the hardest of his life
Signed up on a recommendation. Almost left on day 3. Walked out on day 10 having felt something that apps and books had never touched.
- 3
First 12 months
Four courses in one year
Reorganized the year around returning. Dhammamanda in NorCal, the CYO Christmas course (nearly 300 meditators), North Fork in Central CA.
- 4
Years 1 to 3
Daily practice becomes the anchor
Two hours a day becomes non-negotiable. Morning 45 to 60 minutes. Four to five evenings per week.
- 5
2026
vipassana.cool and Practice Buddy
Publishes the unofficial companion site and the free Practice Buddy matching he now runs by hand. Six courses done, 950+ days and counting.
Algorithm match vs Matthew's hand match
A shorthand for why vipassana.cool's matching feels different from other accountability services. Same signup form on the surface, very different mechanic on the back end.
| Dimension | Typical algorithm | matching.mjs, by Matthew |
|---|---|---|
| Who does the matching | A cron job or an LLM. | One practitioner reading every row. |
| How pairs are encoded | Hidden vector similarity score. | Named lines in a BATCH array: “Nahïl + Greta”. |
| Priority signal | Whoever signed up first, or random. | Old students prioritized, timezone compatibility, sit duration alignment. |
| Send trigger | Automatic email blast on a schedule. | node scripts/matching.mjs send-batch |
| Failure mode | Silent mismatch, nobody notices. | Matthew sees the ✗ in his terminal and fixes it the same evening. |
| Cost to the practitioner | Usually a monthly subscription. | Zero. Dana, same as the tradition. |
Where Matthew has sat courses
All six courses are in California. Each center has a different character, which is why most of his practical tips on the site cross-reference the three.
Northern California
Dhamma Manda
Private rooms, tall trees. The quieter end of the three. Closer to resort conditions than any center has a right to be.
Bay Area
CYO Christmas course
Bunk beds, 12 to a room, rain and snow. Nearly 300 meditators, the biggest course in the Western hemisphere. The hardest of the three.
Central California
North Fork
One of the oldest centers in North America. Pagoda and private meditation cells. The technical center: where his deepest sittings have happened.
What Matthew actually says about the practice
From the experience page, not paraphrased:
- “Just go. Stop reading about it, stop analyzing whether it's right for you, and just sign up. The intellectual understanding of Vipassana is worth nothing compared to the experiential understanding.”
- “The real practice happens off the cushion. You have to actually pay attention to how you behave in normal life and actively apply your meditation skills.”
- “Every time it's a massive mind reset. The depth of meditation at a centre is night and day compared to home practice. You just can't reach that same level on your own.”
- “I'm not a teacher. This is just my personal story and analogy to help you find the practice. You need to come to the course.”
Frequently asked questions
Who is Matthew Diakonov?
Matthew Diakonov is a software engineer and startup founder based in the San Francisco Bay Area who has completed six 10-day Goenka Vipassana courses across three California centers (Dhammamanda in Northern California, the CYO Bay Area Christmas course, and North Fork in Central California). He has maintained over 950 days of continuous daily meditation practice and publishes vipassana.cool as an unofficial companion to dhamma.org.
How many Vipassana courses has Matthew Diakonov completed?
Six 10-day courses, for a total of 60 days on the cushion at a formal center. Four of those six were completed in his first year of practice, while working full time in tech. He now returns to a center roughly twice a year.
What is vipassana.cool and how is it related to dhamma.org?
Vipassana.cool is Matthew Diakonov's unofficial companion site to dhamma.org. It covers what the official site does not: day-by-day personal experience, honest FAQ answers, a preparation and packing guide, a scientific evidence roundup, and a free Practice Buddy matching program. The site is explicit that it is not affiliated with the Vipassana Research Institute.
What is Practice Buddy and does a human actually do the matching?
Practice Buddy pairs two old Vipassana students for daily accountability sitting over Google Meet. A human does the matching. Matthew personally reviews every signup (timezone, sit time, duration, old-student status, years of practice) and runs a CLI tool he wrote, scripts/matching.mjs, to send each pair. The program is free and runs on donation.
How does matching.mjs actually work?
matching.mjs is a single Node.js file with five commands: stats (status snapshot), find (viable pairs), send <idA> <idB> (one pair), send-batch (a hand-edited array of pairs), and verify (DB and email status check). Matthew edits the BATCH array at the top of the file with named pairs like 'Nahïl + Greta' and then runs send-batch from the terminal. There is no automated matching engine.
How long has Matthew Diakonov been practicing daily?
Over 950 days of unbroken daily practice as of April 2026. He typically sits 45 to 60 minutes in the morning and four to five evenings per week, following the standard Goenka two-hour-a-day recommendation for old students.
Why does Matthew write about Vipassana?
He built vipassana.cool as the resource he wished existed before his first course. Before Vipassana, he had not taken a single vacation in eight years and worked seven days a week. After six courses and 950+ days of practice, the site is his way of compiling the honest, practical, non-official information most first-time students are looking for but cannot find on dhamma.org.
Where can I find Matthew Diakonov's personal work outside Vipassana?
His engineering work is at m13v.com and on GitHub at github.com/m13v. He has shipped 20+ products, won three hackathons, and had a startup exit. The Vipassana work at vipassana.cool is a separate public-good project, not a commercial product.
Want Matthew to match you with a sitting partner?
Free. Human-matched. Google Meet sessions every morning with an old student in a compatible timezone. The same CLI you read about on this page is how your pair gets sent.
Find a Practice Buddy