Hi there!

Who I am

I’ve spent my whole career at the intersection of design and technology. Ad agencies, newsrooms, a photo agency. Originally a graphic designer, designer, and photographer — Adobe Creative Cloud is my second home. For a while I also made electronic music — produced in Ableton, released a few tracks on SoundCloud and Beatport. Drop me a line if you want the link. It still pulls me in sometimes.

These days I work in the non-profit sector as a marketing expert. We focus on work with at-risk groups — meaningful work that keeps me going. And in the evenings? In the evenings I build things with AI.

25 years of design and the web

This isn’t a story about seeing code for the first time. I’ve been in the field for 25+ years — graphics, DTP, logos, print, merch, websites. If it can be seen or printed, I’ve probably had a hand in it. I’ve been building websites since 2000 — HTML, CSS, PHP basics, MySQL, piles of WordPress sites, Wix, custom builds. I designed and architected; for heavier backend work I’d partner with developers or hire them. That’s how it worked for years: I’d handle concept, UX, and visuals; a pro would code.

Then Claude arrived

And suddenly the “backend pro” was sitting in my terminal. I tried the free tier, hit the limit in an hour, bought Pro, and realised that things I used to outsource I can now do myself. Not because I learned to code overnight — but because Claude understands what I want, and I understand what it gives me back. 25 years of web experience + AI = a different league.

I wrote the full story in the article From free tier to dependency.

Today my laptop is a clean developer setup — Docker, Warp, Cursor, Figma, Raycast — and I do most things myself. Claude Code in the terminal, vibe coding, iteration. This site is living proof.

What I build

• airepublic.cz — this site. Next.js 15, TypeScript, Tailwind v4, pixel mascot. A showcase of what you can build with AI.
• CARFAST.cz — a car marketplace platform with AI-driven imports, 7 scrapers, 4 languages. Custom PHP, zero dependencies. Technical breakdown here.
• More projects are piling up faster than I can write articles about them.

Off screen

I ride mountain bikes. Trails, downhill, pumptracks, bike parks — the muddier, the better. Prague and its surroundings have surprisingly good trails, and I know almost all of them.

Why airepublic.cz

Because AI changed how I work. As a designer, I spent my whole life creating visually — now I create technically too. And I want to write about it, honestly, without marketing fluff. Reviews of tools I actually tested. How-tos I actually used. Projects I actually built.

No influencer, no guru. Just a guy who discovered Claude a month ago and now can’t imagine life without it.

Contact

Got a question, a collaboration idea, or just want to say hi? pavel@leadforge.cz