I'm Ruslan Hrekov — a solo builder shipping production software with Claude at the keyboard and taste at the helm. I run a studio of one from the US. Five case studies shipped since March 2026, all with Claude, every one documented from spec to DEVLOG.
The register I care about is honesty. Every case study on this site links to commit hashes; every claim about scale points to a number I can defend; every one of the five shipped projects passed through the same spec-plan-DEVLOG loop before a single line landed in production.
My taste settles late in the process, not early. I'll rewrite a design token before I refactor a feature, and I'll kill a nice-looking abstraction the moment it starts hiding decisions. Claude does the typing. I do the pivots, the calls on what to lock down, and the parts that only matter when a user is watching.
Before shipping software with Claude I ran product design for investment, fintech, and e-commerce teams — B&G Canada, Flynaut in Charlotte, then Berlin Labs and PIMU Services out of Kharkiv, 2015 through early 2024. The taste came first; the compiler came second.
- 2026 — now
Solo studio · AI-collaborative software
Shipping five production case studies with Claude as pair. Every build ships spec + plan + DEVLOG. ShipLoop discipline as the operating system.
- 2022 — 2024
Full-stack engineering · remote
Next.js + Supabase + Stripe stacks for boutique clients — moonlighting builder work concurrent with the PIMU design day-job. Learned to measure everything and to trust commit hashes over screenshots.
- 2022 — 2023
Graphic designer · ITOMYCH STUDIO
Marketing-department contract in Kharkiv — social campaigns, presentations, and publication visuals, in parallel with the PIMU product-design day-job.
- 2021 — 2024
Product designer · PIMU Services
Investment products, e-commerce, and mobile builds for a Cyprus product team, remote from Kharkiv. Ran design-to-dev handoffs and sat on FE/BE hiring panels — the muscle that later made spec-first shipping feel natural.
- 2018 — 2021
Product designer · Berlin Labs
End-to-end research and design across web and mobile for investment products, done from Kharkiv. Where the shipping instinct started forming.
- 2016 — 2018
UX/UI designer · Flynaut, Charlotte NC
First US-market work. Learned early that a design only lives if the engineer holding it can defend it.
- 2015 — 2016
UX/UI designer · B&G Canada
Corporate and promotional sites for a Canadian studio — first commercial UX/UI role, coordinating specs directly with the technical team.
Right-sized model for the
decision on the table.
The interesting question isn’t which model is smartest — it’s which model matches the cost, latency, and reversibility of what you’re about to ship.
Angel five-stage pipeline · Noble locked-file authoring
Lexora audio pipeline · Fieldmark auth pivot
smm-factory comment replies · analytics summaries
See the portfolio meta case study for how routing decisions get made in practice.
The certs that
check the taste.
- 01
Ship spec-first
Nothing gets built without a spec, a plan, and a tasks file. The 20 minutes of writing saves a day of re-work every single time.
- 02
One decision at a time
Batching architectural choices is how you end up rewriting three of them at once. I pick, ship, review, then pick again.
- 03
Numbers over screenshots
A commit hash and a benchmark beat a slick demo. If the number isn't there, the claim isn't either.
- 04
Reduce-motion first, always
Every animation ships with a static fallback. Every canvas gates on hover-capability. The site works for the reader who needs it to be still.
Fractional engagement, or a full-time seat.
Both doors are open. Say what you’re after and I’ll reply within two business days.