Recent content on Igor Varyvoda
There’s a folder on my machine called skills . If you opened it cold you’d think it was documentation: how to commit on a shared branch, how to run a bug-fix loop, how to audit a codebase. Neatly structured, imperative voice, the works. It is not documentation. It is a burn ward. Every rule in that folder is a funeral for a specific incident, and I can name the deceased. One of the…
1 Aug 2026 · doctrine written 2 Jul · sequel to Two theories of a programmer
A few days ago I opened earendil.com and forgot why I came. Behind the landing page there’s a live fragment shader: a raymarched ocean rolling under a night sky, stars, waves, the whole thing computed per pixel while you read.
Image work gets messy fast: formats, responsive markup, LCP hints, CDNs, video delivery, 360 spins, product galleries, API operations, and whatever the browser decides to do with all of it. This repository packages that knowledge into eight focused skills for AI coding agents, from a no-dependency page audit through Sirv APIs, Studio workflows, Media Viewer, Dynamic Imaging, video optimization,…
I wanted the useful parts of an agent workflow separated properly: one model understands the codebase and writes the plan, Codex handles the implementation, and independent reviewers try to break the result. Each plan runs in an isolated git worktree with browser tooling removed, constrained resources, focused verification, and explicit review gates. The skill never merges or pushes the result.…
A few days ago I wrote about two theories of a programmer : the old one, where a programmer types the code they thought of, and the new one, where a programmer exercises editorial judgment over a fleet that types. That post was deliberately about the theory . This one is about a concrete, open-source, 100%-shell-script piece of the practice. improve-codex is an agent skill I extracted from my…
In 2019 I wrote a guide to image SEO for e-commerce . It did well, it ranked, and by the standards of the time it was good advice. Seven years is an eternity in search. So I went back through the old article, line by line, and audited every claim against how images actually get discovered in 2026. This post is the result: what held up, what quietly died, and what’s genuinely new.
It started over a beer Some coworkers were visiting me in Herceg Novi, Montenegro. Over a beer the conversation drifted to AI — what it could actually build now, not what the keynotes promised — and at some point I told the table: I’m going to build this in a day.
2 Jul 2026 · data: 23 Mar–2 Jul · one repo, three contributors, every commit counted
I needed a queue I could trust On 5 March 2026 I needed a task board that Veniamin and I would actually use for Sirv Studio . Enough structure to stop work disappearing into chats and terminal windows. The first version had a pinned backlog and GitHub login.
Master the languages of the Balkans with spaced repetition—the proven method that helps you remember 8,000+ words like a native speaker. Learn Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin
I wanted less bookkeeping Most finance trackers work perfectly if you enjoy entering every purchase by hand. I do not. If recording a coffee takes longer than buying it, the system has already lost. I built BudJet because I wanted a clear view of my money without turning expense tracking into a second job. The basic rule is simple: capture spending from the evidence that already exists, then make…
Start with a sentence, not a form Most travel planners begin by making you fill in a small tax return. Travel Bot starts with a conversation. Tell it you want five days in Tokyo, a cheap weekend somewhere warm, or quiet places in Paris that are not the same five tourist traps. It turns that into a day-by-day itinerary, then lets you keep talking until the plan stops being generic and starts…
My latest project is Sirv Experts , a directory of professionals proficient with Sirv that we can vouch for. The project is powered by Nuxt and has some tricky parts about it, like an interactive map of experts closest to you , a portfolio showcase of each expert, and lots of images all over the website. It’s a perfect project to test Sirv’s performance and see how it can be optimized…
The problem Good product media is specialised work. A normal freelancer marketplace gives you thousands of profiles and very little confidence that anyone has actually shot a 360 spin, prepared a 3D model, or built a proper product viewer. Sirv users kept needing photographers, retouchers, videographers, 3D artists, equipment suppliers, designers, and developers. The useful people existed. Finding…
Russia is waging an unprovoked and vicious war against Ukraine. Millions of people got displaced, tens of thousands of people lost their loved ones and once beautiful Ukrainian cities are getting razed to the ground. Barbaric Russian occupiers are facing fierce resistance from Ukrainians, who are not willing to lose their independence, culture, national identity and their lives to pathetic Russian…
A curated list of resources to help Ukraine
The problem is too much choice Travel sites are very good at selling you a hotel after you already know where you are going. They are less useful when the entire problem is: where the hell should I go? Earth Roulette starts there. Push the button and it gives you a place you might never have searched for yourself. The randomness is not a gimmick bolted onto a booking engine. It is the point.
The original article was posted on Sirv’s blog In 2020, e‐commerce has become more important than ever; thousands of businesses had to transition to selling online simply to survive. The platform that embraced most of them was Shopify. Shopify’s popularity is no surprise. Building your own, scalable, online store with hundreds of built-in features is a breeze with Shopify. The only thing…
Why it exists Video downloaders have a special talent for making a basic job feel suspicious. Five fake download buttons, three pop-ups, a browser notification request, and somewhere underneath it all there might be the actual file. I wanted the opposite. Paste a link, get the MP4, leave. No account. No ceremony. No need to explain to your antivirus why you clicked the large green button. What it…
Update, July 2026: I re-audited every piece of advice in this guide, seven years on — what survived, what died, and what changed. Read the follow-up: Image SEO in 2026: Everything That Changed Since 2019 . The original article was posted on Sirv’s blog Have these questions ever crossed your mind? What is image SEO? How can I rank product images in Google Image search? What is the most…
The original article was posted on Sirv’s blog Personalization has become one of the hottest marketing trends. Nowadays, shoppers want not only products – they want better experiences. That’s what makes them come back for more.
Hey, I’m Igor. Made in Ukraine, based in Montenegro. I build products. I enjoy building shit and promoting it. That’s what I’ve been doing at Sirv for the last decade—mostly promoting, until I decided to build Sirv AI Studio . Outside work, I build tools that solve my own problems : travel discovery, personal finance, language learning, video downloads, and whatever else…