AI LAB · HUMAN-AI COLLABORATION & CAREER ENGINE
Beyond AI Slop: Building a Portfolio & Career Engine
A study in human-plus-AI craft—combining non-cringe generative art direction, a lean zero-bloat architecture, and a private back-office engine for tailored job pitches.
Why I Built It
Using AI on a heavily content-driven site usually results in generic prose and uncanny-valley visuals. I wanted to prove that with tight human art direction and editorial discipline, AI can help build a deeply personal site—while doubling as an active system to power my job search.
What It Actually Is
What visitors see is a fast, static-first portfolio with a live Role-Fit Evaluator. Underneath, running on Firebase Cloud Functions, is a private career command centre: an engine that analyses job specs and generates tailored CVs, custom company pitch pages, and slide decks—tracked via custom, cookie-free telemetry.
Key Craft & Architectural Decisions
- Fighting "AI Slop" in Words and Imagery: AI defaults to buzzword soup and generic glossy illustrations. It took rigorous human-in-the-loop iteration to strip the copy back to my real voice, and a strict prompt grammar to lock in a consistent, non-cringe isometric risograph illustration style across every card.
- A Full Application Engine, Not Just a Brochure: Rather than manually tweaking documents for every role, I built an admin pipeline (shown above) that maps my structured career history against a target role—spinning up bespoke pitch URLs, tailored CVs, and presentation decks on demand.
- Opinionated, Low-Dependency Engineering: I deliberately avoided heavy frontend frameworks and third-party bloat. The site uses minimal dependencies, deploys automatically via GitHub Actions, and runs custom cookie-free analytics so visitors never get hit with a GDPR consent banner.
“AI is a terrible creative director, but an incredible production partner. The magic happens when you pair opinionated human taste and lean architecture with agentic speed.”