Matze Schmidbauer, Head of Platform & AI

Owned, not vibed.

I work out what a system should do and why, then build it with AI in the loop.

Projects

Svelte Meetup presentation navigator.berlin (opens in new tab)

2026, live

Talk at Svelte Society Berlin, Sep 2, 2026. The slides, spec-driven and agent-built like the project they describe.

Svelte
Animotion
Reveal.js

Svelte Meetup presentation navigator.berlin website (opens in new tab)

navigator.berlin

2026, live

Berlin's open data on one map: 74 datasets, a Kiez-Score and a Kiez-Finder. Spec-driven, agent-built, human-reviewed.

SvelteKit
TypeScript
MapLibre
PostgreSQL

rcllr

2026, live

One memory for Claude Code, Codex and other agents: Markdown notes in your own Git repo, one CLI, and an import of what each agent remembers on its own. Agents forget. rcllr recalls.

TypeScript
Node
Git
Markdown

Uncounted

2026, live

A Chrome extension that keeps your own visits out of Plausible Analytics, from the first pageview on. With developer tools to check a Plausible setup.

Svelte
TypeScript
Chrome Extension
Playwright

mmcp.dev

2026, retired

A memory MCP server for LLM agents. Promising prototype, shut down to focus.

SvelteKit
Node
TypeScript
Redis
PostgreSQL

Stimmungsschau

2025, retired

Party sentiment analysis of German TV news.

D'IGGY

2019, retired

High-efficiency tick repellent. Named after the dog.

Commercial photography

2008–2012, retired

Commercial advertising photographer.

Kontempora

2006, retired

Online print gallery for young photographers. Before Instagram existed.

How I build

Agents build it. I own it.

Owning a project means four jobs. How formal the plan gets depends on the project.

Analyze
I work out the problem, the users and the constraints before anything gets built.
Plan
- Full spec
  New products and unclear domains: brief, PRD, architecture, ADRs, UX, epics, stories.
- Handover note
  Known ground: goal, definition of done and decisions on one page.
Steer
I set the rules agents follow and correct course. Lint, type checks, tests and build run before every push.
Approve
- Code
  Always. No change merges unreviewed.
- Frontend and copy
  Generated UI and text need review more and more. I check them against rules I wrote for design, UX, semantics and language.

The spec is optional. Owning it is not.

About

People say they get inspired. I get obsessed.

I don't do casual interest. When something catches my attention, I read everything, take notes and end up with a knowledge base. It happened with open data. With music, cooking and keeping plants alive. With politics, climate change and my job. With my dog Iggy, who got a tick repellent named after him. And with being my dad's IT hotline, though that one chose me.

I don't consider myself a developer. Yes, on schmidbauer.dev. The domain was cheap.

Agents write my code. I decide what they build and why, set their rules and approve what ships. The code is theirs. The result is mine.

I have worked in digital for about twenty years. Code came first, then architecture, strategy and leading projects. When ChatGPT came out in late 2022, I got obsessed again. Today I'm Head of Platform & AI at mtc.berlin(opens in new tab), where that obsession is the job.

I'm really good at having ideas. Not so good at running them, as the retired projects above show. The next obsession has already started.