Design. Code. Deploy. One author.
I'm Norbert Kovalčín — a digital solutions architect based in Prešov, Slovakia. I've shipped software on the public web for seventeen years — long enough to have rewritten my own stack four times and to have stopped apologising for it.
I started in 2009 with Joomla and jQuery because that's what paid. Moved to Laravel and early React when that's what paid better. Now I run a Next.js 16 / Postgres / Drizzle default for new builds and a Laravel + Filament default for operations-heavy clients — because boring technology, carefully chosen, is how small teams outrun bigger ones.
I work solo by design. One person handles the design, the code, the deploy, and the Sunday-night fire alarm. Fewer handoffs, fewer 4px decisions lost in translation, one signature across every surface. When a client needs a team of ten, I tell them honestly — and point them at the three agencies I trust to do that well.
I run three of my own products alongside client work — Faborino (e-commerce), Conseto (growth platform), and Kovrin (open-source AI safety). Two in active build, one in OSS maintenance. They exist partly because I wanted them to exist, partly because every feature I ship for clients gets battle-tested on my own properties first.
Built in Europe — the cultivated middle. Working with teams across the EU, the UK, and the US East Coast. Available for 1-2 new engagements per quarter — see the slot bar at the top for current capacity.
Not the frontier's move-fast-break-things. Not the let-the-user-sort-it-out race to the bottom. European engineering means quality that holds up, rights that travel with the product, and a discipline that treats the user as a person, not a data point.
EU law, GDPR, EAA, accessibility directives — not compliance theatre, baseline discipline. The product survives an audit because it was built to.
Consent-first, no dark patterns, a real unsubscribe that actually unsubscribes. Citizen rights are a product requirement, not a legal afterthought.
Freedom of the citizen, sovereignty of the data, privacy by default. The values predate the regulation — the regulation just wrote them down.
Cultivated, not cowboy. Seventeen years of European engineering discipline — the same tradition that built the Gotthard tunnel and the Eiffel Tower, applied to software that ships weekly.
No account-manager telephone game. The person designing is the person coding.
Twelve-week rewrites are how projects die. Small commits, fast feedback, working production after week two.
Design systems that survive a year start with primitives. Tokens first, components second, pages third.
Observability, backups, documentation — on day one, not phase two.
Boring technology, carefully chosen, wins. I'll pick Laravel over Next.js if your team is Laravel-shaped.
Fewer parallel projects, deeper work. I run 2-3 active build engagements at any time, not 8.
I built my first websites at twelve — restaurant menus, music-club pages, the kind of HTML you write with three open tabs of W3Schools. Paid work started later.
First paid Joomla + jQuery builds for SK restaurants, clubs, and small e-commerce shops.
Brand identity projects for restaurants, hotels, music venues. Logos, print, and early CMS-driven web.
Next.js, Laravel, Postgres. First production SaaS work — moved from agency-style delivery to long-running engagements.
Multi-year retainer engagements replace one-off project gigs. Same operator end-to-end on every build.
First public OSS push — Kovrin agent-safety framework lands on GitHub, plus a handful of MCP servers shipped under nkovalcin/.
Three own products in the same year — Faborino (EU Montessori e-commerce) launches, Conseto (site-growth platform) goes public, Kovrin hits v1.0. Plus this site, v3 rebuild.
The same three clients featured on the homepage — full case write-ups live on /work.
Our experience at ERESfacility, and mine personally as managing director, with Norbert has been entirely positive. Highly professional approach, responsible and accommodating when meeting agreed deadlines. The price for his work was very acceptable for our company. Our ERESfacility portal gives our clients a perfect 24/7 overview of the outsourced facility-management services we provide. It positions us in an entirely different place relative to the competition. Having seen similar portals, I can say ours is unique. I warmly recommend the programming services provided by Norbert Kovalčín.
Dr. Ján PavlisManaging Director · ERESfacility s.r.o.He immediately grasped my vision and offered expert advice that pushed the result to a higher level. The overall experience was outstanding. I recommend his services without reservation.
Leo SzaboOwner · ÉLIO Caffè & BistroWhat started as an app for AI postcard analysis grew into an all-in-one platform that helps us build our brand. I’m glad I chose Norbert. He turned a basic idea into a masterpiece.
Václav KovářFounder · BidBoxSame rhythm across every engagement. Tap a step for detail.
One call, three sharp questions, one architecture proposal. I qualify the fit before anyone commits.
Discovery sprint (1-2 weeks) produces: problem framing + user map, stack + architecture decision, scoped roadmap with estimates, working prototype where it adds value.
Small commits, fast feedback. Production-grade from day one: observability, backups, docs.
Milestone-based. Design + code in the same hands, so no telephone-game loss between surface and system. Staging deploys from commit 0.
Launch with monitoring wired, CI green, rollback plan ready. No 'we'll fix it in the next sprint.'
Vercel preview → production with DNS cutover runbook. Sentry + Vercel Analytics active before first real user touches it.
Retainer or hand-off, your call. Documented either way, so the next person knows what they're looking at.
Retainer: reserved hours/week, priority response, quarterly roadmap reviews. Hand-off: onboarding doc + architecture diagrams + 2 weeks of overlap.
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