Merijn van Wouden

Software developer / inventor of digital things professionally, and non-digital things outside of work. Zaandam, NL.
I love life and work is a large portion of my life, therefore I choose work that I love and believe in. A meaningful life should be a neverending quest to acquire more wisdom. I am constantly developing; myself, my surroundings. I question everything; sometimes my ethical boundaries conflict with commercial interests or climate/social related consequences of work that I am offered, I always take this into account first. But when I am excited and believe in a project, I have an infinite supply of energy for it!

I've been building web apps since 2008. Some of them have been running for more than ten years.
I can offer fixed quotes with flexible scope, and hourly rates for continuous work during which I can always provide time estimates per feature.

I really love UX puzzles, especially when building tools that other people use daily.

My strongest soft skills I would say are about ideation: brainstorms during concept stages, thinking outside the box. I'm quick to adapt to anything new. Taking ownership of the project I am working on.

Tools I LOVE SVELTE AND CONVEX!! I would name my children Svelte and Convex if that were allowed.
But usually my backends are Node-ish. Fluent in PHP but it's more a thing of the past.
Very familiar with React/Vue/etc.. but did I mention I love SVELTE?
I also build blockchain applications and smart contracts, but do not take on work for proof-of-work chains that consume massive amounts of energy. I like Hedera.

I strive to use mostly local LLMs;
and to work 1-2 hours per day without AI assistance to preserve brain health.

Languages Dutch and English daily. Russian fluent. German and French reading. Turkish, learning.

If you want to work together, tell me why you're excited about it, and try to make me excited as well. That's my driving force.

Email me at m [at] hacktis.ch.

What I can help with

Technologies I work with
Frontend
Backend and data
Blockchain and smart contracts

I do not take on work for proof-of-work chains.

Integrations and commerce
Mobile and deployment
AI applications

Model APIs, agent workflows and prompt versioning. I prefer local models where they fit.

Earlier work

Much of my older work; PHP also comes up in current Shopware maintenance.

Timeline

  1. ⟶ now Guidesty group travel planner
  2. ⟶ now Kwantor employee participation, funding rounds
  3. ⟶ now Taxi Haarlem Service taxi booking app and dispatch system
  4. ⟶ now Morgen is Nu holistic health webshop
  5. ThuiszorgInHolland care-worker app connected to AFAS
  6. ⟶ UpLinked LinkedIn content automation
  7. Multihaarden fireplace webshop
  8. ⟶ SUYE digital certificates for physical art
  9. ⟶ WEYU NFT creator tool, launchpad & marketplace
  10. SPJ financial & corporate communication
  11. ⟶ Handlefy real life 'Dropbox'
  12. Naampie using Tinder UX to find the best baby name
  13. ⟶ AllMusic intuitive discovery for library music label
  14. Deukweg easy & fast car repairs
  15. ⟶ MijnOefening physiotherapist + patient exercise app
  16. ⟶ a corporate site built around a tile grid
  17. ⟶ Evenses booking software for an entertainment agency
  18. Salt a magazine site with a subscriber side
  19. ⟶ MyAdbooker choosing advertising screens on a map
  20. ⟶ Full stack web developer
  21. ⟶ University of Amsterdam Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence
  22. 🐣

Code

Commits last year 20262025202420232022202120202019

1,024 contributions · longest run 9 days · current run 3 days

Languages

By bytes across 7 public repositories, 204 kB in all, forks and archived left out.

  • JavaScript 57%
  • Python 26%
  • Svelte 8%
  • HTML 3%
  • Shell 2%

and 2 more

Repositories

  • mailcow-status-tracker ★ 7 Track delivery status of outgoing Mailcow emails by checking the Postfix logs through the Mailcow API. JavaScript · pushed
  • next-zod-api ★ 6 Simplify Next.js App Router endpoints, with Zod schema validation TypeScript · pushed
  • media-tunnel ★ 5 Self-hosted on-the-fly image optimization and cropping on a NodeJS backend JavaScript · pushed
  • icloud-offload ★ 3 Backup media to a cutoff date to your machine and delete them from your iCloud to take back control over your storage use. Python · pushed
  • solwrap ★ 3 Inline solidity imports from node_modules (e.g. from @openzeppelin/contracts) JavaScript · pushed
  • trapcalculator ★ 2 A simple calculator to find the dimension table of stairs' slingers (was needed for personal use, it's in dutch) Svelte · pushed
  • boxolino ★ 1 Game by Simon (9 years old) and Claude JavaScript · pushed