coding is the new knitting

Hi, I'm Oli.

I lead software engineering teams, and I build useful apps plus small web experiments for the pure joy of making things.

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A little about me

I was born in the seventies and grew up in Germany at a time when home computers started to shape how people think and create. From the C64 and Amiga to PCs and Macs, technology was always part of my daily life. I moved early into smartphones and smart devices, driven by curiosity and a strong interest in how things work.

I am a tech enthusiast and a nerd at heart. I enjoy building useful applications and small experimental web games, often as prototypes to explore ideas fast and learn from them. For me, software is both a craft and a playground.

Professionally, I work as a software engineering team lead. My main focus is to build high throughput teams by creating an environment that supports autonomy, trust, and individual growth. I have experience across startups, mid size companies, and corporate environments, which helps me adapt my leadership style to different contexts.

At my core, I believe in people. In their curiosity, their good intentions, and their ability to grow when given trust. I believe in people first, in trust over control and curiosity over certainty. I try to move through my work and everyday life with humility, kindness, and an open mind, because meaningful things are built where people feel respected, trusted, and seen.

Things I've built

All projects
Latest build

ID5 IRL Attendance App

A web app for collecting attendee information ahead of company offsites ("IRLs"). Admins (IRL team) configure an event once; employees sign in with Google SSO (restricted to @oglimmer.com) and submit attendance + travel details via a form with conditional logic. The app tracks non-responders, sends invitations + tz-aware reminders over email or Slack, logs all activity, and exports responses. Events can carry a cover image, and the admin activity timeline is filterable by participant vs. admin actions.

GoVueTypeScriptShellCSSGo Template
Web source code

Coding Agent - Self-Service Feature Development Platform

Self-service platform where authenticated users request features against configured GitHub repositories and an autonomous coding agent implements them end-to-end — with tests — opens a pull request, waits for the repository's GitHub Action review, and fixes the findings. It then auto-merges the approved PR, or — if the requester turns auto-merge off — stops at an approved, green PR and leaves the final merge to a human.

GoShellVueTypeScriptDocker

Trivia - Real-Time Multiplayer Trivia Game

A mobile-first, real-time trivia game where players upload a photo and a question, the host runs the round, everyone answers live, and scores are revealed with a podium finish. Live updates via WebSocket, time-bonus scoring, scheduled-start games, and optional magic-link email login so players can rejoin from any device.

Vue 3TypeScriptVitePiniaGo

Plugin Skill Hosting - Claude Code Plugin Marketplace

A self-hosted, token-gated Claude Code plugin marketplace for organizations to share plugins and skills. Authors edit skills via the web UI or a built-in MCP server, and the backend materialises every change into a bare git repo served over smart HTTP so updates are instantly available to every Claude Code user in the org.

Go 1.25chigitkitMCPVue 3

NIST Randomness Beacon - Verifiable Dice Rolls

A single-page Vue 3 app that turns a public NIST beacon pulse plus a user-chosen seed into a SHA-256 hash and maps it to fair dice rolls. Anyone can re-fetch the same pulse and recompute the hash to verify the result — no trust required.

Vue 3Web Crypto APISHA-256NIST BeaconGitHub Pages

Video Nicer - Video to MP4 Converter for macOS

A native macOS app that converts video files to MP4 using ffmpeg. Supports drag-and-drop, right-click Finder context menu, and "Open With" integration. Includes a Finder extension for seamless conversion without opening a separate window.

SwiftSwiftUImacOSffmpegHomebrew

From the blog

All writing

A cluster of Raspberry Pis

I run a bare-metal Kubernetes cluster on six Raspberry Pi nodes. It hosts my personal projects and doubles as a playground for cloud-native tooling.

6
Pi nodes
48 GB
total RAM
2
control plane
4
workers
Explore the cluster

Running services

  • Keycloak

    Identity and Access Management

  • Longhorn Persistent Storage

    Cloud native distributed block storage for Kubernetes

  • Traefik Ingress Controller

    Cloud Native Application Proxy