Aakaash
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01 Front-end developer & UI/UX designer

Front-end developer and UI/UX designer building interfaces people want to keep open.

Explore the workGet in touch

Open for new projects

02 About

Design and code, seen through one lens.

I’m Aakaash, a front-end developer and UI/UX designer from Tamil Nadu, India. I work across the whole surface of a product: the visual design, the interaction, and the code that makes it fast.

Most of what I build lives in the browser. iWeb, a macOS-style new tab for Chrome, grew from a small HTML project into a React extension with live widgets, a Markets app, a music player and its own release pipeline. Alongside it I’ve built peer-to-peer file sharing, image tools and WebGL landing pages.

My principle is simple: professional ethics and attention to detail make the difference between a website and an experience someone remembers.

Web development

Websites and web apps that embody the business behind them: fast, responsive and built with modern front-end tooling.

UI/UX design

Intuitive, distinctive interfaces designed in Figma and carried through to code without losing the detail.

03 Selected work

Five things I built, each in its own orbit.

Every project is an object you can visit. Scroll to fly between them, or open a case file for the full story.

01 / 05

iWeb

Chrome extension · React

A macOS-style new tab for Chrome: a personal dashboard with live widgets, a Spotlight launcher, a Markets app and a music player.

  • React 19
  • Vite
  • Manifest V3
  • IndexedDB
  • Web Workers
  • Vercel Functions
Website Source
02 / 05

CutThatOut

In-browser AI tool · React

An AI background remover that runs entirely in the browser, so images never leave the device, with brushes to retouch the result by hand.

  • React 19
  • React Compiler
  • Vite
  • Tailwind v4
  • ONNX Runtime Web
  • WebGPU
Live Source
03 / 05

Sprintora

Peer-to-peer web app · React

Peer-to-peer file sharing and chat in the browser. Files go directly from one device to the other, with nothing stored on a server.

  • React
  • Vite
  • PeerJS (WebRTC)
  • Ant Design
Live Source
04 / 05

WanderLog

Web & desktop app · React + Electron

A travel diary and itinerary planner that runs on the web and as a desktop app from one codebase.

  • React 19
  • Vite
  • Electron
  • Firebase Auth
  • Firestore
  • Tiptap
Live Source
05 / 05

Diskette

Notes app · React + Firebase

A Markdown notes app with search and archiving that exports any note to PDF, Word, Markdown or plain text.

  • React
  • Vite
  • MUI
  • Firebase
  • Firestore
  • react-pdf
Live Source

Also in the archive

04 Skills

A constellation of tools.

Grouped by what they do. Point at one to find its star.

Languages

  • JavaScript (ES6+)
  • TypeScript
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • SCSS

Front-end

  • React
  • Vite
  • Astro
  • Tailwind CSS
  • MUI
  • Ant Design

Motion & 3D

  • GSAP
  • Three.js
  • Framer Motion
  • Lenis
  • Locomotive Scroll

Browser platform

  • Chrome Extensions (MV3)
  • IndexedDB
  • Web Workers
  • WebRTC / PeerJS
  • WebGPU / ONNX Runtime
  • File System Access API
  • Electron

Backend & cloud

  • Firebase
  • Firestore
  • Vercel Functions
  • Vercel
  • Netlify

Tooling & practice

  • Git & GitHub
  • GitHub Actions
  • Vitest
  • Lighthouse
  • Webpack
  • Babel

Design

  • Figma
  • UI/UX design
  • Design systems

Bright stars are tools used in the projects above; dimmer ones are part of my wider toolkit.

05 Journey

From a homepage to an observatory.

  1. Joined GitHub

    Opened github.com/2k-Aakaash and started publishing work in public.

  2. iWeb begins

    A personalised homepage in vanilla JavaScript: weather, notes, music and a search bar.

  3. Sprintora

    Peer-to-peer file sharing over WebRTC, rebuilt across three versions during 2024.

  4. First portfolio

    Designed and launched the first version of this site.

  5. Diskette

    A Firebase-backed Markdown notes app with PDF and Word export.

  6. WanderLog

    A travel diary for web and desktop with Electron and Firestore.

  7. CutThatOut

    In-browser AI background removal on WebGPU with hand-written inpainting.

  8. iWeb, rebuilt in React

    A full extension with widgets, a Markets app, a self-updater and automated releases.

  9. This observatory

    The portfolio, rebuilt as an explorable 3D world.

06 Contact

Up for a chat?
Let’s talk.

Tell me about the product, the brand or the idea. I reply to every message.

Email meBook a 15-minute call

Chrome extension · React

iWeb

A macOS-style new tab for Chrome: a personal dashboard with live widgets, a Spotlight launcher, a Markets app and a music player.

iWeb new tab dashboard with clock, search and widgets over a wallpaper

The problem

The default new tab is a blank page and a search box. iWeb turns it into a calm, useful home screen without sending anyone to another app.

My role

Design, development and release engineering

Key features

  • Smart Stack widgets for weather, currency, gold & silver and Indian markets
  • Spotlight (Ctrl+K) with a hybrid FlexSearch + Fuse engine in a web worker and inline answers
  • Markets app: NSE/BSE watchlist and charts through a validated, CDN-cached Yahoo Finance proxy
  • Unsplash wallpapers through a server-side proxy, plus a local music player with a Dynamic Island

Technical challenges

  • Unpacked extensions cannot update themselves, so iWeb ships its own updater: it reads the latest GitHub release, verifies the zip’s SHA-256 and writes the files through the File System Access API.
  • A daily wallpaper quota that has to hold across many open tabs, enforced inside a single IndexedDB transaction.
  • A CI pipeline that tests, versions from commit messages, builds, checksums and publishes a GitHub release on every push.

Outcomes

  • Grew from a vanilla JS homepage (started July 2023) into a React extension with 19 test files
  • Released automatically to github.com/2k-Aakaash/iWeb

Stack

  • React 19
  • Vite
  • Manifest V3
  • IndexedDB
  • Web Workers
  • Vercel Functions
  • GitHub Actions
  • Vitest
Website Source Releases

In-browser AI tool · React

CutThatOut

An AI background remover that runs entirely in the browser, so images never leave the device, with brushes to retouch the result by hand.

The problem

Most background removers upload your photos to a server. CutThatOut runs the model locally and still gives precise manual control.

My role

Design and development

Key features

  • Background removal on the GPU (WebGPU) with an automatic CPU fallback and model preloading
  • A WebGPU capability tester that detects the adapter and GPU tier
  • Erase, recover and inpaint brushes, with a hand-written Telea-style inpainting routine
  • Undo/redo history (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y), zoom and pan canvas, and a layer dock

Technical challenges

  • Choosing between WebGPU and CPU at runtime and avoiding races while the model downloads.
  • Pixel-level canvas work for the brushes and inpainting without blocking the interface.

Stack

  • React 19
  • React Compiler
  • Vite
  • Tailwind v4
  • ONNX Runtime Web
  • WebGPU
Live Source

Peer-to-peer web app · React

Sprintora

Peer-to-peer file sharing and chat in the browser. Files go directly from one device to the other, with nothing stored on a server.

Sprintora file sharing interface

The problem

Sending a file to the person next to you shouldn’t need an upload, an account or a cloud drive.

My role

Design and development

Key features

  • Connect with a generated peer ID and approve incoming connections
  • Per-file consent: the receiver accepts or rejects, and the sender is told either way
  • Accepted files arrive as downloadable blobs, with transfer progress
  • A chat sidebar alongside the transfer

Technical challenges

  • Coordinating connection, consent and transfer state between two peers in real time.

Outcomes

  • Iterated across three versions (New-Sprintora, Test-Sprintora, Sprintora) during 2024

Stack

  • React
  • Vite
  • PeerJS (WebRTC)
  • Ant Design
Live Source

Web & desktop app · React + Electron

WanderLog

A travel diary and itinerary planner that runs on the web and as a desktop app from one codebase.

The problem

Travel notes end up scattered across apps. WanderLog keeps diaries and itineraries together, online or on the desktop.

My role

Design and development (in active development)

Key features

  • Rich-text diary editor and itinerary pages
  • Google and email/password sign-in, with diaries stored per user in Firestore
  • Encrypted .wl export and import for backups
  • A theme system shared by the web and desktop builds

Technical challenges

  • Shipping one React codebase to both the browser and an Electron desktop build.

Stack

  • React 19
  • Vite
  • Electron
  • Firebase Auth
  • Firestore
  • Tiptap
  • MUI
  • Tailwind v4
Live Source

Notes app · React + Firebase

Diskette

A Markdown notes app with search and archiving that exports any note to PDF, Word, Markdown or plain text.

The problem

Notes are only useful if they can leave the app. Diskette writes in Markdown and exports to the formats people actually send.

My role

Design and development

Key features

  • Create, edit, archive and search Markdown notes
  • Export to PDF, DOCX, MD and TXT
  • Delete confirmation, profile modal and theming
  • Firestore security rules and Firebase Hosting CI

Technical challenges

  • Generating PDF and Word documents in the browser from Markdown content.

Stack

  • React
  • Vite
  • MUI
  • Firebase
  • Firestore
  • react-pdf
  • docx
Live Source