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Paul Bakaus

Paul Bakaus

Product engineer before it was cool.

Code, design, and product since jQuery UI. Now founder of Renaissance Geek, the company behind Impeccable.

See what I'm building Read the writing

I move between code, design, and product. I've been doing this since jQuery UI, through Chrome DevTools at Google, and now as founder of Renaissance Geek, the company behind Impeccable. I like building things right before they become obvious.

I'm driven by making AI work for everyone, not just developers, and by bringing curation and human judgment back to a web drowning in slop.

Read the mission

Now running

All projects

Impeccable

Impeccable teaches AI coding tools design: a shared design vocabulary, persistent project context, and quality checks that run inside your codebase. It started as an open source skill and is now the first product of Renaissance Geek, my new company backed by a16z.

Radiant

Radiant is a collection of 80+ production-ready WebGL shaders you can preview, customize, and drop into any web project. Zero dependencies, MIT licensed, works with any framework.

agent-reviews

Token-efficient, automated GitHub review workflows and bug fixing that understand your codebase.

burn-after-login

Solves authentication for AI browser agents. Analyzes your auth, creates dev-only login shortcuts, then self-destructs.

Writing

All writing
  1. Impeccable by Design 8 min
  2. Carving Shaders Out of Claude Code 5 min
  3. The Curse of 'Cursor for X' 4 min
  4. Why certain creators have fans and others don't 2 min
  5. Vibe Editing 2 min
  6. All writing 39 disks in the box

The story so far

Since 2007 I keep ending up where a new technology has arrived and its tools have not caught up.

The long version
  1. 2007 jQuery UI Creator The interaction library that brought drag and drop, sortable lists, and date pickers to the web.
  2. 2010 Aves Engine Co-founder, acquired by Zynga One of the first in-browser game engines, and the startup built around it.
  3. 2013 Chrome DevTools Google Product and developer relations for the tools web developers open every day.
  4. 2016 AMP & Web Stories Google Kickstarted developer relations for AMP, then evolved it into visual storytelling for the open web.
  5. 2019 Google for Creators Founder, Head of Creator Relations Started the sister organization to DevRel, focused on creators across the web.
  6. 2021 Koji Head of Creators Helped creators monetize and engage their audiences in new ways.
  7. 2022 Spotter EVP Product Built AI tools for YouTube creators at scale.
  8. 2024 Independent Fractional CPO, advisor Open source tools, talks, and writing. One of those tools, Impeccable, grew into a company.
  9. Now Renaissance Geek Founder Building Impeccable. Seed round led by a16z, bundled with the new GitHub Copilot app.

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