ai71
Slidez — AI Presentation Platform
Slidez, an AI-powered browser platform for creating, editing, and customizing structured presentations.
Built during my time at LocAI.ai / ai71.
- Role
- Software Engineer II contributing to architecture modernization, AI editor workflows, performance, testing, and secure delivery.
- System scope
- Structured slide editing, rich-text composition, AI generation and refinement, presentation themes, secure authentication, and presenter preparation workflows.
- Measured outcome
- Reduced page-load time by 50% and covered 70% of key flows with Playwright automation.
Product workflow
Editor workspace
Contribution
Worked on React-based editor workflows and structured content editing using Craft.js and Lexical.
Problem
Users needed to move from prompt to polished presentation without losing control over layout, structured editing, theme customization, AI assistance, and final content quality.
Contribution scope
- Conducted codebase review work to identify architectural bottlenecks, rendering inefficiencies, and areas where editor behavior needed clearer boundaries.
- Implemented editor architecture improvements using Craft.js and Lexical to support richer slide and text-editing workflows.
- Built AI-powered editing features including single-slide edits, full-presentation edits, AI co-pilot recommendations, and AI image-generation workflows.
- Designed RESTful Node.js and Express APIs supporting core platform workflows and frontend-to-backend integration.
- Migrated authentication from Clerk to a backend-driven JWT login and signup flow using HTTP-only cookie patterns.
- Delivered standard and custom theme capabilities, including light and dark presentation themes and enterprise-oriented brand customization.
- Collaborated across frontend, backend, AI, and product stakeholders to onboard teams onto the new editing system.
Constraints
- AI-generated content needed clear loading, editing, and failure states instead of feeling like a black box.
- The editor architecture needed to support both structured page composition and rich text editing without making the codebase brittle.
- Performance improvements had to happen while new AI and theme features were being shipped.
- Team adoption mattered because multiple functions needed to work confidently inside the new editing model.
Technical decisions
- Separated server state and client editing state with React Query and Zustand to keep complex editor interactions responsive.
- Evaluated Craft.js, Lexical, and Tiptap before implementing the editor foundation with Craft.js and Lexical.
- Reduced redundant network work through API-call optimization and caching patterns.
- Refactored navigation and rendering behavior to improve transitions, responsiveness, and page-load performance.
- Integrated Playwright automation into CI/CD and added security checks with Semgrep, OSV Scanner, and Yarn Audit.
- Moved authentication away from Clerk toward a backend-owned JWT flow to give the product more control over login, signup, and secure session handling.
Outcomes
- Reduced page load time by 50% through performance optimization, navigation refactoring, API-call improvements, and caching.
- Covered 70% of key flows with Playwright automation and integrated testing into CI/CD to reduce regressions.
- Rolled out AI-powered editing workflows, including single-slide editing, full-presentation editing, guided recommendations, and image generation.
- Strengthened product authentication by moving from Clerk to a backend JWT-based flow.
- Designed 8 standard presentation themes and custom theme support for enterprise brand styling.
- Improved maintainability, scalability, and user experience across the Slidez editor experience.
Technologies
ReactTypeScriptOpenAI APIsNode.jsExpressCraft.jsLexicalReact QueryZustandTailwind CSSStyled ComponentsPlaywrightVitestGitHub ActionsJWT authHTTP-only cookiesSemgrepOSV Scanner