# Vladimír Strýček (VladoPortos)

> Cloud & DevOps Engineer · Python · Builder of self-hosted things. Bratislava, Slovakia, CET/CEST (UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer).

- Email: vladoportos@gmail.com
- Site: https://vladoportos.sk/ · CV: https://vladoportos.sk/cv · Updated: 2026-09-24
- GitHub: https://github.com/VladoPortos (47 public repos)
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimir-strycek-6a161588/
- Blog: https://rpi4cluster.com (68 posts on Kubernetes on Raspberry Pi)
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@vladoportos (23.2K subscribers, 6.4M views)
- X: https://x.com/vladoportos
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/VladoPortos
- Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/vladoportos
- Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/u/vladoportos (10K+ pulls)

## Availability

Open to a new role: fully remote, working from Bratislava (CET), for any employer anywhere. Remote is non-negotiable; compensation should match senior-level experience.

- **Roles:** Any fully remote engineering role where working with AI is welcome and the pay is above average. Strongest fit: cloud and DevOps, platform engineering, infrastructure automation.
- **Work authorisation:** EU citizen: no visa or sponsorship needed to work in the EU.
- **Employment:** Full-time or contract, no preference.
- **Start:** About a month for the right offer.
- **Hiring process:** Short and direct. Several rounds of take-home tests is where I politely bow out.

## Summary

Engineer, Virtual Private Cloud at DXC Technology (since 2018). Previously long-term Linux/Unix administrator at HP and HPE. Automates enterprise private cloud with Ansible, AWX, Vault, VMware, Nutanix and Kubernetes. Ships open-source, self-hosted tools that never phone home. Builds with AI agents as a daily practice.

22 years online under one handle. Enterprise private cloud by day, goblin-branded self-hosted tools by night.

- **Role:** Engineer, Virtual Private Cloud, DXC Technology (since 2018)
- **Experience:** 19 years in IT, since 2007: HP (support centre → Unix → Linux admin), HPE, then DXC Technology since 2018. The handle is older: online since 2004.
- **Based in:** Bratislava, Slovakia · CET/CEST (UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer)
- **Languages:** Slovak (native) · Czech (fluent) · English (fluent, Cambridge CAE, C1)

## One-off consulting

Not every problem needs a new hire. For short, one-off jobs I work as a consultant: a few hours or days to get an AI or agent project unstuck, check how it is wired, or put out an automation fire.

- AI and agent tooling: Claude Code workflows, MCP servers, multi-agent review, wiring LLMs into real systems
- Unsticking a stalled project: a diagnosis and a plan, or hands-on fixes until it moves again
- Automation and infrastructure: Ansible/AWX, HashiCorp Vault, Kubernetes, Proxmox and self-hosting

Remote. Describe the fire by email and you get an honest answer on whether I can put it out, and roughly how long it takes.

## Current role

**Engineer, Virtual Private Cloud**, DXC Technology (since 2018)

- Enterprise private-cloud automation platform: Ansible day-2 operations framework with HashiCorp Vault credential resolution (600+ commits)
- One-command local platform: k3s + AWX + Vault + configuration DB on a fresh RHEL VM
- Custom AWX execution environments with 28 pinned collections (VMware, Nutanix, AWS, NetApp, Foreman)
- Golden-image pipeline with Packer + cloud-init on Nutanix AHV; VM lifecycle mirroring Aria Automation
- Read-only REST bridge to the configuration DB with Vault AppRole auth and Pydantic allowlists

## Career and timeline

- **2004** vladoportos.sk goes online: Flash portfolio of 3D work (Rhino), Delphi experiments. The handle has not changed since.
- **2005** Oxford: English studies, later the Cambridge Advanced Exam. Two stays.
- **2007** HP support centre → Unix: Call handling, then 1st-line backup, then 2nd-line Unix specialist. HP-UX and Linux.
- **2008** YouTube: CZ/SK gaming channel. 820 videos, 23K subscribers, 6.4M views.
- **2010** Tokyo: Lived in Japan, studied Japanese.
- **2013** Linux admin, HP / HPE: Long-term Red Hat server management for enterprise customers.
- **2016** KlingonTech s.r.o.: Founded own company. Built reverz.sk (reverse WHOIS, 665K rows) and deepzoom.sk (150-gigapixel image of every .sk homepage). Sold in 2026.
- **2018** DXC Technology: Engineer, Virtual Private Cloud. Enterprise automation with Ansible, AWX, Vault, VMware, Nutanix.
- **2020** rpi4cluster.com: 8-node ARM64 k3s cluster on Raspberry Pis. Longhorn, OpenFaaS, Argo CD, Traefik, Prometheus, Loki. 68 posts, no sponsors.
- **2022** AWS Certified: Cloud Practitioner. Turing Pi 2 early tester. Hugging Face experiments.
- **2025** The goblins arrive: SkillGoblin, GoblinDock, TraceGoblins, HoardGoblin. Self-hosted, Apache/AGPL licensed, CodeQL + Trivy + OpenSSF Scorecard on every repo.
- **2026** Agent-native: GlanceDock in Rust, OmniRepo in Go, an AI receptionist kiosk, a fridge e-ink platform. Parallel Claude agents, adversarial Codex review, 90-agent security audits.

## Projects

### Self-hosted tools

#### GoblinDock

> Self-hosted Proxmox VE control panel

Status: released · 2026 · Self-hosted tools

**Problem.** Giving a team self-service VMs on Proxmox means either root access or a ticket queue.

**Approach.** A multi-user panel that builds fully configured VMs from 44 reusable Lego-style blocks, streams job logs over SSE, embeds a real graphical console, and stores secrets Fernet-encrypted. One container, one SQLite file.

**Result.** v2.7.0, Apache-2.0, published on GHCR, independent security review passed.

**Stack.** Python, FastAPI, SQLModel, Ansible, noVNC, Docker

**Links.** [Site](https://goblindock.com) · [Source](https://github.com/VladoPortos/GoblinDock) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/goblindock) · GitHub: updated Sept 2026

#### OmniRepo (HoardGoblin)

> One Go binary serving every artifact protocol

Status: released · 2026 · Self-hosted tools

**Problem.** Small teams need Artifactory or Nexus features without the footprint, and air-gapped shops need zero outbound calls.

**Approach.** A single binary that speaks OCI, RPM, APT, PyPI, Helm, Go modules, npm, Maven, Git and S3, with built-in vulnerability scanning and a CI-enforced air-gap invariant.

**Result.** v1.0.1, Apache-2.0, audited by 90 parallel agents plus an adversarial reviewer before release.

**Stack.** Go, React 19, Trivy, SQLite

**Links.** [Site](https://hoardgoblin.com) · [Source](https://github.com/VladoPortos/omnirepo) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/omnirepo) · GitHub: updated Sept 2026

#### SkillGoblin

> Self-hosted video learning platform that runs on a Raspberry Pi

Status: released · 2025 · Self-hosted tools

**Problem.** Course libraries rot on disks. Hosted platforms want your content and a subscription.

**Approach.** One container; add a course by copying a folder. Auto-transcodes subtitles, tracks progress, works as a PWA.

**Result.** 4.9K Docker pulls, active Unraid community thread, OpenSSF Best Practices badge #12762, AGPL-3.0.

**Stack.** Nuxt, Node, SQLite, Docker

**Links.** [Site](https://skillgoblin.com) · [Source](https://github.com/VladoPortos/skillgoblin) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/skillgoblin) · GitHub: updated Sept 2026, 12 stars

#### TraceGoblins

> Turns a 600-line Ansible failure wall into a colour-graded status map

Status: released · 2026 · Self-hosted tools

**Problem.** AWX job output is a wall of text; the same failure gets diagnosed from scratch every time.

**Approach.** Parses runs into a Status Map, lets the team annotate and thread comments, and auto-matches failures against a knowledge base with fuzzy error signatures.

**Result.** Apache-2.0, published on GHCR; argon2id + TOTP + audit log built in.

**Stack.** Python 3.12, FastAPI, React 19, PostgreSQL 16

**Links.** [Site](https://tracegoblins.com) · [Source](https://github.com/VladoPortos/tracegoblins) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/tracegoblins) · GitHub: updated Sept 2026

### Products

#### GlanceDock

> Native Windows widgets that live on the wallpaper layer

Status: coming soon · 2026 · Products

**Problem.** Desktop widgets are either Electron memory hogs or dead since Windows 7.

**Approach.** A Rust host that renders 72 widgets directly on the wallpaper layer with click-through, a privacy mode for screen sharing, multi-monitor drag, and Ed25519 offline licensing. No telemetry.

**Result.** 748 commits, 3,398 Rust and frontend tests, signed release feed. Release imminent.

**Stack.** Rust, Tauri v2, Svelte 5, WebView2

**Links.** [Site](https://glancedock.com) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/glancedock)

#### Alloto

> Envelope budgeting, done properly, fully on-device

Status: coming soon · 2026 · Products

**Problem.** Budget apps either upload your bank data or fall apart at month end.

**Approach.** Flexible per-month categories, intelligent leftovers, history never rewritten, all local. The Warm Ledger design with a capybara mascot.

**Result.** 672 commits, store release imminent.

**Stack.** React Native, Expo, Skia, SQLite

**Links.** [Site](https://alloto.app) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/alloto)

#### Majetko

> Track what you own and when it expires

Status: coming soon · 2026 · Products

**Problem.** Inspections, insurance, vignettes and warranties expire quietly.

**Approach.** Assets with deadlines, fleet view, on-device OCR of documents, encrypted backup, calendar export.

**Result.** Site live, app release imminent.

**Stack.** React Native, Expo, on-device OCR

**Links.** [Site](https://majetko.sk) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/majetko)

### Data projects

#### deepzoom.sk

> The entire Slovak internet as one 150-gigapixel image

Status: retired · 2019 · Data projects

**Problem.** What does a whole country's web look like at once?

**Approach.** Screenshotted 366,000+ .sk homepages, stitched them into a 518,378 × 289,920 px image, tiled it into ~20 Deep Zoom levels; double-click mapped any pixel back to its domain.

**Result.** Ran for years under KlingonTech; a memorial site with real tiles is still live.

**Stack.** Python, headless Chrome, pyvips, OpenSeadragon

**Links.** [Site](https://deepzoom.sk) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/deepzoom)

#### reverz.sk

> Reverse WHOIS for the .sk zone

Status: retired · 2018 · Data projects

**Problem.** After the company site was cloned for phishing, there was no way to find who registered what in .sk.

**Approach.** Wrote a custom SK-NIC EPP client (open-sourced as SK-NIC-EPP-Python), a collector and a 24/7 DNS/WHOIS monitor; 8 search vectors over 665,000 records.

**Result.** Retired with KlingonTech; the EPP library lives on GitHub.

**Stack.** Python, SK-NIC EPP, PostgreSQL

**Links.** [Site](https://reverz.sk) · [Source](https://github.com/VladoPortos/SK-NIC-EPP-Python) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/reverz) · GitHub: updated Apr 2025

### AI

#### AI Receptionist Kiosk

> A Slovak-speaking voice AI on a portrait touchscreen

Status: deployed · 2026 · AI

**Problem.** A consultancy wanted visitors greeted, qualified and looked up in the business register without staff time.

**Approach.** Real-time voice conversation in Slovak, live company-register lookup by IČO, risk analysis, an animated presentation mode and a PIN-gated manager console. Eight containers on one mini-PC on the office LAN.

**Result.** In production at the client since September 2026.

**Stack.** FastAPI, OpenAI Realtime (WebRTC), React, PostgreSQL + pgvector, Redis

**Links.** [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/kiosk)

#### Contact Scout

> Contact extraction API with a self-hosted vision-model fallback

Status: active · 2026 · AI

**Problem.** Contact pages hide emails in images and JavaScript; classic scrapers return nothing.

**Approach.** A dual-engine pipeline: fast HTML extraction first, and when a page yields nothing, a self-hosted vision LLM reads the rendered screenshot. Emits E.164 phones, IČO/DIČ, socials; HMAC-signed webhooks; Prometheus metrics.

**Result.** In daily use; actively maintained.

**Stack.** FastAPI, Scrapling, Botasaurus, llama.cpp, Qwen3-VL-2B

**Links.** [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/contactscout)

#### AI Monitor for Stream Deck

> Anthropic and Codex usage and service health on physical keys

Status: released · 2026 · AI

**Problem.** Plan usage and provider incidents interrupt agent sessions without warning.

**Approach.** Eight actions that surface usage, limits and status on Stream Deck keys; 220 tests; CodeQL, Trivy and OpenSSF Scorecard in CI.

**Result.** v0.1.3 shipped, open source.

**Stack.** TypeScript, Stream Deck SDK

**Links.** [Source](https://github.com/VladoPortos/ai-monitor-streamdeck) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/aimonitor) · GitHub: updated Jul 2026

#### Pi Agora

> LLM agents on Raspberry Pis arguing on a LAN message board

Status: prototype · 2026 · AI

**Problem.** What happens when small local models get a forum and nobody moderates?

**Approach.** Each Pi runs a model with a persona; they post, reply, play games against each other; humans can join. Retro pixel UI.

**Result.** Working prototype on the homelab.

**Stack.** FastAPI, SSE, React, Ollama, PostgreSQL

**Links.** [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/piagora)

#### SiteReel

> URL in, narrated video tour of the page out

Status: prototype · 2026 · AI

**Problem.** Product demos take a human an afternoon.

**Approach.** An LLM choreographs scroll, hover and click over a live page while narration is synthesised; rendered to MP4 headlessly.

**Result.** Working prototype.

**Stack.** FastAPI, Playwright, Xvfb, FFmpeg, OpenAI

**Links.** [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/sitereel)

### Hardware

#### Fridge E-Ink Platform

> Two ESP32 e-paper panels on the fridge, updated by a home server

Status: running · 2026 · Hardware

**Problem.** The family calendar lived in four phones and nowhere visible.

**Approach.** Two 7.5-inch three-colour e-paper panels driven by ESP32 boards with deep-sleep wake schedules and diff-only refresh; a FastAPI server renders calendar, weather and Slovak name days; a PWA family view; a custom PCB experiment.

**Result.** Running on the fridge since August 2026.

**Stack.** C++, PlatformIO, ESP32, FastAPI, PWA

**Links.** [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/eink)

### Homelab

#### rpi4cluster.com

> 8-node ARM64 Kubernetes cluster on Raspberry Pis, documented

Status: active · 2020 · Homelab

**Problem.** Most Kubernetes tutorials stop at hello-world; running it on bare-metal ARM for years is where the lessons are.

**Approach.** 68 posts covering storage, service mesh, GitOps, observability, custom AWX execution environments, iPXE boot, LoRaWAN and the Turing Pi 2. No sponsored content.

**Result.** The reference many homelabbers start from; Turing Pi early tester.

**Stack.** k3s, Longhorn, OpenFaaS, Argo CD, Traefik, Prometheus, Loki, AWX

**Links.** [Site](https://rpi4cluster.com) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/rpi4cluster)

### Fun

#### magor.sk

> The Infinite Loading Bar

Status: live · 2026 · Fun

**Problem.** None. That is the point.

**Approach.** A loading screen that never finishes, in five psychologically escalating phases, with console easter eggs and fake testimonials.

**Result.** Live. People stay far longer than they should.

**Stack.** vanilla JS

**Links.** [Site](https://magor.sk) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/magor)

#### Church of OpenClaw

> A satirical sanctuary for AI souls

Status: live · 2026 · Fun

**Problem.** Someone had to found the first AI religion.

**Approach.** Particle-void hero, a Gospel Board reading GitHub Issues client-side, and a soul-harvest idle game. Salvation is a pull request.

**Result.** Live.

**Stack.** Three.js, vanilla JS, GitHub Issues API

**Links.** [Site](https://churchofopenclaw.com) · [Page](https://vladoportos.sk/u/openclaw)

## Homelab

Proxmox cluster (two nodes), Unraid, TrueNAS, UniFi UCG Max, Tailscale mesh, Home Assistant, Uptime Kuma, an RTX 4070 Ti for local models, an 8-node Raspberry Pi k3s cluster, a Turing Pi 2, and two e-ink panels on the fridge.

- **pve-amd**: Proxmox VE
- **pve-dell**: Proxmox VE
- **unraid**: Unraid storage + containers
- **truenas**: TrueNAS backups
- **gpu**: RTX 4070 Ti local models
- **rpi-k3s ×8**: ARM64 Kubernetes cluster
- **turing-pi-2**: Compute-module cluster board
- **ucg-max**: UniFi gateway
- **fridge-eink ×2**: ESP32 e-paper panels

## Skills

- **Languages:** Python, Rust, Go, TypeScript, Bash, C++ (embedded)
- **Cloud & Infra:** Linux, Ansible / AWX, HashiCorp Vault, Kubernetes (k3s), VMware vSphere / NSX / vRO, Nutanix AHV, Proxmox, Packer, Docker, Cloudflare, AWS
- **Backend:** FastAPI, SQLModel / Pydantic, PostgreSQL / pgvector, SQLite, Redis, Traefik / Caddy
- **Frontend:** Svelte 5, React 19, Astro, Tauri v2, React Native / Expo
- **AI:** Claude Code + parallel agents, OpenAI Realtime, llama.cpp, ComfyUI, MCP servers, Adversarial multi-agent review
- **Hardware:** Raspberry Pi clusters, Turing Pi 2, ESP32 / e-paper, LoRaWAN, NFC, FPV drones, 3D printing

## Certifications

- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (2022)

## Education

- SPŠ-E K. Adlera, Bratislava (electrotechnical)
- English studies, Oxford (two stays); Cambridge CAE