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Hey, I’m Marie. I like making things on the internet, and this year I’m going all in on exploring AI. This portfolio contains the experiments that worked: things I actively use or have launched.

I’m open to product design roles, selected freelance work and collaborations with people building thoughtful AI products.

Available for web and product design work ·mariedrouvin.com@gmail.com

Private project notes

Marie’s Library

A private, phone-friendly library I built for interactive courses, source-led research reports and small tools.

PeopleDex

A private research workflow I built to understand how the people I admire think, work and share what they make, without losing the sources behind the interpretation.

Why I made this project

When I discover a creator I really connect with, I tend to go deep into their archive. I read the new work, the very old work and everything in between. I think of these people as distant mentors: their ideas affect me emotionally, but I also want the way they think to change the way I work.

I wanted to understand more than what they say. I wanted to see the ideas that keep returning, what they build, how they collect and develop ideas, which references shape them and how they decide to share something.

PeopleDex came from the realisation that AI could help me do that systematically. I feed the skill substantial source material from someone who already matters to me, and it turns that material into a sourced profile I can explore in my private library.

A three-minute English walkthrough of Alex Dobrenko’s profile and the six sections inside PeopleDex.

What PeopleDex extracts

Each profile is organised around six questions:

  • Which ideas and principles keep returning?
  • What have they made?
  • How do they find, store, develop and publish ideas?
  • Which people, traditions, tools and bits of culture influence them?
  • How do they present and share their work?
  • Which exact sources support each interpretation?

The references are one of my favourite parts because they send me down useful rabbit holes. Visakan Veerasamy references superhero films. Alex Dobrenko references Windows 95 and coding environments. JA Westenberg’s references are more like tech minimalism: webcam, room, no B-roll.

The references section of an Erich Fromm PeopleDex profile, with traditions, teachers, practices and cultural objects linked to their sources
The references inside an Erich Fromm profile.

How it works

  1. Readwise highlights
  2. Full talks + substantial pieces
  3. The skill extracts and organises recurring patterns
  4. A sourced profile is published in Marie’s Library

Readwise highlights are usually the starting point because I have already highlighted these people heavily before deciding to build a profile. I add a few complete pieces that had a real impact on me. A full presentation is ideal: it gives the skill enough context to understand what the person is working on now, instead of treating isolated excerpts as the whole picture.

Every interpretation links back to Sources. The material is organised by idea and source type, so I can check what the AI surfaced instead of treating it as fact.

The searchable Sources section of an Erich Fromm PeopleDex profile, with filters and links back to the original Readwise material
The source browser makes every interpretation checkable.

How I use it

The most transformative part of PeopleDex is not the archive itself. It is that I have actually added some of my distant mentors’ reflexes to my own workflow.

Zara Zhang opens videos by starting with the problem. I studied that from her, and now I feel much more confident making short videos about the little products I build. I know how to find the angle before I start explaining the thing.

Another Zara principle has become integral to how I work: build first, then learn. I build something with AI, then ask the AI how it was built. I have learned far more about how things work on the internet by doing it in that order than by trying to learn everything before making anything.

Alex Dobrenko turns the talk into the thing. I have not had the right presentation to try this yet, but I cannot wait to create an environment that is itself the talk: the actual room the audience enters. That idea has completely changed what I want a presentation to be.

What comes next

PeopleDex has not needed a major redesign since I made it. At this point, I add people rather than features.

There are six profiles now, starting in July. It is a deliberately slow, long-term archive because I only add someone when their work genuinely matters to me. I do not find a new person like that every week, and that is part of the point.

Personal AI workflows

A small set of AI-assisted workflows I built to move work through capture, planning, making, publishing and review.

  • Ready to Publish: Checks a finished Les Papiers draft, suggests internal links and prepares the files and URLs needed to publish it.
  • YouTube Description: Produces consistent French YouTube descriptions with a clear opening and the relevant links.
  • MD Slides: Turns teaching material into responsive HTML slides in the visual language of mariedrouvin.com.
  • YouTube Thumbnail: Applies my visual system to video artwork while keeping the centre clear for YouTube’s play button.
  • Monologue to Daily Note: Turns new Monologue notes into full transcripts, then adds a structured summary and exact link to the corresponding daily note.
  • Project Creation: Creates a durable project folder, action properties, context and journal from a single brief.
  • Website News Publisher: Turns a Markdown news item into validated data, then updates the homepage and news archive on mariedrouvin.com.
  • Notes Publisher: Prepares and checks an Obsidian draft, builds the public article and deploys it on notes.mariedrouvin.com.
  • End of Day: Combines completed reminders with daily-note evidence to record what actually happened.
  • Month Review: Synthesises notes, transcripts, calendars, sales, published work and reading history into a monthly review.
Ready to Publish

A private publication workflow that checks a finished Les Papiers draft, suggests internal links and prepares the files and URLs needed to publish it.

YouTube Description

A private writing workflow for producing consistent French YouTube descriptions with a clear opening and relevant links.

MD Slides

A private presentation workflow I use to turn teaching material into responsive HTML slides in the visual language of mariedrouvin.com.

YouTube Thumbnail

A private image-production workflow that applies my visual system while keeping the centre clear for YouTube’s play button.

Monologue to Daily Note

A local automation I built to turn new Monologue notes into full transcript files, then add a structured summary and exact link to the corresponding daily note.

Project Creation

A private vault workflow that creates a durable project folder, action properties, context and journal from a single brief.

Website News Publisher

A private publishing workflow that turns a Markdown news item into validated data and updates the homepage and news archive on mariedrouvin.com.

Notes Publisher

A private publishing workflow that prepares and checks an Obsidian draft, builds the public article and deploys it to notes.mariedrouvin.com.

End of Day

A local end-of-day automation that combines completed reminders with daily-note evidence and writes a concise record of what actually happened.

Month Review

A private monthly review workflow that synthesises notes, transcripts, calendars, sales, published work and reading history.

Tweet Inbox

A private, offline-first web app I built to capture possible social posts without opening a feed.

Portfolio

The bilingual website I designed and built to make my websites, tools, skills, automations, publications and internet experiments easy to explore.