--- title: Questions about Nico van Zyl canonical: https://nicovanzyl.com/faq.md last_updated: 2026-10-05 --- # Questions about Nico van Zyl These curated answers are available without JavaScript. For a question not covered here, an agent can ask Scribe through the [FAQ API](https://nicovanzyl.com/openapi.json), using the instructions below. ## What does Nico do? Nico is a design engineer with 15+ years of experience designing, building and maintaining digital products. He is Head of Product Design and founding designer at Altostrat, and co-founded, designed and built Owners Circle. His work connects product thinking, interface design and implementation. See [About Nico](https://nicovanzyl.com/about.md). ## What has Nico shipped? At Altostrat, Nico led product design and app development to ship Studio in three months with one other engineer. At Simvida, he refined the visual language, created and maintained the design system, and designed and built the adviser, admin and client interfaces. See [selected work](https://nicovanzyl.com/work) and the [career timeline](https://nicovanzyl.com/career.md). ## Does Nico write code? Nico started as an engineer and has 15+ years of experience designing and building products. His practice has shifted to agentic engineering: using coding agents to build software, with his engineering experience guiding the approach and judgement about the result. That work extends beyond prototypes into implementation. ## Which technology stacks has Nico worked with? Nico works across stacks and has worked with Electron, React Native, React, Next.js, Nuxt, Vue and Ruby on Rails over the years. These are examples of his broader experience, rather than one fixed stack. His engineering background informs how he works with agents across technologies. See [his engineering background](https://nicovanzyl.com/about.md). ## How does Nico use AI? Nico uses coding agents in his own design engineering work, applying his technical judgement to guide and evaluate what gets built. He also designs and builds AI-powered products at Altostrat, exploring how network-operations teams can work with AI. These are two aspects of his practice; they do not establish model-training or ML-research experience. ## Is Nico a hands-on lead? His experience includes product strategy, hiring and team management, but he describes himself as happiest as an individual contributor: working through the details while keeping the bigger picture in view. His leadership experience sits alongside hands-on design and implementation. ## How does Nico work with a team? Nico works remotely and asynchronously, with clear ownership, written updates and early feedback. He works closely with founders, designers and engineers, using sketches and working prototypes to explore options and carrying decisions into production. See [approach and project fit](https://nicovanzyl.com/about.md#approach-and-project-fit). ## Is Nico available, and what does he charge? Current availability, rates and response times are not established by this public profile. Contact Nico at nico@vanzyl.co with the product, problem, desired outcome, team, constraints and deadline. ## How can I contact Nico? nico@vanzyl.co ## What do people say about Nico? The portfolio publishes eight testimonials. Laura Beaumont, Manager at Simvida, praises his thoughtful design, creativity, professionalism and openness to feedback. Jon Ambler, Co-Founder of Tuesday Innovation, describes a design and development partner who takes ownership of a problem and contributes positively to the team. Other testimonials highlight reliability, communication and the combination of design and development. Read the [exact quotes and author attributions](https://nicovanzyl.com/testimonials.json). These are their opinions, not independently verified performance claims. ## Ask a question through the FAQ API Server-side agents can send a public professional question to `POST https://nicovanzyl.com/api/nico-chat`. No client API key or sign-in is required. Send `Content-Type: application/json` and set `surface` to `agent`: ```json { "surface": "agent", "messages": [ { "role": "user", "content": "Which stacks has Nico worked with over the years?" } ] } ``` A successful response contains `response` (plain-text answer), `responder` (`Scribe (AI)`) and `profileUpdatedAt` (the curated context's update date). Scribe uses the same approved professional context as the website FAQ. Its answer is AI-generated, not a personal reply from Nico. It does not perform website actions for external agents. For a follow-up, include the earlier user question and assistant answer in `messages`, then finish with the new user question. Limits: four user turns, nine messages, 400 characters per user message, 1,000 per assistant message and 5,000 total characters. Start a new conversation when those limits are reached. Responses are not cacheable. The service is rate-limited to 10 requests per minute by IP/domain; on HTTP 429, wait at least a minute before retrying. On HTTP 502 or 503, use the curated sources rather than inventing an answer. The endpoint supports server-side clients without an `Origin` header and same-origin website requests. It does not enable cross-origin browser JavaScript. Agents that can only fetch pages can read this FAQ, [About](https://nicovanzyl.com/about.md), the [career timeline](https://nicovanzyl.com/career.md) and [full public context](https://nicovanzyl.com/llms-full.txt). The complete request and response contract is in the [OpenAPI description](https://nicovanzyl.com/openapi.json). Do not infer availability, current rates, years per framework or client-to-stack mappings beyond the supplied evidence. Use direct contact for a personal answer or commitment from Nico.