I wrote my first lines of code in 2013 on a Nintendo DSi in SmileBASIC, moved on to Java and Minecraft plugins, and never really stopped. Backend development is where most of my time goes today, along with the infrastructure it runs on. What I enjoy most is getting systems to work together and keeping them running once they are live.
Most of what you find here started as something I wanted to run or use myself, from shell tooling to a backup tool for Docker volumes to whatever else came to mind or my server needed.
- Running my own infrastructure: A good part of my stack is self-hosted and provisioned with Ansible, which keeps rebuilds repeatable instead of a weekend project. Running the things I depend on is also how I learn most of what I know about them
- Agentic development, done carefully: I put a lot of work into the configuration, guardrails and review steps around AI assisted development, so the output holds up to the same review any other code gets
- Whatever fits the problem: Go, PHP, TypeScript, Java or shell. I have no favourite language to defend. What matters to me is that the result is maintainable and actually fits the requirements
- Tools I actually use: Most of what I publish exists because I needed it myself. If it holds up in daily use, it ends up on GitHub
Most of what I build these days happens over at Lazy Bytez, where a friend and I work on things together in our spare time.
- psh is Pascal's Shell, a setup tool for zsh.
It installs zsh, antidote, oh-my-zsh and a curated plugin set, then generates a
customizable
.zshrcfrom a template system. My longest running project - Conba is a Go CLI that wraps restic to back up Docker volumes. It discovers containers and volumes, applies filter rules, takes snapshots and handles retention, all driven by a single YAML file
- Sync Markdown to BookStack is a GitHub Action that pushes Markdown files into BookStack, so documentation can live next to the code and still end up in the central wiki. It takes a single file or a glob pattern and creates or updates the pages on every run
- GamingBytez Enhancements is a Paper plugin for Minecraft that runs on our private server. Its modular architecture adds custom game mechanics and quality of life features that can be enabled and extended independently of each other
More about me, what I work with and how to reach me at pascal-zarrad.de