BaltShip the brand, a code-level design system, and the production marketing site for an AI recruiting agent: solo, in three weeks, ahead of its September 2026 launch.
- Role
- Product Designer & Front-end · sole designer
- Team
- 3 people: founder, engineer, me
- Timeline
- 3 weeks, on-site at Station F, Paris
- Scope
- Brand · design system · marketing & GTM site · build
- Stack
- Astro · Tailwind v4 · self-hosted design system
- Context
- Launched Sept 2026 · HEC Paris program · 10+ client firms
Balt is an AI recruiting agent for staffing firms. Instead of one more tool to manage, it does the sourcing itself, so recruiters run their pipeline through it rather than around it.
Built out of Station F in Paris, inside the HEC Paris program, and already in production with real firms before launch.
The first screen leads with a promise and a live product visual, not a logo wall or a feature list.
Recruiters judge in seconds. Opening with the claim and the product on a calm cobalt field earns trust before a single feature is explained.
The product is an agent that works in the background: no dashboard to show, no clean before-and-after. The site had to make an invisible AI feel real and trustworthy, in three weeks, ahead of a September 2026 launch.
Nothing to demo
An AI agent has no dashboard to screenshot. Adjectives don't make a recruiter believe it. Trust is earned by showing the work, not claiming it.
Product-led UI
Put the agent's behaviour on the page: live chat, ranked shortlists, a working pipeline across 70+ integrations. A visitor watches it work.
Reads like a product
A GTM and investor-facing site that feels like the real thing, shipped in three weeks, for a product already in the hands of 10+ firms.
Live chat, ranked candidate shortlists and a working pipeline across 70+ integrations, all on the page.
An invisible agent has to be seen, not described. Putting its real behaviour on screen is what makes recruiters believe it before they sign up.
Three weeks, on-site at Station F, with the whole thing sitting in one pair of hands.
Art direction from scratch
Charcoal-and-cobalt on a warm off-white surface, Montserrat, soft blue depth. Made to feel trustworthy and calm, not sci-fi.
A design system as code
Colour, type and spacing as tokens, plus 30+ reusable components: the exact system running in production, no Figma-to-dev loss.
Showing the agent
Live chat, ranked shortlist cards and a 70+ integration pipeline put the agent's behaviour on the page instead of describing it.
Bilingual by structure
EN/FR baked into the content model and components from the start, so every screen holds up in both languages.
The three decisions that made an invisible product believable, and made shipping it in three weeks possible.
Show, don't claim
Every section demonstrates a behaviour instead of asserting a benefit. The page proves the product rather than praising it.
Design and build in one hand
Owning the shipped build collapsed the design-to-dev gap. Tokens and components are the production ones; iteration was same-day.
Calm, not sci-fi
Balt's identity is deliberately warm and grounded, because trust in hiring comes from feeling in control, not impressed.
Colour, type and components as code: the same system running on the live site.
Every page is built from the same tokens and 30+ reusable components.
Design and build in one hand means the system I designed is literally the one in production: consistent across the site and fast to iterate.
Everything at once
Three weeks, one designer-plus-front-end, a product with nothing visual to lean on. Brand, system and build came up together.
The site is the system
Design and build in one hand made the timeline real. The tokens I designed are the ones in production, in two languages.
Room to grow
The site becomes the surface for the go-to-market push and investor story, expanding the product-led sections as the agent grows.