/about

About Harder Labs

Harder Labs is an engineering-led product studio and venture laboratory based in Austin, Texas. We build and operate online communities, diverse e-commerce brands, and software experiments. We keep notes on what we build, what can be improved, and the lessons learned along the way.

The Company

Harder Labs LLC is a Texas limited liability company founded by Kevin Harder and based in Austin, Texas. It serves as the parent entity for a growing portfolio of e-commerce businesses, community platforms, and software projects under a single, unified operational framework. Each venture operates under its own brand with official DBA filings, real customers, and real payment processing.

Why 'Labs'?
We believe the best businesses start as curious questions. Harder Labs provides the legal, financial, and technical infrastructure to turn those questions into sustainable brands. Every project under our umbrella shares a commitment to quality, engineering excellence, and the Austin maker spirit.

What started as a series of experiments has evolved into a registered laboratory for launching and scaling high-quality digital and physical brands. We build things with clear architecture, focus on helping real people, and a bias toward shipping fast. The common thread across everything we do: use modern technology (especially AI and agentic tooling) to build small, focused businesses that deliver genuine value.

what_we_do

Build and operate unique e-commerce brands
Ship community platforms that bring people together
Run practical experiments with AI and agentic systems
Contribute to and help with open source projects
Share what we learn publicly and honestly

The Founder

I'm Kevin Harder, a software engineer with 25+ years of experience across startups, enterprise companies, and everything in between. I've worn hats ranging from developer to architect to engineering leader.

I started Harder Labs to formalize the work I was already doing — building small businesses and running experiments at the intersection of community, e-commerce, and AI. Turning ideas into actual products that people use and enjoy is what gets me out of bed.

For the longer personal and career story, see KevinHarder.com.

focus_areas

Build things with clear architecture (and defaults that aren't insane)
Track AI and agentic releases that can help real businesses
Execute practical experiments and share the outcomes
Operate interesting e-commerce brands that serve real customers

The Harder.dev web site

This site is static-first by design, with dynamic behavior only where it provides value. Because the best way to ensure a page works is to not make the server do anything when someone visits.

Static Stability

Built with Astro and TypeScript for static generation, clean routing, and minimal JavaScript by default. It's fast, predictable, and doesn't load megabytes of JavaScript just to show you a sentence.

Occasional Hydration

We use Astro dynamic islands for things that actually need to move. Preact hydrates the signal widget only when you're looking at it. The rest stays peacefully still.

Typed Content Layer

Structured site data now lives in Astro collections with schema validation instead of hand-maintained arrays in page files. It keeps content centralized, type-safe, and easier to extend as the site grows.

Data & Safety Controls

Feed allowlists, CORS-aware proxying, retry/backoff, relevance filtering, and layered caching (`localStorage`, edge cache, conditional `ETag` / `Last-Modified`) keep the data fresh and predictable.

Delivery Workflow

The Astro site deploys as static assets, while the worker deploys independently via GitHub Actions. It keeps updates fast and avoids coupling content deploys to edge API deploys.