UI/UX designer Maksym Klodchyk has been passionate about fan fiction since his student days. The inconvenience of foreign platforms and the insufficient level of English made the IT professional think about creating a Ukrainian alternative. With the development of AI tools, Maksym realized that it was time to realize his long-standing idea.
UI/UX designer Maksym Klodchyk has been passionate about fan fiction since his student days. The inconvenience of foreign platforms and the insufficient level of English made the IT professional think about creating a Ukrainian alternative. With the development of AI tools, Maksym realized that it was time to realize his long-standing idea.
I had been thinking about creating this site for a long time, so I kept asking AI: can we do it together? But for some reason I was afraid, because my knowledge of development was limited to HTML + CSS, so I put it off, put it off, and put it off. At the same time, I followed AI updates, industry developments, etc. Well, the moment came when I decided it was time to try it — it doesn’t require much money.
And so, almost three months later, NovelKlo was born. Maksym began working on the design and technical part of the platform in mid-March 2026. The official launch of the site took place a few months later, on June 9.
NovelKlo is a platform for writers and readers. Authors can publish any of their works: from fanfiction based on their favorite fandoms (music, books, movies) to their own original works of any format and volume. And readers can find something interesting for themselves.
The platform has the following capabilities:
“This is only the basic functionality available on the platform,” Maksym emphasized. “If we were to describe absolutely all the features and details, it would take a long time.”
The developer started to attract the first users in advance. In early May, he launched pages on social networks, in particular on Threads, where he showed the development process, shared future functionality and communicated with the audience. This strategy turned out to be successful and brought the project its first popularity.
As of June 22, 2026, the platform is already showing results: more than 700 users have registered on it, and authors have managed to publish more than 300 of their works.
"Currently, the site indexing is still ongoing, and Google Analytics data is being updated, so it's too early to talk about final statistics. However, it has already been recorded that during peak hours, the platform's traffic reaches from 70 to 100 users per hour," added Maksym.
Maksym started the project with design development — as a professional habit in Figma. In parallel, he mastered Claude Code, and later set up its integration and collaboration with mockups.
The designer also chose the platform's technology stack together with Claude. It included: Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, NextAuth v5, Prisma 7, PostgreSQL (Neon), Cloudflare R2, Resend, Tailwind v4, and Vercel.
“It was very difficult at first because I didn’t understand what was happening at all. The process dragged on because I asked Claude to explain his every step—why he was doing it—and to give me literature to delve deeper into the topic,” recalls Maskim.
The designer started with Claude's basic plan for $20, but it was only enough for basic tasks. So he almost immediately switched to the professional plan for $100, and since then, the limits have never hindered his development.
NovelKlo is currently in open beta testing. The functionality is still being refined, and many bugs have to be fixed on the fly.
The platform is completely free. Monetization is planned in the future, but its implementation will only occur with the expansion of the tools and a significant growth in the audience.
