Commerce engineering
Shopify themes, apps and integrations built for real stores and the people who run them. Part interface, part operations, part understanding what a merchant actually needs on a Tuesday.
Core practice
Independent practiceIndex 2026
Usefulsoftware.Unreasonablecuriosity.
I'm Erkin — a Shopify developer and independent builder working across software, commerce, game worlds, science stories and sound.
Disciplines: Shopify engineering, software products, game worlds, science visualisation, animation, sound and creative experiments.
Practice
One practice,
several instruments.
I move between code, commerce, image and sound. The through-line is simple: make complex things feel clear, useful and worth spending time with.
Product engineering
From a rough idea to a working interface: small products, internal tools and prototypes that can be put in front of people and tested.
Ongoing
Worlds & play
ERK is an early world-building concept — landscape, ritual, memory and a creature at the centre of it. A place to explore how systems become stories.
Early concept
Science & story
Translating complex material into images, motion and sound. Experiments in making data feel like a place, and explanation feel like a story.
Ongoing study
Selected work is shared in conversation. This page is the map, not the archive.
Explorations
An index of things
being figured out.
Not a showcase of finished work. A map of active curiosities, kept visible while they are still becoming something. Nothing here is dressed up as a product it is not yet.
Worlds & playConcept
ERK
A world in the making
Landscape, ritual, memory and a creature called ERK. An early world-building concept taking shape through notes, references and questions — not a playable game yet.
Notes / references / questions
Science & imageStudy
Field studies
Data as landscape
Experiments in turning scientific datasets into images with atmosphere and scale. How much can a visual carry before an explanation gets in the way?
Visual research
Moving imageSketches
Short motion
Time, matter, machinery
Animation sketches about processes that are hard to see: geological time, invisible forces, machines that should not work.
Motion tests
Sound & voicePilot notes
Voice notes
Conversations on making
A podcast idea about how things are actually made — the detours, constraints and accidents behind finished work.
Audio experiments
Small softwareIn progress
Useful little tools
Built when the itch is specific
Micro-tools for Shopify merchants and independent makers. Small, sharp utilities that remove one recurring annoyance at a time.
Prototypes / no public release
AI & contentResearch
Models as material
A collaborator, not a shortcut
Experiments in using generative systems for writing, image and code — with a bias toward craft, attribution and knowing when not to use them.
Workflow experiments
Open questions / the work behind the work
What makes a store feel like a place rather than a page?
Can a dataset carry a narrative without becoming decoration?
What does play teach us about the systems we build for work?
About
A systems mind
with a soft spot for wonder.
I'm Erkin. I build for the web, mostly on Shopify, and I follow curiosity into places where software rarely goes.
Environmental engineering trained me to see systems: inputs, feedback loops, second-order effects. Software taught me to make those systems tangible. Commerce is where the two meet real people every day — a store is part interface, part theatre, part machine.
The rest is exploration: game worlds, scientific images, animation, voice. Different materials, same question — how do you make something complex feel inevitable?
erkin.click is where those threads stay visible while they are still becoming something.
Usefulness first
Elegance that does not help someone is decoration. Start with the real constraint.
Build to learn
A prototype is an argument you can test. Thinking gets better when it has to run.
Cross the lines
The best ideas usually arrive from another discipline, slightly out of context.
Leave room for wonder
Not everything needs to justify itself with a metric. Curiosity is part of the method.
Contact
Have a problem
worth making useful?
Shopify work, product ideas, collaborations, or a question that will not leave you alone. The most reliable way to reach me right now is GitHub.
Direct line / open
GitHub@erkinturhan-aogen (opens in a new tab)- Good fitCommerce, product, worlds, story
- AlsoA good question or an odd idea
- ApproachDirect, honest, no pitching
No forms, no funnels. Just a direct conversation.