Founder and Builder of Senlay

Viktor Kryvotsiuk

Founder and builder of SmartSurf and Senlay. Experience in water-sports instruction, wind and water, and hands-on prototyping led from a maritime prototype and reference application to Senlay, an environmental evidence API in evaluation beta. Senlay is now testing whether a source-aware wind workflow is useful to drone software teams; that market hypothesis is not yet validated.

20-Second Summary

Founder origin: SmartSurf, wind and water, and product building.

Problem Lived

Time spent teaching and working around wind and water raised the question of what local evidence an application can show.

Builder Proof

SmartSurf hardware, solar trackers, board mounts, intercom prototypes, and a live Senlay API.

Why Senlay

AI agents can reason, but they need measured current conditions before making real-world decisions.

The Short Version

Senlay did not start in an office. It started with a life spent reading conditions.

Before Senlay, I spent years teaching people to move safely in wind, waves, and changing weather. That kind of work trains a different instinct: you learn to read the water before it explains itself, to notice the gust before a student feels it, and to treat physics as something with consequences.

I also kept building. Rope-access work taught respect for margins. Kitesurfing taught wind systems. Paragliding taught calm decision-making. SmartSurf hardware taught how hard it is to make something work in salt water, sunlight, impact, and beach life.

Senlay grew from that same habit: notice what is really happening, trust real measurements, and help people make better decisions.

"For most of my life I had the ideas. AI tools finally gave me the hands to build them."

Viktor teaching with a radio on the beach
Instructor mode: reading wind, student, beach traffic, and risk at the same time.
Viktor doing rope access work on a high-rise building
Industrial rope-access work: a practical education in gravity and margins.
Water First

I have lived inside this problem for years.

Weather apps show numbers. On the beach, those numbers have to become decisions.

I learned the problem through repetition: students arriving overpowered, boards drifting away, gusts turning a good session into a rescue, and forecasts missing the local effect that everyone on the beach could feel.

Kitesurfing, surfing, hydrofoil, and paragliding all punish shallow answers. The useful question is never only "what is the wind?" It is: where is it coming from, what shaped it, what is changing, and what should a human do now?

Yearsof work in water-sports instruction and related activities
100sof students and beach-side decisions
4domains: kite, surf, foil, paraglide
1core habit: test in the real world
Viktor teaching on a beach with waves behind him
Teaching on the beach where the data has to become a decision.
Preparing a kite before a session
Viktor riding a twintip kiteboard in Sri Lanka
SmartSurf Hardware

SmartSurf came first: small trackers tested on real boards.

Before Senlay, I explored the problem through SmartSurf hardware prototypes.

SmartSurf started from a simple beach problem: lost boards and separated riders. The prototypes became solar-powered GPS trackers, board-integrated mounts, SOS concepts, and charging experiments that lived on real boards instead of presentation slides.

Every generation made the idea sharper. A tracker can show where a board is. SmartSurf also raised questions about how changing conditions should be represented for a user.

Black epoxy-sealed tracker experiments with external solar support and board placement tests.

Yellow solar prototype family: larger panel, board-top integration, real beach and water exposure.

SOS thinking, wireless charging tests, board mounts, and paired communication hardware.

Yellow SmartSurf prototype close-up
Yellow SmartSurf prototype: solar surface, sealed body, visible field iteration.
Very first SmartSurf prototype on a board
Black SmartSurf prototype on a board
From the Water

A life spent building in the real world.

The founder story spans water-sports instruction, SmartSurf prototypes and product building.

Viktor's electronics and prototyping workshop

The Workshop

A small room where boards, batteries, tools, and ideas turn into working things.

SmartSurf tracker prototypes on foilboards

Tested on Boards

The trackers were mounted on real boards, near real water, with sand, heat, and impact waiting.

Viktor in paragliding gear before flight

Respect for Wind

Paragliding teaches the same lesson in another language: wind, timing, and margins matter.

Viktor holding his daughter near the sea

Why It Matters

This is not abstract for me. My family lives near the sea, and the sea deserves respect.

From Hardware to Senlay

The work moved from one board to the wider world.

SmartSurf showed me the problem. Senlay became the larger answer.

SmartSurf raised a broader product question: what environmental evidence is available at a place, when was it observed or forecast, and what is still unknown?

That question led to Senlay: an evaluation beta that structures available environmental observations and forecasts with source, time, distance, disagreement and unknowns. An observation is not automatically representative or ground truth.

3D model of SmartSurf case in slicing software
The same habit, translated: draw it, build it, test it, improve it.
Planning a dual charging system for SmartSurf hardware
SmartSurf intercom prototype hardware on a bench
Experience

What I bring to Senlay.

Kite and Water-Sports Instructor

Years of direct teaching experience in real wind and wave conditions, where safety depends on reading subtle changes fast.

Hardware Prototyper

Solar trackers, board mounts, charging experiments, 3D-printed cases, epoxy sealing, and live ocean testing.

Paragliding and Rope Access

Two disciplines that make risk visible: launch margins, vertical exposure, weather shifts, and consequence-aware decisions.

Solo + AI Tools = Full Platform

Senlay currently offers a spot-level environmental API, documentation, public demo, developer access and reference integrations. The robotics workflow, source representativeness and field performance remain to be validated.

Senlay Live

A live product with a demo, docs, and a working way for AI to understand real-world conditions.

The Mission

Test whether source-aware, spot-level environmental evidence helps drone software teams and their operators review wind conditions.

Built from water, weather, and work.

Senlay is live because I have lived both sides of the problem: the human side of physical risk, and the builder side of making tools survive outside.