Alterist
Role
Everything
Team Size
1
Alterist is a marketplace for Magic: The Gathering altered card art — a niche where artists hand-paint over existing cards and collectors buy unique pieces for hundreds of dollars. The community has been served only by generalist marketplaces (Etsy, eBay) that don't understand the medium.
Visit ︎
Business Opportunity
Altered MTG cards sell for $200-$2000+. The community is passionate, vocal, and underserved by existing platforms. No purpose-built marketplace exists. AI/ML unlocks discovery features generalist platforms can't replicate — tagging by aesthetic, object, art quality, and eventually personal taste.Personal Challenges
Build a multi-sided marketplace solo while running audience research, design, frontend, backend, ML integration, and go-to-market in parallel. Balance dev-first execution with design polish once concepts validate.Goals
Build the purpose-built marketplace for MTG altered art. Demonstrate AI-augmented discovery as a category differentiator. Test what solo AI-augmented development can ship in product velocity. Expand into custom commissions, collections, and personalized feeds.Tech Approach
- TypeScript/React frontend
- Claude Code as primary development partner
- Gemini 2.5 Flash + 3 Flash for image tagging
- Three ML models for aesthetics, object recognition, and art quality
- Custom search and filter built on ML-generated tags