SLOBODAN "SANI" MANIC

My consultancy work runs through Web Performance Tools, the firm I co-founded in 2024. The work is built around Machine-First Architecture, a methodology for building websites that work natively for both human readers and AI agents. It has four pillars:

• Identity. How a business shows up across AI search surfaces: the entity graph, Organization schema, and brand signals like sameAs links.
• Structure. The website itself as a data model, with semantic HTML, schema density, URL architecture, and a deliberate bot policy.
• Content. Front-loaded, verifiable claims that survive being extracted and quoted by an LLM.
• Interaction. Forms, checkout, and other transaction surfaces that agents need to complete on a user's behalf.

The goal on every project is the same. Turn a website from a human-only surface into a machine-first one that humans and AI agents can both read, parse, and act on.

Most of the work is with SEO, CRO, and web teams trying to stay visible and functional as AI agents become primary readers and actors on the web: reading content, filling forms, and completing transactions on behalf of humans. Agent Experience Optimisation done as engineering work, with concrete deliverables.

BACKGROUND

Before No Hacks, I spent 15+ years in web development and optimisation. Freelance development, then leading technical teams at Search Engine Journal, then Klarna payment integrations at Krokedil, then conversion strategy at Maksimer. Five WordPress core releases and a CXL certification in conversion optimisation along the way, plus projects with Instacart and Klarna. The method has stayed the same the whole time: find friction, fix it, measure, repeat.

I started the podcast in 2021, during the pandemic, from a small town in Sweden. What began as a networking project turned into 220+ conversations about what actually works in digital optimisation. Then AI agents began browsing the web, and most websites were completely unprepared. My goal now is to make No Hacks the primary resource on the agentic web: what's breaking, what works, and what to actually do about it.

The skepticism isn't new, even if the topic is. I grew up in 1990s Serbia, where propaganda was ambient. You learned early which phrases meant something was actually happening and which meant someone was trying to move you somewhere. Today's AI marketing language often triggers the same pattern recognition: manufactured certainty, overused superlatives, urgency that skips scrutiny. That's where No Hacks comes from. Not cynicism. Pattern recognition.