# Kartonky — Launched in under an hour — 5M+ media reach in 3 days

> 4,000+ signs · 20+ outlets · first version in an hour

- **Project:** «Voices from the Square. Kartonky» — a people's archive of protest signs
- **Format:** Our own product, on the same stack we set up for clients
- **Timeline:** First public version — in under an hour
- **AI inside:** Computer vision · handwriting OCR · auto-moderation · face blur

## The problem

In July 2026, Ukrainians took to the streets with handmade cardboard signs. The messages lived for a few days — then vanished along with the moment. Building an archive «properly» meant a team and weeks of work, while the window was closing right now.

## What it does

Kartonky is a people's online archive of protest signs. We didn't write the code: Artem directed an AI agent, and the first public version went live in under an hour — he walked into the rally with the platform's QR code on his own cardboard sign. Anyone uploads a photo from their square; a computer-vision model reads the handwritten text, filters spam and hostile symbols before they reach the gallery, and routes edge cases to manual moderation via a Telegram bot. When the site went viral and the hosting gave out, we migrated everything to our own infrastructure live, without stopping the stream of uploads.

- Reads handwritten text from photos — any sign is searchable by its words
- Filters spam and hostile symbols before publication; edge cases go to manual moderation in Telegram
- Blurs faces with a local ML model — safety for participants who didn't consent to the photo
- Handles viral traffic and bot attacks: flood protection, audit log, Telegram alerts

## Result

- **4,000+ signs from ~100 cities** — From Kyiv and Lviv to Berlin, Paris and Toronto. 1,000 photos on day one.
- **20+ media outlets in the first days** — Ukrainska Pravda, Suspilne, Hromadske, Kyiv Post and more; Vector covered the launch in a dedicated piece.
- **<1 hour to the first version** — An AI agent wrote the code from our instructions — work that usually gets a team and weeks.

> Every participant put creativity and energy into their sign — and they just get thrown away and forgotten. They've become a defining feature of the protests of recent years and are historical artifacts, so they deserve to be preserved.
>
> — Artem Sakh, co-founder of Propeller Crew, author of Kartonky

## ← All cases

- [GGTC Kyiv](https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/ggtc) — 28 relevant opportunities for a think tank — out of 10,000+ pages processed
- [Minimal Studio](https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/minimal-studio) — A design studio saves 30+ hours a month — and is thinking about a 6-hour workday
- [Fulcrum](https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/fulcrum) — A complex WordPress site, now edited by an AI agent
- [Gearheart](https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/gearheart) — A website the team updates just by writing in Slack
- [Propeller Crew — our own outreach](https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/linkedin-outreach) — 17 people asked for a call in 4 weeks
- [Revby](https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/revby) — A cold list that comes alive: warm reasons to write instead of a static spreadsheet
- [Subtitler](https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/subtitler) — Drop in a vertical video — get back a Reels-ready cut with subtitles
- [Brandkit](https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/brandkit) — Give it your website — get your company's brandbook in minutes
- [Perry](https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/perry) — The personal assistant that keeps a company's operations in order
- [Webby](https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/webby) — The helper that runs a website from Slack — including this one

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Source: https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/kartonky (HTML) · https://propellercrew.com/en/cases/kartonky.md (Markdown)
Contact: tim@propellercrew.com · https://t.me/timakozak · Call: https://calendar.notion.so/meet/timakozak/propeller-15min
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