# Tom Girou

> Senior Lead Dev — PHP, Symfony & PrestaShop. I help companies cut backlogs from 200+ tickets to under 50 and finally breathe between sprints.

## About

Tom Girou is a Senior Lead Web Developer based in France. PHP, Symfony, and PrestaShop core & module specialist with 7+ years across e-commerce platforms, gift-card systems, ERP integrations, and CI/CD pipelines.

- Site: https://tom-girou.dev/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tgirou
- GitHub: https://github.com/Kaikina
- X: https://x.com/kaikina_art
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Kaikina
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/Kaikina/
- PrestaShop forum: https://forum.prestashop.com/profile/1776632-tom-girou/
- Location: France (Loire region)
- Languages: English, French, Spanish

## Stack

PHP · Symfony · PrestaShop · MySQL · PostgreSQL · JavaScript · TypeScript · SCSS · Java · Spring Boot · Angular · AWS · Docker · CI/CD · REST APIs · ERP integration · WordPress · WP-CLI · TYPO3 · Ruby · Perl

## Selected Work

- [Tactical Sports Marketplace — DG-Airsoft](https://www.destockage-games.com/): PrestaShop, PHP.
- [Footwear E-commerce — Les Tropéziennes](https://www.lestropeziennes.fr/fr/): PrestaShop, PHP.
- [Collectibles Marketplace — Sylvanian Families](https://sylvanianfamilies-boutique.fr/): PrestaShop, PHP.
- [Cakes Storefront — Maison Colibri](https://www.maison-colibri.com/fr/): PrestaShop, PHP.
- [Wellness & Herbalism Shop — Herbiolys](https://www.herbiolys.fr/fr/): PrestaShop, PHP.
- [E-commerce Suite — Thermcross](https://www.thermcross.fr/fr/): PrestaShop, PHP.
- Gift Card Platform — Wedoogift · Pluxee: Java, Spring Boot, Angular.
- WordPress Site Generator — Wedoogift · Pluxee: WordPress, PHP, Bash.

## Experience

- **2023 — Now — PHP Developer · Tech Lead, Evolutive.** Technical leadership and full-stack PrestaShop core & module development. Resource planning, Agile estimations, robust API/ERP integrations, and CI/CD quality assurance.
- **2022 — 2023 — PHP Developer, Thermcross.** Full-stack e-commerce and backend development specializing in PrestaShop integration, custom PHP/PIM applications, and automated ERP data-sync pipelines — all under Agile.
- **2020 — 2022 — R&D Engineer, Emagineurs.** Full-stack development, API integration and security engineering across TYPO3, WordPress, and Ruby — specializing in financial tools, automation, and web application security.
- **2018 — 2019 — Fullstack Web Developer, Wedoogift.** Full-stack & DevOps using Angular, Spring Boot, and AWS — built CI/CD pipelines, shipped under Agile, and authored the documentation that scaled with the team.

## Open Source

- PrestaShop core contributor as @Kaikina: https://github.com/PrestaShop/PrestaShop/commits?author=Kaikina

## Blog

Notes from the trenches on PHP, Symfony, PrestaShop, CI/CD, and shipping production software — by Tom Girou, Senior Lead Dev.

- [Every New Smithmagus Made Search Slower: Killing the N+1 Behind Forgemage.net](https://tom-girou.dev/blog/forgemage-search-n1-queries/) (2026-07-20): Forgemage.net's smithmagus directory ran roughly seven queries per card — reviews, response time, online status, three lazy relations — plus facet counts recomputed on every filter tweak. Here's how I got a page of 24 cards from ~168 queries down to a handful, with a request-scoped batch cache and a paginate-then-hydrate pass, without touching the single-profile pages.
- [Markdown for Agents, Self-Hosted: One Symfony Subscriber Instead of a Cloudflare Plan](https://tom-girou.dev/blog/markdown-for-agents/) (2026-07-08): Cloudflare converts pages to markdown for AI agents via Accept: text/markdown — on paid plans. The same HTTP contract fits in a 144-line Symfony event subscriber. My homepage went from 59 KB of HTML to 7.7 KB of markdown, same URL.
- [Claude Code From My Phone: Tailscale, Termius, and the Whole Machine in My Pocket](https://tom-girou.dev/blog/claude-code-from-my-phone/) (2026-07-06): Claude Code's /remote-control mirrors one session to your phone. SSH over Tailscale hands you the whole workstation: resume sessions, start new ones in any repo, tail logs, restart containers — with nothing exposed to the internet.
- [RepoWrapped: Spotify Wrapped for a GitHub Repo, and the API That Fought Me](https://tom-girou.dev/blog/repo-wrapped/) (2026-07-01): A weekend idea — a shareable stats page and README badge for any GitHub repo and contributor — turned into a fight with GitHub's stats API: 202s that never resolve, a top-100 wall, and a first-commit lookup you have to trick out of a header.
- [Letting Non-Technical PMs Query the Codebase in Plain Language](https://tom-girou.dev/blog/ai-codebase-portal-for-pms/) (2026-06-29): Why I built a read-only AI analyst that lets project managers ask questions about a codebase and have a Jira ticket filed for them automatically — and why the whole thing only works because the AI can read but never write.
- [Adding AI Code Review to a Self-Hosted GitLab — Without Handing It the Keys](https://tom-girou.dev/blog/claude-gitlab-ai-review/) (2026-06-24): How I wired Claude into the merge-request pipeline of an old, self-hosted GitLab, and why the whole design hangs on never letting the AI both read an untrusted diff and hold a token at the same time.

Feed: https://tom-girou.dev/rss.xml

## Certifications

- [PrestaShop Expert — Core Skills](https://app.procertif.com/parchment/2511TOMGIR400/check): issued by PrestaShop, verifiable on Procertif.
- [PrestaShop Expert — Front Skills](https://app.procertif.com/parchment/2602TOMGIR716/check): issued by PrestaShop, verifiable on Procertif.

## FAQ

Frequently asked questions are answered in full at https://tom-girou.dev/#faq (translations at https://tom-girou.dev/fr/#faq and https://tom-girou.dev/es/#faq). Topics covered:

- What does Tom Girou do?
- What's your background?
- Do you specialize in PrestaShop?
- Can you handle PrestaShop migrations (1.5 → 1.7 → 8 → 9)?
- What about ERP integrations?
- Do you work with non-PrestaShop stacks?
- Are you available for freelance briefs or new roles?
- Where are you based and what languages do you work in?
- What's the fastest way to reach you?
- Do you contribute to PrestaShop open source?

## Contact

Preferred channel: LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/tgirou

## Optional

- [Full content (llms-full.txt)](https://tom-girou.dev/llms-full.txt)
- [Sitemap](https://tom-girou.dev/sitemap-index.xml)
- [French translation](https://tom-girou.dev/fr/)
- [Spanish translation](https://tom-girou.dev/es/)