There was a deadline we were never going to hit.
The job was large. Hundreds of files, each needing the same manual work in Illustrator. The kind of work that takes hours and wears people down.
I did the math.
Even working through the night, from the last train to the first train, there was not enough time for one person. Or two.
The only way to finish was to get more people involved. But the work required specific knowledge of the files and the process. Designers and operators who had nothing to do with the project could not just jump in.
So I wrote a script.
Something simple enough that anyone could run it, without needing to understand what was happening inside.
I spent my commute reading ExtendScript documentation on my phone. Forty minutes each way. One function at a time. Testing at my desk before and after work. Building it piece by piece.
It worked.
People who had never touched the project could now process files correctly. We hit the deadline.
That experience made one thing clear to me.
This kind of repetitive file work is not a skill problem. It is a systems problem. And systems can be fixed.
Most print shops, sign shops, and apparel teams are still doing this work by hand. Not because they want to. But because no one gave them a better way.
That is what Onvark is. A better way.