THABANI
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Software Engineer · South Africa

Thabani M. Takwena

I build systems that take complicated day-to-day work and make it manageable for the teams running it.

Open to remote engineering roles

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Products

Software I own and ship

Products I built end to end — live users, real maintenance, my own roadmap.

SymbioLearn
Edtech · passion project

SymbioLearn

2024 — Present

SymbioLearn started as my final-year project in 2024. The first version was a PDF chat app with RAG over uploaded files, using Pinecone and LangChain.

I rebuilt it around live voice tutoring with the Gemini Live API.

After that, answers kept drifting off uploaded textbooks — whole PDFs in every prompt was not workable. I added a RAG pipeline with Gemini embeddings and pgvector in Supabase; uploaded textbooks are now searchable during a live session.

I also added post-session generation of quizzes, flashcards, summaries, and study notes from the lesson transcript.

Next.jsTypeScriptSupabasepgvectorGemini
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YTTG
Creator tools

YTTG

Nov 2025 — Present

YTTG started in November 2025 — a web app that generates YouTube thumbnail images from text prompts.

I worked on the prompt → image → follow-up refinement → export flow, plus billing, hosting, and production fixes.

Shipped to yttg.app; it now has paying users (~$40 MRR).

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Experience

Roles where I build for teams

Contract roles on internal systems — I currently work across both in parallel.

2025
Messaging automation

Cerebro Novus

Founding Engineer

Remote · Contract

May 2025 — Present

Founding engineer since May 2025 on a B2B messaging automation product (WhatsApp-based workflows for clients).

I worked on a visual flow editor — a drag-and-drop UI to define which messages send and in what order — plus template uploads, onboarding screens, and separate admin and client dashboards.

Live chat ran through Inngest and queue latency was slowing responses. I moved that processing to dedicated API routes so inbound messages were handled without waiting on background jobs.

I worked on migrating the database and login to Supabase and Clerk. Currently working on RAG-backed reply suggestions scoped to each client's documents and settings.

Next.jsTypeScriptSupabaseClerk
2024
Internal operations

HambaNathi

Full-Stack Engineer

South Africa · On-site · Contract

2024 — Present

Full-stack contract engineer since 2024 on an internal training management web app.

I work on enrollment and attendance records, certification tracking, payment-to-enrollment status, and branch-level operations.

I am rebuilding the older IMS into a Next.js app on Supabase, adding finance-related workflows and basic LMS modules (course material and learner progress).

Releases depended on manual cPanel steps each time. I set up GitHub Actions pipelines that deploy over SSH so a push can reach production without that handoff.

Next.jsTypeScriptSupabaseGitHub Actions

Approach

How I work

What shows up across the systems I build — not values posters, just patterns.

Replace manual work

If people repeat the same steps across departments, that is usually a system problem.

Payment confirmed → enrollment approved at HambaNathi.

Connect disconnected workflows

Software should show state and handoffs, not hide them in email and spreadsheets.

Branch ops, finance hooks, client-facing status.

Build around visibility

Roles, audit logs, and clear status so teams know what happened.

RBAC, logs, dashboards for staff and clients.

Ship, then refine in production

Real usage exposes what design missed. I expect to rebuild parts.

SymbioLearn: PDF chat → voice + retrieval. Cerebro: reworked live-chat paths in production.

Use AI where it removes friction

Not as decoration — when retrieval, voice, or automation actually changes the workflow.

Grounded answers in tutoring, generated thumbnails, assisted replies.

Now

Currently

  • Contract work on HambaNathi's internal platform (on-site, South Africa).
  • Parallel contract as founding engineer at Cerebro Novus (remote).
  • Building SymbioLearn — my edtech passion project — and maintaining YTTG.
  • Going deeper on retrieval, backend design, and ML foundations.