TobiSalau
I build the product people see and the system running behind it. Payments, AI, and everything in between, shipped end to end by one person.
Location
Lagos, NG
Field
Design & Development
Approach
Less but better
Clients
Startups & Creative Brands
I build the interface and the system underneath it. Payment rails, AI pipelines, and the products people actually touch. One person, the whole stack.
I don't let AI be the source of truth. It talks, the database decides, the webhooks confirm. Every price is validated before it reaches a user. Slower than it could be, but nobody gets double-charged.
Twilio's five-second retry window, idempotent ledgers across three chains, AES-256 audit trails, and the dashboards sitting on top of all of it. No Figma file, no designer.
Driven Result
The work doesn’t just look good, it performs.Here’s the impact behind the build.
0+
Years shipping
Production systems where correctness is non-negotiable, fintech, e-signature, and AI.
0+
Autonomous AI tools
Orchestrated across IléHQ's 15-step WhatsApp messaging pipeline.
0%
LoCoMo benchmark
Reached by engram-dev, my open-source MCP memory server on PyPI.
0%
Manual work automated
A 3-stage Paystack pipeline replaced manual transaction processing at Digitaley Drive.
Experience(06)
Where I’ve shippedthings that matter
Payments infra, AI systems, multi-tenant platforms, where getting it wrong means someone loses money.
Selected Work(06)
Scroll sideways
Six things I built for myself, end to end. Keep scrolling, the shelf moves with you.
mini-github
A solo-built forge that hosts real bare-git repos over HTTP and SSH, deploys them to live URLs in Docker, and layers on an OpenAI code brain, PR review, pgvector search, and grounded ask-your-code.
- NestJS
- Docker
- pgvector
IléHQ
An AI operating system for short-let hosts, guests book from a WhatsApp link, and IléHQ runs the whole stay: availability, guest trust scoring, access-code check-in/out, deposits, receipts and host payouts.
- Next.js
- Prisma
- Twilio
Revi
A self-hostable alternative to Sentry and LogRocket, automatic error capture, pixel-perfect session replay, and performance analytics in one dashboard.
- Encore.ts
- PostgreSQL
- WebSockets
Sabo Junction
A self-playing simulation: seven AI citizens of a Lagos junction pursue private wants, hold grudges, and evolve nightly while a hidden Director stokes the drama.
- TypeScript
- OpenAI
- WebSockets
Motionforge
A dev-only, in-page motion editor for React/Next.js, tweak animations on your running page, and it writes idiomatic CSS/TSX back into your repo. No runtime lock-in.
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
Engram
An open-source, local-first memory layer that indexes your whole codebase into a vector store and serves it to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client, so you stop re-explaining your architecture.
- Python
- MCP
- FAISS
That’s the shelf.
See everythingApproach(04)
CreativeApproach
Every project is different, but the path stays the same, a balance of research, clarity, creativity, and refinement.
Map before I touch anything
On a new system I read it first and write down how it actually works. No blind rewrites, no guessing at the data model.
Nail the contracts
The schema, the API shapes, the money paths. Get these right and the rest of the build stops fighting you.
Ship in phases you can see
Each phase is something running, not a slide. You watch it work as it lands instead of waiting for one big reveal.
Harden the edges
Loading, error and empty states, the retries, the reconciliation. The unglamorous parts that decide whether people trust it.
Questions, answered
The things people usually ask before we start working together.
A short discovery call, a scoped plan with verifiable phases, then shipping, you see it working every step, not at a big-bang reveal.