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The Engineering Handbook
How it's actually built.
Not marketing — documentation. Live architecture diagrams, the real integration flows, and the decisions behind them. Everything here reflects systems that exist, sourced from the build journals of the products themselves. Poke at it.
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Container view
This site, as a system
mirembemuse.co.za is a Next.js 15 app on Vercel. Every public /api/* route is guarded by Arcjet and Upstash rate limiting; data and auth live in Supabase (Postgres with row-level security); the assistant streams from Claude; payments run through PayFast (local and international); and a private engine, JarvisOS, is reached only over signed webhooks — never a shared database.
Solid arrows are request paths; dashed arrows are asynchronous, signed callbacks (PayFast ITN, JarvisOS webhooks). The engine node is ghosted because it is a separate, isolated project surfaced only through webhooks.
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Integration flow
Truthful stock, across two systems
A real, end-to-end-wired loop: when someone buys from the Sanyu Botanicals store, the inventory is decremented in the private engine and synced back — so the storefront never oversells. Two webhooks, two distinct auth schemes, a five-minute replay guard, and graceful no-op if secrets aren't set (checkout never breaks).
Outbound (Store→Engine) is authed with a Bearer key plus an HMAC-SHA256 of the body; inbound (Engine→Store) is signed over timestamp.body with a five-minute replay window. JarvisOS is the single source of truth for finished-goods stock.
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Product deep-dives
Engineering specs, per product
Each spec is its own architecture diagram, real stack, schema scale, the decisions behind it (ADR-style) and the hard parts — drawn straight from that product's build journals.
VarsityOS
An AI "Student Operating System" for South African students — study planning, NSFAS budgeting, wellness and careers around an AI chief-of-staff, Nova.
Next.js 14 (App Router, RSC) · React 18 · TypeScript (strict)AdminOS
A WhatsApp-native, multi-tenant business OS for South African SMEs — the interface is the customer’s existing WhatsApp line, not a dashboard.
Next.js 16 (App Router) · React 19 · TypeScriptK53 Drill Master
An offline-first K53 learner's-licence drill PWA — 600+ DLTC-format questions in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa, built for budget Android on 3G.
React 18 + Vite · Framer Motion · Supabase (auth + Edge Functions)Sanyu Botanicals
An editorial e-commerce storefront for botanical hair care — with an AI hair chatbot, an "Angel" loyalty portal, and a live two-way inventory sync to the private engine.
Next.js 14 (App Router) · TypeScript · SupabaseThe Selves of Us
A premium digital literary magazine + podcast platform — explicitly anti-AI-generated-content, with a real-time multi-role editorial workflow.
Next.js 15 · React 19 · TypeScriptTrue Access
South Africa’s first community accessibility-mapping platform — disabled people discover and rate accessible spaces; businesses get SANS 10400-S compliance scoring. One codebase for iOS, Android and Web.
Expo SDK 52 (Expo Router) · React Native 0.76 · TypeScriptStokvelOS
AI-powered management for South African stokvels — members transact entirely over WhatsApp in their own language, every transaction is immutable, and records mirror to a read-only Notion workspace for full transparency.
Next.js 16 (App Router) · React 18 · TypeScriptWatchSankofa
A pan-African creative-content streaming platform — film, music, poetry, writing and photography — built mobile-first for African connectivity realities, with Claude-powered discovery.
Next.js 16 (App Router, Turbopack) · TypeScript (strict) · Supabase (Postgres + RLS + Realtime).jpg&w=3840&q=75)
The handbook
Where to go deeper
System Architecture
The one-system view — engine, fleet, this site, and how they connect.
LiveEngineering Decisions
Why we built it this way — across the business, engineering and human lenses.
LiveThe Observatory
The studio in the open — live commit feed and the systems that are running.
LiveProduct Deep-Dives
Per-product technical case studies: stack, schema, the hard parts solved.
LiveDecision Records (ADRs)
Numbered, dated architecture decisions — context, choice, consequence.
LiveData & Schema
Real schema slices and data dictionaries from the production databases.
LiveRunbooks
Deploy, rollback, incident response and handover procedures.
LiveSecurity & Trust
RLS, signed webhooks, rate limiting, POPIA/PAIA — the controls in plain terms.
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Want this rigor on your build?
The same documentation discipline ships with every client system — you own the code, the schema and the runbooks.