Articles
Field notes on engineering, AI, product, and building for African markets. Written so a curious newcomer can follow — and a hardcore engineer still finds the meat.
Engineering
Custom Currencies Without Lying to Your Ledger
How we run RBX, ZiG, and admin exchange rates through the money gem as a single source of truth — plus the construction bugs that silently corrupt African fintech math.
Nick·moneyrailscurrencies
Production-ready. Still fast.
How Kudapara ships with Hermes agents, board handoffs, pull-request discipline, local CI merge gates, and a five-step algorithm before automation.
Nick·hermesshippingci
Self-Hosting Pelias: Geocoding for African Addresses
How we run Pelias for descriptive African addresses Google often misses — landmark language, fuzzy match, pin fallback, and a cheap VM that actually fits the terrain.
Nick·geocodingpeliasinfra
Rails 8 Engine Architecture: Building a Monolith That Scales
Why we run Muchiround as a single Rails application with domain engines instead of microservices — and how boundaries keep the codebase shippable as domains multiply.
Nick·railsarchitecturemonolithProduct
First Principles, Not Competitors
Why Kudapara rejects competitor-copy culture — the Algorithm, rejected analogies, and how we decide what to build for African markets.
Nick·first-principlesstrategyethos
Not an agency. Not a clone.
How Kudapara differs from consultancies, single-founder shops, and startups that ship Western software with a local skin.
Nick·differentiationcompanyafrica
The Agentic Company
How Kudapara runs real departments as AI agents — a shared board as the engine, Basecamp for the human CEO, and hard lines that keep speed honest.
Nick·agentshermesops
Building Muchiround: Business and community on one stack
What Muchiround actually is — shops, social, deliveries, wallets, hiring pros, messaging, and AI sharing one identity and one ledger. Built for the terrain, not localized from a US tutorial.
Nick·muchiroundrailscommerce