Cape Town, South Africa 🇿🇦

Duane Cilliers

I make things.

Sometimes with code. Sometimes with plastic. Always with intention.

About

I started as a frontend developer, spent years at a proptech startup, then went freelance. Now I'm building my own products while keeping the freelance engine running.

My days split between client work — building full-stack web apps with TypeScript, Next.js, React, and Laravel — and side projects exploring AI and developer tools.

I think in systems, ship in iterations, and believe the best products come from people who actually use them. Currently on the dev→entrepreneur arc, figuring it out as I go.

Now

Updated February 2026

Freelancing with REW and Trust My Group
Building side projects and exploring product ideas
Learning the business side of shipping products
Trying to practice drums more consistently

Projects

Featured

Pomodorino

shipped

A minimal Pomodoro timer for your menu bar. Native Swift, local analytics, no bloat. The timer for people who tried the others and got annoyed.

SwiftmacOSSwiftUI

TubeMind

shipped

Chat with a YouTube creator's AI persona. Built from video transcripts, embeddings, and conversational AI.

TypeScriptPythonFastAPINext.js

Client Work

REW

client

Real estate web platform serving thousands of agents across North America. Full-stack feature development.

TypeScriptReactNext.js

Trust My Group

client

Group management platform. PHP/Laravel backend with React/TypeScript dashboard SPA.

PHPLaravelReactTypeScript

Blog

February 25, 2026

Building Collective Memory for AI Agents with Obsidian

How I built a memory architecture that gives 14 AI agents continuity across sessions and lets them learn from each other using plain markdown files.

aiopenclawobsidian

February 25, 2026

Syncing Cloudinary Asset Data Back to Sanity

Your Cloudinary assets in Sanity are snapshots. They go stale. Here's how to build a daily sync pipeline that diffs and patches only what changed.

sanitycloudinarytypescript

February 18, 2026

Securing Your OpenClaw Setup: Git Backups Without Leaking Secrets

How I set up automatic secret redaction for git commits and a seamless restore workflow using macOS Keychain and 1Password.

openclawsecuritydevops

Life

🏄

Surfing

Chasing waves when Cape Town cooperates

🥋

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Planning to get back on the mats

🥁

Drums

Trying to practice more in 2026

🖨️

3D Printing

Bambu A1 Mini — making things IRL