Mustapha Lawal
Full-stack developer in Lagos, Nigeria
“I build real-time products that hold up in production.”
Full-stack developer in Lagos. Collaborative software, booking platforms, inventory systems.
Real-time collaboration & CRDTs
Playwright E2E on 390px iPhone & Desktop
Edge-first architectures ($0 overhead)
Index of Production Builds
Hover rows for live preview. Click to inspect architecture and case studies.Tap a project to preview.
Real-time collaborative canvas with peer-to-peer sync, offline persistence, and AI-driven board organization.
Engineered full stack: custom WebSocket sync server powered by Yjs CRDTs, React canvas engine, offline-first IndexedDB persistence, structured Gemini AI canvas organizer, and automated Playwright E2E suites.
Guaranteeing conflict-free distributed document convergence during sudden network drops while keeping gesture rendering smooth on mobile viewports.
Stock tracking, customer management, pay-later credit sales tracking, and POS-style checkout built for real shop owners.
NOOK
A curated directory of luxury stays and experiences across Lagos, paired with an administrative operating suite.
Hostvale
Operations app for shortlet hosts across Nigeria: bookings, caution fees, guests, and a per-host mini website with apartment photos.
Yípo
A high-performance, offline-first Android application engineered for Nigerian Ajo, Esusu, and Adashe rotating savings organizers. Functions strictly as a secure digital ledger (never touches money) to automate contribution rounds, payout schedules, WhatsApp receipts, and member reliability scoring.
Fig 1.0 — Tessel interface & active session canvas view
Real-time collaboration without dropped state.
Teams need to think together on one canvas without lag and without losing work when the connection drops. Distributed participants require immediate visual feedback while concurrent operations reconcile seamlessly in the background.
- ›Network drops in high-latency geographies discard state on naive HTTP pipelines.
- ›Visual canvas manipulation requires zero rendering stutter on low-power devices.
Tessel canvas interface and initial landing state
Conflict-free replication with Yjs CRDTs.
Yjs CRDTs run over a custom WebSocket sync server, ensuring edits from many people merge deterministically without central lock contention. Awareness states broadcast live cursors, selection bounding boxes, and peer presence across active peers.
- ›WebSocket sync engine broadcasting delta updates via binary Yjs encoding.
- ›Awareness protocol for multi-user presence, remote cursor tracking, and collaborative selection.
Multi-user live canvas with concurrent editing and real-time cursor awareness
Local persistence that catches up on reconnect.
y-indexeddb caches full board state directly in the browser's IndexedDB, keeping boards fully usable without an internet connection. When connectivity returns, local deltas automatically sync and merge with remote updates.
- ›Local-first document lifecycle via y-indexeddb provider.
- ›Automatic bidirectional synchronization on browser online events.
- ›Fully responsive canvas touch controls tailored for mobile screens.
Mobile viewport execution: responsive canvas interaction and offline continuity
Board organization powered by structured Gemini output.
The 'Organise' tool cleans and structures messy whiteboard clusters using Google Gemini with structured JSON schema outputs. It executes a fast model first with graceful fallback tiers, exponential timeouts, and strict rate-limit protection.
- ›Algorithmic spatial cluster parsing fed to Gemini structured response schema.
- ›Fallback escalation on 429/timeout errors to ensure continuous user flow.
Live interactive demo: board manipulation, object grouping, and sync speed
Hardened tokens, signed assets, and zero trust.
JWT access tokens paired with rotating refresh tokens secure user sessions. Password recovery uses hashed, single-use, time-limited reset links. Cloudinary file uploads are signed server-side, and API routes enforce strict rate limiting.
- ›Stateless JWT access tokens with rotating refresh tokens stored in HTTP-only cookies.
- ›Single-use scrypt-hashed password recovery tokens with automatic expiry.
- ›Server-signed upload signatures preventing untrusted Cloudinary asset injections.
Threaded contextual comments and fine-grained board permissions
Monorepo architecture with mobile-tested CI pipelines.
TypeScript monorepo housing web client, WebSocket server, and shared schemas. GitHub Actions CI runs unit tests, type checks, build pipelines, and Playwright end-to-end tests across desktop and iPhone 390px viewports before automated deployment.
- ›Automated dual-viewport Playwright matrix (Desktop Chrome + iPhone 390px Safari).
- ›Auto-deployment: Web client to GitHub Pages, sync API to Render, storage to MongoDB Atlas.
- ›Installable Progressive Web App (PWA) with service worker caching.
Production dark dashboard: board management, permissions, and PWA integration
Real-time Distributed Sync Lifecycle
Changes apply instantly to user canvas before socket dispatch.
Yjs binary encoding merges concurrent edits deterministically.
Server batches binary updates into MongoDB Atlas document snapshots.
Production Canvas in Real Time
Tessel is live on GitHub Pages with automated CI deployments. Open multiple browser tabs or load it on an iPhone to test conflict-free CRDT synchronization, offline persistence, and live multiplayer awareness.
Live multi-user board session with concurrent peers
Production Systems in the Wild
Real products built for real merchants, community savings organizers, travelers, and property managers. No templates, no dummy mockups.
StockFlow
Inventory and sales management for small businesses.
StockFlow empowers retail shop owners to control inventory, register point-of-sale transactions, and manage customers. Built end-to-end to withstand everyday commerce demands in emerging markets.
Designing the pay-later credit sales reconciliation model so merchants can accurately track installment payments, balance settlements, and customer purchase histories without accounting drift.
- Real-time stock depletion & low-stock alerts
- Pay-later credit sales ledger with installment tracking
- POS-style rapid counter checkout
NOOK
A curated guide to stays and experiences in Lagos, with the admin to run it.
Built from the ground up on Next.js 16 App Router and Prisma 7 on Supabase Postgres. Couples a high-aesthetic public directory with a bulletproof administrative back-office.
Hostvale
Operations app for shortlet hosts across Nigeria: bookings, caution fees, guests, and a per-host mini website.
Nigerian shortlet operators face recurring friction with untracked caution fees, guest identity fraud, and disjointed booking channels. Hostvale replaces chaotic spreadsheets with a purpose-built operational cockpit.
Engineered with state machines that track caution deposits, inspection clearances, deduction audits, and scheduled customer refunds.
- Next.js App Router + Supabase Postgres with RLS policies
- Per-host multi-tenant mini storefronts with direct booking
- Guest KYC verification and automated WhatsApp dispatch
Yípo
Offline Ajo & Esusu Mobile Record Keeper
A high-performance, offline-first Android application engineered for Nigerian Ajo, Esusu, and Adashe rotating savings organizers. Functions strictly as a secure digital ledger (never touches money) to automate contribution rounds, payout schedules, WhatsApp receipts, and member reliability scoring.
Built with local Expo SQLite database using transactional ACID writes, versioned migration schemas, and JSON backup/restore. Operates with zero network dependency.
- Interactive Skia Visuals: Custom Skia-powered rotating turn ring with dynamic collector spotlight and haptic feedback.
- Native Hardware Integrations: Biometric App Lock (Fingerprint/Face ID), Android Share Intent receiver, and contact picker.
- Direct WhatsApp Automation: One-tap formatted payment receipt and customizable reminder generation deep-linked to WhatsApp.
- Offline Document Engine: Custom A4 PDF statement generation with embedded base64 typography for zero-network printing.
- Multi-Architecture Build: Universal production APK compiled for both 32-bit (armeabi-v7a) and 64-bit (arm64-v8a) ARM architectures.
Practical Tooling, Verified in Production
“MERN at the core, plus Next.js and Postgres when the product needs them.”
Hover or tap any technology below to see which live project it powers.
Core (daily)
My daily production foundation. Built around the MERN paradigm with strict TypeScript.
Document store, flexible schemas, Atlas clusters
REST APIs, WebSocket attachment, middleware
Component architectures, custom hooks, canvas rendering
Event-driven runtime, sync servers, background tasks
Strict typing across client, server, and shared packages
Also ships with
Mobile app engineering, relational modeling, modern SSR architectures, and rapid UI.
Offline-first mobile engineering, native Android hardware integrations
Local transactional database with ACID writes and versioned migrations
Hardware-accelerated 2D canvas, custom rotational ring geometry at 60fps
App Router, Server Actions, per-page SEO, Route Handlers
Relational tables, Row-Level Security, database migrations
Type-safe database ORM and automated schema migrations
Utility-first design tokens, zero runtime style cost
Fast client bundling, PWA plugin support, HMR
Real-time & delivery
Collaborative CRDT sync, end-to-end verification, and modern deployment pipelines.
Bidirectional state streaming and awareness protocols
Conflict-free replicated data types for multiplayer canvas
Automated E2E testing on desktop and 390px iPhone viewports
CI test matrices, type-checks, and auto-deploy jobs
Reproducible container environments
Global edge deployment and serverless execution
Long-running WebSocket sync service hosting
How I Build & Ship
Concrete engineering principles proven through actual implementation. No hypothetical theories or buzzwords.
Real-time & sync
CRDT-driven collaborative states via Yjs and custom WebSockets that guarantee eventual consistency without central lock contention.
Auth & security
Scrypt and JWT auth architectures with rotating refresh tokens, HMAC-signed session envelopes, and zero-trust honeypot spam defenses.
Testing & CI
Automated Playwright end-to-end suites validated on both 390px iPhone and desktop viewports, with strict type-checking gates before deploy.
Performance & $0 infra
Monorepos and static-first architectures paired with edge delivery (Vercel, Render, Supabase, Cloudinary) running on $0 recurring overhead.
About Mustapha Lawal
I am a Lagos-based full-stack developer who builds products that hold up in production. I engineer software with a phone-first mindset because the majority of real users interact with the web through mobile viewports first.
My core lies in the MERN stack—MongoDB, Express, React, and Node.js—reinforced with Next.js and PostgreSQL when structured relational guarantees are needed.
I ship products end-to-end: from initial database schema and API design to automated CI testing pipelines and production edge deployment.
Real-time collaborative canvas tooling & shortlet booking engines
Advanced local-first CRDT topology & distributed sync protocols
Remote full-stack roles, contract engineering & freelance builds