CREATIVELYNANDA.CO.ZA — Personal Brand Platform

Portfolio, blog, Notion template store, poetry section, and AI chatbot built as a unified personal brand platform for Nandawula Kabali-Kagwa, founder of Mirembe Muse. The most iterated repo in the portfolio: 100+ commits, most of which were decisions about what to remove rather than what to add.

Architecture Decisions

Next.js 14 App Router for nested layout architecture — each section (blog, shop, poetry, about) has its own shell without re-rendering the root. Server Components reduce JS payload on a content-heavy site where first-load performance directly affects credibility with international visitors.

Multilingual support via Next.js locales. Resend for transactional email with custom React Email templates. PayFast for ZAR template sales. Supabase for contact form submissions, blog content, and Nanda AI chatbot conversation history.

The Nanda AI chatbot is Claude-powered with a system prompt trained on Nanda's full professional context — acts as a first-response layer for client enquiries, capable of answering technical questions about the app portfolio, discussing services and pricing, and routing complex enquiries to the contact form.

Grain texture overlay implemented as an SVG feTurbulence filter fixed to the viewport — not a repeating background image — to prevent scroll repaints. Design palette: navy, cherry, beige, white with gold as structural accent only.

POPIA-compliant across all data collection points. Reg. No. 2026-005658.

Stack: Next.js 14 · TypeScript · Supabase · Tailwind CSS · Claude API · Resend · PayFast · Framer Motion · Vercel · Arcjet (per-route, not middleware)