v0 · pre-seed · studio open to select engagements
Infrastructure as craft.
Protoworks is a boutique engineering studio in Cape Town. We build event-sourced backends, the graphs and models that read them, and the compliant cloud they run on: the load-bearing layer other teams stand on.
Three ventures in build, no outside capital yet. The studio takes a small number of engagements alongside them.
- 12 yrShipped systems
- 3 venturesIn build
- 0 failingCIS · ISO 27001 · SOC 2 controls
- Typed corePorts and adapters
The architecture, in five parts
One system, read five ways. Each page runs a live simulation of its part.
Capability
What the studio builds.
Six registers of work, each on a single seam. Engagements usually sit on one or two at a time, not all six.
Backend systems
Event-sourced services with clean cores. Pure logic at the centre, adapters at the edges, illegal states designed out.
rust · services · apis · ledgersGraphs and entity resolution
Typed entity graphs derived from the ledger, never written around it. Resolution that merges what is the same and keeps apart what only looks it.
memgraph · clickhouse · followthemoneyApplied transformers
Small encoders where they win, large decoders only where they must, both held to a schema. Recorded fixtures in every test, never a live API.
gliner · onnx · qdrant · vllmDevops and landing zones
Reproducible cloud foundations. Environment isolation, composable modules, changes applied in dependency order, every control traced to the line that sets it.
opentofu · terramate · gcpGitOps and delivery
Every change is a pull request. Plans on the PR, applies behind a gate, drift checked nightly. No long-lived keys, no hand patches on live clusters.
argocd · github actions · wifBuild, monorepo and tooling
Task graphs that survive large multi-language monorepos without ceremony, and the internal CLIs that pay back their build cost in the first quarter.
moonrepo · remote cache · clisAssurance
Audit-ready is a build output, not a project.
Automated evidence from our most recent client landing zone: Prowler 5.42 against the org and folder, Checkov across the infrastructure code with 1,377 checks passing, 16 September 2026, re-run weekly. Client anonymised. The ISO and SOC 2 figures are control-mapping results ready for an auditor, not a third-party attestation.
How it is built →In build
What the studio is building.
No client roster to show yet: the studio is pre-seed and has not closed a named engagement. These are the three ventures it is building in the meantime: two live enough to visit, one still in build.
Studio
Small on purpose.
- 2Engagements at once
- ~3Per year
- 12 yrShipping
Protoworks is a one-person engineering studio. Twelve years of shipped systems behind it: control planes, ledger cores, and build infrastructure that other teams keep using after the engagement ends.
Most of that capacity currently points at the studio's own ventures, Protoworks Defence, Panoptes and Aegis, all pre-seed. The remaining time goes to a small number of outside engagements, usually multi-quarter, usually on the load-bearing layer other teams build on.
Boutique means the person who scopes the work writes the code, writes the Terraform, and signs off the evidence. Nothing is handed down a chain.
Contact
Reach the studio.
Write here or to the address below. It reaches one inbox, and a person reads it. Replies usually arrive inside a working week.