NIMO
A Local-First Interface Connected to a Standalone Project Intelligence Core
NIMO began as a portfolio-aware assistant and is evolving into a reusable intelligence layer for Manav's public software ecosystem. The visible assistant remains native to each product, while shared knowledge, secure model access, conversation handling, and provider routing live in the independent NIMO Core repository.
Beyond a Portfolio Chatbot.
Problem
A chatbot embedded deep inside one portfolio repository becomes difficult to maintain, reuse, test, and connect to additional products. Every intelligence change risks touching unrelated portfolio code.
Solution
Separate intelligence from presentation. NIMO Core owns verified public project knowledge, model routing, validation, memory, security, and API contracts. The portfolio retains its native NIMO interface and becomes the first client.
Design Principle
Knowledge is central; runtime context is local. NIMO can discover and recommend public projects globally, while each connected product controls its own page state and allowlisted actions.
Privacy Boundary
Only explicitly registered public projects enter NIMO's knowledge base. Private or unpublished repositories are excluded rather than represented as hidden records.
One Core. Multiple Native Clients.
The client first runs deterministic local intent resolution for navigation, project facts, glossary definitions, and common portfolio questions. Out-of-scope requests are forwarded to NIMO Core through a stable API contract.
NIMO Core validates the project identity, page context, language, message length, and bounded conversation history before constructing the provider request. OpenRouter credentials remain server-side.
Fast Locally. Intelligent Remotely.
- 1. Local resolution: Known navigation, identity, glossary, and project queries are answered without a network call.
- 2. Context capture: The client supplies trusted IDs for the active project, page, section, and language.
- 3. Validation: Unknown IDs, malformed payloads, oversized messages, and unsafe context strings are discarded or rejected.
- 4. Bounded memory: Only the latest validated conversation turns are forwarded, preventing fake UI-only memory.
- 5. Provider failover: NIMO Core tries configured OpenRouter models in order and rejects unusable outputs.
- 6. Safe response: Visitors receive a clean answer or generic service error; provider diagnostics stay in structured logs.
Designed Around Explicit Trust Boundaries.
Server-Side Secrets
OpenRouter credentials are stored in Cloudflare environment bindings and never shipped in frontend JavaScript.
Context Allowlisting
User-supplied project and route context is treated as untrusted input. Only registered identifiers enter the system prompt.
Abuse Controls
The API supports Cloudflare's distributed rate-limiter binding, with a limited in-memory development fallback and strict request budgets.
Safe Rendering
Assistant text is escaped before rich formatting is applied, reducing the risk of model-generated HTML injection.
Operational Tracing
Every response carries a request ID. Detailed provider failures are logged internally instead of exposed to visitors.
Privacy by Exclusion
Private projects are not indexed, promoted, summarized, or acknowledged by NIMO unless intentionally published later.
Still Native to the Portfolio
Separating the backend does not remove NIMO from the portfolio. The mascot, panel, suggestions, keyboard behavior, local navigation, visual tokens, and responsive layout stay integrated with the site.
- Natural-language section navigation
- Current case-study awareness
- English, Hindi, and Hinglish responses
- Graceful local fallback during API failure
- Arcade keyboard-focus isolation
Reusable Across Public Projects
Future clients connect through a small project manifest and adapter rather than copying NIMO's intelligence. Each client may expose navigation or other safe capabilities without granting one project access to another project's private state.
- Versioned client SDK
- Canonical public project registry
- Structured, allowlisted actions
- Per-project context adapters
- Cross-project discovery and relevant recommendations
Maintainable Intelligence.
The extraction turns NIMO from a deeply nested portfolio module into an independently testable system. Intelligence issues can now be fixed inside NIMO Core without searching through the portfolio's ArcadeOS, case studies, styling, and unrelated frontend modules.
From Assistant to Project Layer.
The next stages are deployment of the standalone Worker, portfolio cutover to the stable endpoint, a shared client SDK, a second public-project integration, distributed production rate limiting, and controlled tool execution.