Djembe AI

Djembe AI is the company. Melanin Map and Big Mama are the first two products, and Kelpie AI is in design under the same roof. The thesis underneath all of it is one bet: the next decade of consumer AI is voice-first, agentic, and culturally grounded, and the companies that win it are the ones built for communities the current AI giants were never designed to serve.

The thesis

Three shifts are happening at once. Voice is becoming the default way people talk to software, not a feature bolted onto a screen. Agents are moving from demos to systems that actually do the work. And the audiences the big labs optimize for are not the audiences I am building for. Put those together and there is a real opening: products that listen, act, and understand the cultural context of the people using them.

A djembe is a drum that carries a message across a community. That is the whole idea. The technology is the instrument. The point is who hears it and what it lets them do.

What lives under Djembe

The company is a portfolio, not a single app. Each product is a different angle on the same bet.

• Melanin Map is shipped and live on the App Store. It is the consumer surface: Black history, culture, businesses, landmarks, and events in one place, with a guide built in.
• Big Mama is in development as a beta inside Melanin Map. She is the voice-first, agentic layer: a culturally grounded assistant that helps people discover and helps Black-owned businesses actually grow.
• Kelpie AI is in design. It is the B2B side, an AI governance control plane for regulated industries, and where my twelve years of security operations come back into the work.

The products look different on the surface. Underneath, they share infrastructure, a voice and agent stack, and the same standard for how the technology should treat the people on the other end of it.

How I build it

I build Djembe AI in public, from the principal-engineer-as-founder seat. The Bingo Codes blog you are reading is the documentation of how that build actually goes: the wins, the dead ends, the architecture decisions, and what I ship next. No hype, no highlight reel. If something breaks, it shows up here too.

That is deliberate. Building in the open is both how I stay honest and how the work compounds. The writing becomes the proof, and the proof is the brand.

Where it is

Early, and honest about it. Melanin Map is real and in people’s hands. Big Mama and Kelpie are earlier. The company is a bet I am making one shipped thing at a time, out loud, so you can watch it hold up or fall over.

If you are building in voice, agentic systems, or culturally grounded AI, or you just want to compare notes on going from the SOC to founding a company, find me on X. No pitch deck required.