Curation and trust
It's an invitation-only network: every applicant goes through human approval before getting in. Trust is the product, there's no 'sign up free'.
// RBAC with 4 roles and ~57 permissions · 2FA TOTP · audit log · LGPD-first
in productionibanetwork.org2026full-stack, whole product
IBA · Cross-Border Innovation Network
IBA is the digital platform of the Innovation Business Alliance, a membership-led, invitation-only alliance that connects fintech leaders, financial institutions, investors and regulators across Brazil, Ireland and the UK. Instead of scattered chat groups, it brings the whole network into one place: curated member approval, events with check-in, themed committees, a directory and institutional memory.
NestJSNext.js 16React 19TypeScriptPrismaPostgreSQLRedisBullMQSocket.IOOpenAIAnthropicResendTwilionext-intlDockerNginx
The problem
Networking between the innovation ecosystems of Brazil, Ireland and the UK used to happen all over the place: WhatsApp groups nobody keeps up with, contacts that get lost, one-off events with no follow-through. There was no profile, no search, no memory, so finding the right company or the right person on the other side of the Atlantic came down to luck and to who you already knew.
Building the trust this corridor is missing is hard precisely because you can't fake it. The platform doesn't invent relationships, it gives structure to a network that already exists: it approves who comes in, organizes what happens and keeps the memory of all of it.
Applicationhuman approvalProfilecompany and interestsConnectionssemantic matchmakingLiving networkevents and committees
How it was built
Directory and smart connections
Search members by company, role, country and interest, plus a semantic matchmaking that reads the profiles and suggests cross-border connections with a clear reason.
$ how i solved it
Every profile becomes an embedding; the algorithm crosses profile and history and suggests 6 to 20 people.Each suggestion carries the reason for the connection, not just a blind match.Recommendations are recomputed by cron (daily/weekly), off the request path.The member decides whether they show up in external search or not.
Living committees and events
Themed committees with realtime agendas, in-person events with QR check-in and a versioned document library with granular permissions.
// realtime agendas (Socket.IO) · QR check-in · per-document ACL · AI summary on close
AI over the knowledge base
An AI chat answers on top of the network's indexed documents, with citations and feedback, turning institutional memory into something you can actually query.
$ how i solved it
Documents are indexed (RAG) and the chat answers with citations back to the source.Two AI providers behind it (OpenAI + Anthropic), with caching and cost control.Answers stream in (SSE) and a circuit breaker keeps the experience from falling over.AI budget alerts fire at 50/80/100% through metrics.
What it changed
What was once scattered conversation became infrastructure: a curated network where approved members find each other, schedule events, trade knowledge in committees and get connection suggestions based on what they actually do. Instead of a chat group, a whole international platform, in production, in five languages.
BR·IE·UKcross-border corridorSão Paulo · Dublin · London
5languagesEN · PT · ES · IT · DE
4surfacessite · portal · admin · API
invite-onlycurated approvalevery member reviewed
cat specs.txt # for the technical reader
- architecture
- Turborepo monorepo · NestJS 10 · Next.js 16 + React 19
- database
- PostgreSQL (pgvector) · Prisma · 24 migrations
- realtime & queues
- Socket.IO · BullMQ · outbox pattern · Redis
- ai
- OpenAI + Anthropic · RAG with citations · semantic matchmaking
- security
- RBAC (~57 permissions) · 2FA TOTP · LGPD-first
- infra
- Docker · Nginx · 5 locales (next-intl)
Designed, built and shipped live by Bernardo Iannini
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