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Rony Imanuel Sihombing  ·  Future Product Engineer

Documenting a journeytoward thoughtfulsoftware engineering.

Current Mission

Learning how to build software that remains useful, understandable, and maintainable as complexity grows.

Base

Pematangsiantar, ID

Modules Shipped

7 bot phases & counting

Currently Exploring

System design & Next.js

Status

Building Foundations

01. Identity

The Person Behind The Screen

I'm Rony — a Computer Engineering student at Politeknik Negeri Medan, currently in my second semester.

My background lives at an unusual intersection: system-level engineering, visual design, and creative technology. I've modded Android kernels, built production-ready WhatsApp automation platforms, and designed for church events — each discipline feeding the others in ways I didn't expect.

My interest in photography taught me to observe details — to read the mood of a scene before reaching for a camera. I apply that same discipline to code and interfaces: understanding context before committing to structure.

Today I'm focused on building software that solves real problems — functional, readable, and precise. Engineering with taste.

Systems

Linux · Android Kernel · KernelSU · Pterodactyl · Nginx

Software

Node.js · Next.js · Fastify · Prisma · WhatsApp Baileys

Creative

Design Systems · Photography · Framer Motion · Visual Storytelling

02. Trajectory

Direction Over Speed

  1. 2026 / Present

    Building Foundations

    Shipping real projects in Node.js, Next.js, and Fastify. Learning system architecture through building — a modular WhatsApp bot, a gamified learning app, and deployment pipelines all emerged from this phase.

  2. 2027 / Next Phase

    Scaling Complexity

    Transitioning into distributed systems, robust API design, and production-grade infrastructure. Moving from isolated experiments to platforms serving real users reliably.

  3. Future / The Goal

    Product Engineering

    Building software products that bridge rigorous technical architecture with fluid, human-centered interfaces. Engineering with taste — and intention.

03. Projects

Proof of Iteration

Documenting the process, not just the final repository.

English Quest Dashboard
ronnanakibu/englishquest

EnglishQuest

Full-stack learning app with XP systems, streaks, achievements, and adaptive progression. Built as a second-semester final project.

Next.js 15FastifyPrismaMySQLZustandFramer MotionVercel

01 / Problem

A final project that needed to go beyond CRUD. The challenge: design a learning experience that sustains motivation across sessions — without dark-pattern engagement traps.

02 / Architecture

Quadratic XP scaling, 15 achievements, combo multipliers, hearts, and a dual-lock unit progression model. Frontend on Vercel, Fastify API on Hugging Face Spaces with UptimeRobot keep-alive. Debugged Prisma v7 breaking changes and Railway pipeline failures.

03 / Reflection

Race conditions in the XP flow and CORS misconfigurations under cross-origin token validation were the hardest bugs. Distributed systems fail at their seams — the boundaries between services.

Server infrastructure and code
ronnanakibu/BOTWA2.0

RonnBot v2

7-phase modular bot architecture migrated from a 2,600-line monolith. AI, media utilities, hybrid radio engine, and ops dashboard.

Baileys MDNode.jsExpressPterodactylNext.jsyt-dlp

01 / Problem

A single 2,600-line file — fast to write, impossible to maintain. Any new feature required touching fragile shared state. The system also used Puppeteer, which was blocked in headless Linux containers.

02 / Architecture

Migrated to Baileys MD and rebuilt as a plugin-based system across 7 phases: dual-engine AI, media utilities (OCR, stickers, TikTok/IG downloader), hybrid radio engine with pre-buffer streaming. Phase 9 adds a Next.js ops dashboard via Express.

03 / Reflection

Migrating a live system with active users forces you to think about backward compatibility. The radio engine's pre-buffer approach was the key insight: solve jitter at the source, not with retries downstream.

Data pipeline visualization

WhatsApp → Google Sheets

Standalone bridge between WhatsApp conversations and Google Sheets via webhook, running as an isolated Pterodactyl container.

BaileysNode.jsGoogle Apps ScriptWebhooksPterodactyl

01 / Problem

Structured responses from WhatsApp conversations needed to flow into Google Sheets automatically — without requiring users to change existing behavior.

02 / Execution

Standalone Baileys instance (separate container from RonnBot) that parses incoming messages and POSTs structured data to a Google Apps Script webhook. Zero dependency on the official Google API — just HTTPS.

03 / Reflection

Running two bots on separate containers meant one crash couldn't take down the other. A constraint that taught me the value of fault isolation early, before it became critical.

04. Lab Notes

Engineering Journal

  1. Jun 2026 // Distributed Systems

    Spent a week debugging race conditions in EnglishQuest's XP update flow. Two concurrent requests could both read stale XP and write conflicting values. The fix was an optimistic lock — simple once the problem was clearly understood. Understanding the problem is most of the work.

  2. May 2026 // Android Kernel

    Diagnosed a fast-charging regression on my Redmi 9T after a kernel swap. Traced it to a hardcoded qc_opti_disable = 7 flag — the charging path was simply disabled. Unfixable without recompiling. Knowing when a problem requires changing constraints, not workarounds, is its own skill.

  3. Apr 2026 // Design Systems

    Analyzed Linear, Vercel, and Raycast's design languages. Beautiful interfaces aren't magic — they're mathematical spacing scales, restrained type hierarchies, and disciplined CSS. Restraint is harder to execute than complexity.

  4. Mar 2026 // Refactoring

    Migrated RonnBot from 2,600 lines of monolith to a modular plugin architecture. The hardest part wasn't writing the new code — it was resisting the urge to add features while refactoring. Discipline over velocity.

05. Thinking

Code is a communication tool.

Interfaces must respect user attention.

Aesthetics emerge from system clarity.

Always optimize for understanding.

06. Connect

Always open to discussing
engineering challenges, system design,
and thoughtful software.

GitHubgithub.com/ronnanakibu
Instagram@ronnlbtrn_
Location

Pematangsiantar, North Sumatra, ID