Octavia AI CMS (as a Service)
// A multi-tenant CMS I built to make content creation less painful and more fun — powered by AI and designed for small teams and personal brands.
Octavia CMS was one of those projects that pushed me outside my comfort zone in the best possible way. As the founder of Octavia, I set out with a simple idea: content management shouldn’t be painful, expensive, or over-engineered — especially for small businesses, growing teams, and personal brands just starting out. I wanted to make creating and publishing content something you could do without breaking the bank or wrestling with complicated setups.
The vision was clear: a multi-tenant CMS with AI built right in — a tool that feels modern, scales with your needs, and makes content creation less messy and way more approachable. The hard part, of course, was bringing that vision to life.
On the frontend side, I spent most of my energy designing and building the dashboard. That became my playground — everything had to be fully responsive, intuitive, and pleasant to use. I leaned heavily on React, Tailwind, and shadcn/ui to put together an interface that felt clean but flexible. The toughest challenge? Definitely the Form Builder and Content Type Builder. These weren’t simple forms — they had to handle dynamic structures, adapt to user creativity, and still keep a consistent look and flow. I went through tons of iterations to get the UX right, balancing power and simplicity.
But I didn’t want to stay only on the frontend. I dove into the backend logic too, where we used Node.js, TypeScript, MongoDB, microservices, and Kafka. Multi-tenancy brought its own headaches: every tenant needed to feel independent, but we also needed efficiency at scale. Designing APIs and event flows that could handle that gracefully was a constant puzzle — one I enjoyed solving with the team. Kafka especially became the backbone for reliable event-driven communication, helping the whole system feel snappy and consistent.
And then there was the AI layer. This is where Octavia CMS stood out from the usual CMS tools. Instead of just storing and serving content, it actively helped you improve it. With AI-powered content analysis, users could get real-time suggestions for better titles, summaries, or overall readability. It felt like giving small businesses a built-in editor — not replacing creativity, but nudging it in the right direction.
Looking back, Octavia CMS wasn’t just another product for me. It was my idea brought to life, shaped by countless hours of designing, coding, and problem-solving with the team. It taught me how to merge frontend craftsmanship with backend problem-solving, and how to bake intelligence into a product without making it intimidating.
At its heart, Octavia CMS is about empowerment: helping small players punch above their weight in the digital world. And for me, it will always be a project that represents growth, grit, and a lot of late-night “aha” moments.