Sanay Shah

Building Experience Hackathons Education Skills Connect

Sanay Shah · London

I build AI products end to end, and think hard about what they should do.

Final-year Computer Science student at Cardiff University, graduating July 2026 with First-Class Honours. I'm leading the AI agent rebuild at Innovi Advisors, and working out which side of that I want to go deeper on: the systems, or the ethics behind them. Beau raised that question directly; I've been sitting with it through AI Safety Cardiff University and a BlueDot Impact course this summer. Beau and Gonzo, my two independent products, are paused for now while Innovi stays the priority.

beau.quest gonzo.guide LinkedIn Email Photography

What I've built

Two products, designed and shipped solo.

Concept to production, end to end: the architecture and the product decisions behind each one.

Gonzo

AI-powered travel recommendation engine

Paused · relaunch summer 2026

Finds obscure, authentic places that tourists and guidebooks don't know about. Delivered via Telegram, Discord, and web. Born at the Cerebral Valley "Zero to Agent" Hackathon (Google DeepMind and Vercel), then redesigned and expanded into a full multi-platform product.

Six lenses, one debate

Users pick from 6 AI personas: Local, Plot Twist, Foodie, Hangover, Bougie, Budget. Each one surfaces different places. "Council Mode" pits 2 to 3 personas against each other in a multi-turn debate, and a synthesis call picks the winner.

Grounded, not hallucinated

Every recommendation is verified real and open via Google Maps grounding before it's shown. The model searches in each city's own language to surface what locals actually discuss, and adjusts for weather in real time.

Beau

AI-powered social matching platform

Shipped to beta

A social matching platform for Gen Z that rejects the swipe model entirely. Users play through AI-generated social simulations, reacting instinctively to moments that reveal who they really are, while a weighted identity graph learns their personality over time. I built it solo through to a working beta, and it taught me two things: how to design and cost a real AI system end to end, and a harder set of questions about what it means for an AI to infer who you are from how you behave.

Show, don't tell

People reveal who they are through instinctive reactions, not self-reported bios. The "Dojo" simulation embeds abstract psychological dimensions in naturalistic scenarios. Users never see the underlying model.

Identity as a living graph

Traits, values, interests, and vices sit on weighted spectra in a Neo4j graph, decaying over a 90-day half-life so the system always reflects who a user is now. Matching runs through a 3-stage funnel that uses attachment-theory heuristics.

Engagement by design

Profiles unlock progressively based on conversation quality ("Fog of War"). A credit economy ties real AI costs to user-facing energy, creating a natural usage cadence without runaway spend.

Experience

From a regulated firm's AI rebuild to hackathon sprints.

Aug 2025–Present

Automation Project Manager

Innovi Advisors · London

Sole owner of the "Innovi Automation Initiative": took the firm's AI agent suite from a stalled discovery exercise to a tested multi-agent system spanning two platforms. Consolidated 15 draft agents into 6 production-shaped ones, diagnosed and fixed a live reliability failure at the architecture level, then migrated the entire suite to Claude as 40+ modular Skills.

2025–Jul 2026

Head of Events & Outreach

AI Safety Cardiff University (AISCU)

Led events programming and outreach for Cardiff's AI safety community. Delivered a guest lecture on AI safety fundamentals for the university's "Emerging Technologies" module. Concluded on graduation.

Dec 2024–Mar 2025

Advanced Design Mentor

STEAMunity · Singapore

Mentored 6 students (age 14–20) in design thinking. Team won 1st place Best Prototype and presented to Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister, Heng Swee Keat.

Nov 2024–Sep 2025

Volunteer Researcher

ALITA · Remote

Researched legaltech taxonomies for ALITA's APAC Ecosystem Map. Contributed to the SOLIA Report 2025. On-site support at Singapore and London events.

May 2024–Aug 2024

Builder & Facilitator

Treehouse Innovation · London/Cardiff

Project managed a booth with DLA Piper at LegalTechTalk (2,500+ attendees). Built a GenAI app on Cloud Run. Co-authored a published report.

Feb 2024–Mar 2024

Digital Automation Insight

Highfield HR · Bridgend

Used design thinking to prototype an MVP for employee contract generation. Built and shipped a full-stack WebApp.

Jun 2023–Sep 2023

Design Coach Intern

Treehouse Innovation · London

Designed exercises for 200+ attendee corporate events. Built a prototype app integrating the OpenAI API for a Risk & Compliance session.

Hackathons & competitions

Cambridge, NUS, Web3, and the tournaments in between.

Grand Finalist & Tooling Winner

Hack the Law: LLM x Law

University of Cambridge

Structured financial regulations into a searchable interface that flags entities and activities automatically. Team "Just 3", built on the RegGenome API and Groq.

Golden Glasses Award

Smart Glasses Bootcamp

NUS Smart Systems Institute

Built "Waddles", an XREAL smart glasses app that alerts travellers to dangers in unfamiliar environments. Unity, C#, Gemini API.

Hackathon

Cerebral Valley "Zero to Agent"

Google DeepMind + Vercel

Built the initial version of Gonzo, an AI travel engine with multi-persona debate and Google Maps grounding. Expanded it after the hackathon into a full product.

Finalist

Web3 Hackathon

EasyA, VeChain, BCG · Solo

Competed solo and reached the finals. Recognised for highly efficient prompt engineering.

1st Prize

Design Innovation Day

MiFutures (Fintech Wales)

Consulting Hackathon

TFW & Amey

Sole student among industry professionals. Developed an MVP for "TFW 2.0".

Education

Cardiff, with a year in Singapore.

2022–2026

Cardiff University

BSc Computer Science with a Year of Study Abroad

Graduating July 2026 with First-Class Honours (dissertation: 83%). Project leader for the Year 2 group project, which gamified internship assessments and scored 80%.

Sep 2024–May 2025

Singapore University of Technology and Design

Exchange · Information Systems Technology and Design

Completed the masters-level module "Innovation by Design". The group scored 70% in the final exhibition.

Innovation by Design AI Applications by Design AI by Design History of Surveillance

2020–2022

Whitgift School

A-Levels: Maths, Physics, Computer Science

EPQ: "Should we be concerned about the possible misuse of personal data when online?"

Skills

System design first, with the guardrails that make it trustworthy.

Product and architecture decisions come first. The engineering underneath, including the human-in-the-loop safeguards, is there when I need to build it myself.

Design ThinkingSystem ArchitectureProject ManagementStakeholder ManagementWorkshop FacilitationConsulting

Gemini EnterpriseClaude Projects & SkillsMCPMulti-agent OrchestrationKnowledge GroundingHuman-in-the-loop DesignLangChain / LangGraphPrompt EngineeringStructured Output

PythonTypeScriptReactFastAPINext.jsPostgreSQLNeo4jDockerVercel / Railway / GCP

Beyond the code

A few things that aren't on the CV.

National B Final Winner

Rowing · U15 Coxswain

Performer

School's first student-led play, "Another Country"

Photography

@sanay.photography →

Get in touch

Let's build something.

I'm always up for ambitious projects and hard problems.

sanays.mail@gmail.com LinkedIn beau.quest gonzo.guide Photography