Hi, I am Rafael, a web developer with over 6 years of experience. I enjoy building personal projects to experiment new ideas, improve my technical skills, and stay up to date with modern development practices.
Next Steps
- PHP API REST
- Build an Iphone App
- API LLM Gemini (system prompt)
- RAG AI - pdf reader
- RAG AI - add security layer
- Read books about fundamentals
- PHP OOP
- Strong JS Vanilla
- TypeScript
Goal: Full Stack Development
Featured Projects
Habit Tracker App
CloudHabits is a personal project developed to track daily habits and generate a report over a selected period. Learn More.
Webstore - SCA
scross.com/store - Built the frontend of the retail and B2B e-commerce for Southern Cross Aviation (SCA) using pure CSS and vanilla JS in a PHP environment, consuming a custom internal API, following a design provided by an external team.
AeroGiga Software
AeroGiga is an Aviation MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul) platform where I closely follow and contribute to its development. It also serves as a pilot project for SmartX, a highly complex ERP system that we, SCA dev team, have been developing and improving over the years.
AI Projects
Book Recommendation Assistant
Book Recommender AI was developed with JavaScript and PHP, using LLM Google Gemini API and prompt engineering to deliver personalized literary suggestions, and also exposing response time and token usage metadata.
AI Agent - RAG
This RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) system processes PDF documents, retrieves relevant context through vector search, and generates answers grounded in the uploaded content. An optional security layer was also implemented. Learn More.
Projects
Bookshelf - API REST
Bookshelf Page explores building a simple PHP API without a framework, using data.json file instead of a database, with requests tested using Postman, and also serves as a quick Bootstrap experiment.
Daily Quotes - iOS App
Simple iOS app built with Swift and Xcode that displays random quotes. Users can generate a new phrase with a button tap. Learn More.
CloudHabits — Project Overview
CloudHabits started as a personal project with a simple goal: to help me learn and get hands-on experience with AWS. In the beginning, I set up my own cloud environment, configuring a server to run PHP, managing the database, and handling the deployment process from scratch. It was a great way to understand how web applications work beyond just writing code.
After a few months hosted on AWS, I decided to migrate the project to a web hosting provider so I could focus more on building features and improving the product itself.
The entire project was designed and developed by me — from the layout and user experience to both the frontend and backend implementation. It includes features such as user authentication, login flows, form validations, database integration, and other core web application functionality.
I also built it using StarshipCode, the IDE we use internally at Southern Cross Aviation, which is also available for external use. starshipcode.com (SSC).
CloudHabits became more than just a learning exercise — it turned into a complete project where I could combine infrastructure, design, and software development in one place.
Daily Quotes App (iOS) — Project Overview
The app was developed to explore Apple's development environment and Swift programming language, tested on simulator and personal iPhone as an experimental project.
AI Agent (RAG) — Project Overview
RAG application developed with Python, LangChain, ChromaDB and Google Gemini. The system processes external PDF documents, splits them into semantic chunks, generates embeddings using the sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2 model, and stores them in a vector database. When a question is submitted, the most relevant document passages are retrieved through similarity search and provided as context to Gemini, enabling answers grounded in the source material. The project was developed and tested locally through command-line interface. The screenshot shows a test using the novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson as the knowledge source. The conversation is in Portuguese because that's how it was defined in the prompt.
As a security optional extension to the RAG project, Microsoft Presidio was integrated to detect and anonymize sensitive information before being indexed into the vector database, preventing personal data from being exposed to the retrieval system or the LLM. A sample PDF containing personal data was used for testing, and confidential fields were automatically replaced with anonymized placeholders. The assistant can still answer questions about the document's general content, but it cannot reveal anonymized information because those details are no longer available in the knowledge base.
Original document containing sensitive information.
Same document after anonymization with Microsoft Presidio.
About this site
This website is a personal project that is continuously being developed and refined. Built without frameworks, it relies on pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It works as a repository for my projects and serves as a portfolio where I can showcase my work, experiment with ideas, and explore new concepts. The logo I created (designed on Figma) was inspired by the community JavaScript logo .
About me
Builder mindset with 6+ years in software development, turning ideas into real products — from planning and design to coding, launching, and maintaining websites and internal systems. I work mainly with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and SQL. I’m driven by consistency, discipline, and continuous improvement — both professionally and personally. Whether it’s building software, training, or staying focused on long-term goals, I value routine and progress. My background in Chemistry strengthened the way I think: analytical, curious, and solution-oriented. It also taught me how to research deeply, adapt quickly, and work well with others — skills I now bring into tech every day.
Technical books I read:
