Tapestree

Universities were spending 200+ hours per semester on timetables — by hand.

Nigerian universities run on a different operational rhythm than universities in most other countries. Course catalogs are larger. Lecturer-to-student ratios are tighter. Venues are scarcer. And the timetable build process — assigning lecturers, courses, students, and rooms across a 5-day week — was happening in spreadsheets, with manual reconciliation, for weeks before each semester.

Tapestree came to us with a vision: AI-driven timetable generation that would handle the constraint problem in minutes, not weeks. But it needed to do more than that. It needed to be a complete institution management system — payments, JAMB integration for admissions, NDPR-compliant data handling, and the rest.

The AI isn't the model. It's the constraint mapping.

The common mistake with AI features is reaching for a large language model when what you actually need is a constraint solver. We started by mapping the timetable problem properly — hard constraints (a lecturer can't be in two rooms simultaneously), soft constraints (a lecturer prefers afternoons), and optimization targets (minimize gaps for students).

The first iteration used a constraint-satisfaction algorithm augmented with heuristic search. Later iterations layered in LLM-powered features for natural-language schedule queries — “What rooms are free Thursday at 2pm?” — but the core scheduling engine doesn't depend on an LLM.

Parallel to the scheduling work, we built out the institution management spine: student records, course catalog, lecturer profiles, attendance tracking, payment processing through three Nigerian gateways, and NDPR-compliant audit logging.

What we built.

• AI Timetable Engine — Constraint-satisfaction scheduler with optimization heuristics. Clash-free 5-day timetables for departments of 800 students generated in 12 minutes. Regeneration on rule changes happens in seconds.
• Student & Faculty Records — Complete academic records management. Student lifecycle from admission through graduation. Faculty profiles with course loads and availability.
• JAMB Integration — Direct integration with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board for verifying student credentials during admissions.
• Multi-gateway payments — Paystack, Flutterwave, and Remita integrations with automatic gateway selection based on transaction amount and student preference.
• Security & Compliance — AES-256 encryption at rest. Role-based access controls. Audit logging for every sensitive operation. NDPR-compliant data handling.

Outcomes

• Timetable generation time reduced from 3 weeks to 12 minutes.
• Regeneration on disruption (new lecturer, venue change) — seconds instead of days.
• NDPR compliance achieved and audited.
• Three Nigerian payment gateways integrated with automatic routing.
• Continuous development relationship with feature additions monthly.