AI Research & Thought Leadership

We think.
2nth.ai builds.

Imbila.AI is the research and intellectual property partner behind the 2nth.ai platform. We develop AI methodology, agent architecture, and education — then 2nth.ai turns it into skills, agents, and infrastructure that partners build on.


From thought to motion

Imbila.AI researches. 2nth.ai implements. Partners build. Customers benefit.

Imbila.AI

Research, methodology, IP

2nth.ai

Platform, skills, agents, billing

Partners

Domain skills, branded hubs

Customers

AI-powered products & services

Imbila thinks

AI agent methodology

How should agents compose skills? How do you version AI capabilities? What's the right abstraction for domain expertise? We research, test, and publish the patterns.

2nth builds

SKILL.md format & platform

Imbila's research becomes the SKILL.md open format — 134 skills, 12 domains, token billing, revenue sharing. The thinking made executable.

Partners ship

Domain-specific products

Proximity Green manages shared spaces. AgileX runs recruitment. DroneScan scans warehouses. Each built on methodology that started at Imbila.


What we're working on

Our research informs every skill, agent, and platform decision at 2nth.ai.

🤖

Agent architecture patterns

How autonomous agents should compose, communicate, and hand off work. Multi-agent collaboration with human-in-the-loop approval gates. The thinking behind Penny and the 15 domain agents at 2nth.ai.

📚

SKILL.md — the open skill format

Inspired by the claude.skills movement. A standardised way to package AI domain expertise as versioned, composable, dependency-resolving units. YAML frontmatter, structured markdown, automatic skill tree resolution.

🌐

Edge-first AI infrastructure

Running AI at the edge on Cloudflare Workers — not in centralised clouds. D1 for data, KV for sessions, Workers AI for inference, R2 for storage. The architecture that makes 2nth.ai fast, affordable, and globally distributed.

🇪🇦

Africa-first AI economics

How to price AI capabilities in ZAR, not USD. Token-based billing that works for South African businesses. POPIA-compliant data residency. Revenue sharing that makes AI accessible, not extractive.


Teaching AI to Africa

We believe AI capability should be distributed, not concentrated. Our education initiatives make AI skills accessible.

Free platform

Baobab

Free AI education for every African student. From first prompt to production agent. Named for the tree that gives shade to everyone.

Courses

Claude mastery

Structured training on Claude — from prompting to Claude Code to building production AI agents. Used to train 2nth.ai partners and developers.

Knowledge base

know.imbila.ai

Deep-dive articles on AI methodology, agent patterns, skill architecture, and the decisions behind the 2nth.ai platform.


What we've built

Everything Imbila researches gets built on the 2nth.ai platform.

Partners powered by our research

Shared spaces

Proximity Green

Multi-tenant operations for coworking, student accommodation, corporate campuses. SA, Rwanda, Mauritius.

Recruitment

AgileX

5 autonomous AI recruitment agents. CV parsing, AI interviews, EE compliance, scheduling, onboarding.

Inventory

DroneScan

Drone-powered warehouse inventory management with AI anomaly detection. Featured by CNN, Forbes.

Warehouse

ScanMan

Warehouse management software building AI skills for stock accuracy, shelf life, and pick optimisation.


Who we are

The company

Imbila.AI is a South African AI research company. We develop methodology, architecture, and education for AI agent systems. Our work powers the 2nth.ai platform and its partner ecosystem.

Founded by Craig Leppan. Based in South Africa. Building for the world.

The name

Imbila is a Zulu word meaning "rock hyrax" — a small, unassuming animal found across Southern Africa. Despite its size, it's the closest living relative of the elephant. Intelligence doesn't need to be large to be powerful.

That's our philosophy: small, focused AI capabilities that compose into something much larger than the sum of their parts.

Where we operate

South Africa
HQ, research, data residency
Rwanda
Partner operations
Mauritius
Partner operations
Global
Skills & agents work anywhere

Ready to build?

Start with 50,000 free tokens on the 2nth.ai platform. Or read our research first.