Image and video moderation API built for developers. Tabu detects explicit content with a single API call and zero data retention. Drop-in Express.js boilerplate, webhook callbacks, and a built-in moderation dashboard to handle edge cases.
I started Tabu because I'm tired of seeing explicit content everywhere. After having a child, this became deeply personal. Existing content moderation tools are built exclusively for massive enterprises with huge budgets and dedicated legal teams. Solo founders and indie developers simply cannot afford or integrate them easily. I built Tabu to fix that gap.
My motivation is to empower every developer with a simple, drop-in API to moderate NSFW content in 5 minutes, regardless of their team size. By making compliance affordable, we can collectively clean up the internet for the next generation.
Our stack
Our infrastructure is built for speed, privacy, and simplicity. We run a lightweight Node.js & Express backend that handles API requests. For machine learning, we use TensorFlow.js with the MobileNetV2 architecture, running entirely on-premise (air-gapped) for sub-200ms inference without ever sending user data to external CDNs. We use lru-cache for request deduplication and SQLite for fast rate-limiting.
Our Human-in-the-Loop admin dashboard is a premium React SPA secured by Clerk JWT. The entire system is fully Dockerized and deployed on DigitalOcean Droplets, allowing us to keep costs low.