Rafael Anicet Zanini is the solo founder and CTO of Ruhe Bitte, the first app to answer "Darf ich das jetzt?" for Germany's 14 million foreign residents. He moved with his family from São Paulo, Brazil to Nürnberg and learned about German Ruhezeit the hard way: anonymous letters in his mailbox, citing local Nürnberg rules that forbid dogs from barking during the post-lunch nap hours and limit barking to thirty minutes per day total — written rules he had never heard of, applied by neighbours he had never spoken to.

The letters kept coming even with the dog inside. They escalated to threats to call the police. Then someone threw rat poison into his garden. He has a dog. He also has a toddler.

After hearing the same kind of stories from Brazilian friends and other foreign residents across Germany, he decided to build something useful — an app that translates the unwritten and barely-written rules of German daily life before the next anonymous letter arrives. Ruhe Bitte indexes 200+ everyday activities across all 16 Bundesländer in seven languages and returns a traffic-light verdict in under 200 milliseconds, 100% offline. It launches on iOS and Android in August 2026.
