TinkerTown: a one-person store that keeps itself current
My own collectibles store. Scheduled AI tasks handle the upkeep that usually sinks a small store, and I approve anything public.
What changed
The situation
Small online stores rarely fail for lack of demand. They fail from neglect: listings go stale, search rankings slide, nobody sends the email, and the books are a mystery until tax time.
What I built
A standard store, on purpose
Checkout, payments and inventory run on Shopify. Custom code here would only add risk.
A written operating manual
How the store is run: catalog rules, listing standards, compliance limits, marketing voice and the books.
Daily, weekly and monthly routines
They follow the manual: catalog cleanup every day, Google listings and marketing drafts every week, and the books every month.
Gates
Anything that publishes, makes a product claim or spends money waits for my approval.
Why this matters for your business
Most of the value is in the routine, not the software. If you can write down how a job should be done, a scheduled routine can do most of it and hand you only the decisions.
How it fits together
Not everything should run on AWS. Here the right design is a mainstream store platform plus a disciplined operating layer on top of it.
Colors group the parts by kind: store, AI routines, controls. Grey is outside the store. Swipe the diagram sideways.
Step by step
- Stock and pricing come in from distributor dealer accounts.
- Shoppers arrive from search, social and direct visits, and buy through the standard storefront.
- The daily routine cleans up the catalog: titles, tags, images and product rules.
- The weekly routine works through the search-listing backlog and drafts marketing.
- The monthly routine reconciles the ledger, comparing costs with sales.
- Every routine reads the operating manual first. The manual is the single source of how the store runs.
- Compliance gates hold anything risky, and I approve what ships.
Technical details
For your IT person: components, trade-offs and security. Open any section.
Components
| Layer | Service | What it does here |
|---|---|---|
| Commerce | Shopify | Storefront, checkout, payments, inventory and product feeds. |
| Rules | Operating manual (written, versioned) | Catalog standards, listing rules, compliance limits, marketing voice and ledger steps. The routines treat it as their instructions. |
| Operations | Scheduled AI routines (Claude) | Daily, weekly and monthly sessions that read the manual, act through the store connector, and log what they did. |
| Controls | Approval gates | Anything that publishes, makes a claim or spends money needs owner approval. Everything else is reported, not asked. |
| Books | Ledger | A monthly reconciliation of sales against costs and subscriptions. |
Design decisions and trade-offs
Want your store or practice to run like this?
If you can describe how the work should be done, I can usually make most of it happen on a schedule. Book a free 30-minute fit call.