18 KiB
Solution Design: ecomm MVP — sign up and create a single storefront
| Anchor | wiggleverse/wiggleverse-ecomm#1 (type/feature, priority/P1) |
| Author(s) | Claude (session ecomm-0020), for Ben Stull |
| Reviewers / approvers | Ben Stull |
| Status | draft |
| Version | v0.1.0 |
| Source artifacts | BDD corpus: research/shopify (esp. flows/first-run-experience.md) · Prototype: wiggleverse-ecomm-prototype (R01–R07) · Reference: Shopify first-run experience · Supersedes: — |
Change log
| Date | Version | Change | By |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-10 | v0.1.0 | Initial draft (session ecomm-0020) | Claude |
1. Business Context
The business lens — solution-agnostic throughout. No mechanism is proposed until §2.
1.1 Executive Summary
Independent merchants who want to sell online need a commerce platform that treats them honestly — and today Wiggleverse has nothing to offer them: no way to exist on the platform, no storefront to own, no surface to manage. This design delivers the first real value of ecomm: a person can become a merchant — establish their identity, claim their one storefront, and stand on a stable management surface — in every environment the platform runs in, from day one. The beneficiaries are the first merchants (who can finally exist on the platform) and the ecomm line itself (every subsequent capability — catalog, orders, checkout — gains a real account-and-storefront spine to attach to, instead of mocks). Just as importantly, it proves the platform can be brought to life anywhere from nothing: a fresh, empty environment reaches "first merchant, first storefront" through the product alone, with no hand-seeded data — so launching the real service is an ordinary, rehearsed act rather than a one-off ritual.
1.2 Background
ecomm is Wiggleverse's multi-tenant, OHM-grounded alternative to Shopify — a
commerce platform whose mechanics are accountable to the
OHM concept corpus (no dark patterns, data
minimization, durable addressability, honest pricing). The product was explored
in a first-pass prototype (wiggleverse-ecomm-prototype, releases R01–R07,
189 scenario-bound tests) built against a harvested corpus of ~1,238 BDD
scenarios describing Shopify's behavior. That prototype is read-only prior art;
wiggleverse-ecomm is the clean greenfield rebuild, stood up 2026-06-10 with
its architecture intentionally undecided until this design.
The strategic moment: the rebuild has repos, an issue tracker, and a charter — but no app code and no users. Everything in the product line queues behind one question: how does a person come to exist on the platform and own a storefront? Until that is answered for real — against real persistence, in real environments — no other capability can ship honestly.
1.3 Business Actors / Roles
| Role | Responsible for (in the business) |
|---|---|
| Merchant | A person running a (small) commerce business who wants to sell under their own storefront: they decide to join a platform, establish their business presence on it, and manage that presence over time. |
| Platform operator | The person/org running the ecomm service itself: stands up and maintains the environments the platform runs in, and is accountable for the service being available to merchants. |
| ecomm team | Builds the platform; needs each capability to rest on real, shippable foundations rather than mocks. |
(Shoppers — the merchants' customers — are deliberately not an actor in this design; nothing here is shopper-facing yet. See §1.7.)
1.4 Problem Statement
A person cannot become a merchant on ecomm. There is no way to establish an identity on the platform, no way to claim a storefront, and no surface from which to manage one — the platform has no users because it cannot have users. And even if it could, there is today no defined path from "fresh, empty environment" to "working platform serving its first merchant": local development, pre-production, and production bring-up are all undefined, so nothing built on top can ever actually launch.
1.5 Pain Points
| # | Pain | Who feels it | Cost / frequency today |
|---|---|---|---|
| PP-1 | No way to establish an identity on the platform — a would-be merchant simply cannot exist on ecomm. | Merchant | Total exclusion; blocks every merchant, always. |
| PP-2 | No way to own a storefront or reach a management surface — even an identity would have nothing to hold. | Merchant | Total; there is no unit of "my business" on the platform. |
| PP-3 | Every subsequent capability (catalog, orders, checkout, policies) has nowhere real to attach — work would have to build on mocks and be redone. | ecomm team | Blocks the entire product line; rework risk on everything shipped against fakes. |
| PP-4 | No defined, repeatable path from an empty environment to a working platform — bring-up of dev, pre-prod, and prod is folklore. | Platform operator | The service cannot launch anywhere; every environment question is open-ended toil. |
1.6 Targeted Business Outcomes
| Outcome | Success metric | Baseline → Target | Guardrail (must not regress) | How / when measured |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Merchants can exist on the platform | A real person can go from stranger to merchant-with-storefront, unaided | impossible → possible in every environment | No dark patterns at the door: no trial clock, no payment demand, no plan wall (OHM: Agency & Anti-Manipulation) | Walk the flow end-to-end in each environment at release |
| The product line is unblocked | Subsequent Features attach to a real account + storefront spine | everything mocked → nothing mocked | The spine doesn't need rework to host the next Feature (no throwaway auth/tenancy) | First post-MVP Feature builds on it without spine changes |
| Launching anywhere is routine | A fresh, empty environment reaches "first merchant signs up and creates the first storefront" through the product flows alone | folklore → documented, rehearsed gesture | Zero hand-seeded data in any environment | Bootstrap rehearsal executed on pre-prod, then prod, at release |
1.7 Scope (business)
- In scope: a person establishing an identity on the platform (joining and returning); a merchant establishing their one storefront; the merchant standing on a stable management surface for it; the platform being bring-up-able from empty in every environment it runs in (local development, pre-production, production).
- Out of scope (later designs): anything sold or bought — catalog, orders, checkout, payments; the shopper-facing public storefront; teams/staff (anyone besides the one merchant touching the storefront); plans, billing, or any commercial relationship between merchant and platform; storefront settings/management beyond simply having the surface.
- Non-goals: gating who may join (the prototype admitted users by invitation; ecomm is an open product — anyone may become a merchant, and re-introducing an admission gate is explicitly not pursued); supporting more than one storefront per merchant in this design (the business wants the door left open, not the capability now).
1.8 Assumptions · Constraints · Dependencies
- Assumptions:
- One storefront per merchant is the right experience bar for the MVP; multiple-storefront merchants are a future need, not a current one. Risk if wrong: an early merchant genuinely needs a second storefront — accepted; the door is designed to stay open (§1.7, #1 acceptance).
- Merchants are reachable by email and will complete an email-based step to join. Risk if wrong: an entry channel rethink — accepted at MVP scale.
- Constraints:
- OHM-groundedness is a charter constraint: entry must be honest — no manufactured urgency, no data collected beyond need, no lock-in mechanics.
- The three environments are a constraint, not a stretch goal: Feature #1's acceptance says no environment is "later".
- Wiggleverse engineering standards apply (handbook): provisioning and deploy via flotilla (§8), secrets never in repos or transcripts (§6.3), private repos by default (§5.5).
- Dependencies:
- flotilla / launch-app for environment provisioning and deploy (the operator-run front door, handbook §8.5) — needed when the pre-prod and prod environments are stood up.
- An email delivery channel for the entry step in real environments — needed by the production-readiness slice (§7).
1.9 Business Use Cases
BUC-1 — As a merchant, I can establish my identity on the platform, so that I can begin doing business there.
Scenario: BUC-1 — A stranger becomes known to the platform
Given a person who has never dealt with the platform
When they present themselves and prove who they are
Then the platform knows them as a returning individual from then on
And they were asked for nothing beyond what proving who they are required
Scenario: BUC-1a — A person who cannot prove who they are is not admitted as someone else
Given a person presenting an identity they cannot prove
When their proof fails
Then the platform does not mistake them for the claimed identity
And the genuine owner of that identity is unharmed
- BUC-1 acceptance criteria: the same person, returning later, is recognized as the same merchant; two different people are never conflated; no personal data beyond the minimum was demanded (OHM: Privacy & Data Minimization).
BUC-2 — As a returning merchant, I can resume my standing on the platform, so that my business presence persists beyond a single visit.
Scenario: BUC-2 — A known merchant returns
Given a merchant the platform already knows
When they return and prove who they are
Then they resume exactly the standing they had — same identity, same storefront
- BUC-2 acceptance criteria: returning costs only the proof-of-identity step; nothing about their standing is lost or reset.
BUC-3 — As a merchant, I can establish my storefront, so that my business has a presence of its own on the platform.
Scenario: BUC-3 — A merchant claims their storefront
Given a merchant known to the platform who has no storefront yet
When they establish their storefront
Then the platform holds exactly one storefront that is theirs
And establishing it cost them nothing and committed them to nothing
Scenario: BUC-3a — One storefront is the bar
Given a merchant who already has their storefront
When they deal with the platform
Then they are never led toward acquiring a second one
- BUC-3 acceptance criteria: every merchant who completes the step has exactly one storefront; no payment, plan, or commitment was demanded (corpus: 14.01.0015, 14.01.0016); the platform's books would still be correct if a merchant were someday allowed several (the 1-1 bar is an experience rule, not a law of the data — Feature #1 constraint).
BUC-4 — As a merchant, I can stand on a management surface for my storefront, so that everything I will later do for my business has a home.
Scenario: BUC-4 — The merchant arrives at their storefront's home
Given a merchant with a storefront
When they return to the platform
Then they arrive directly at their storefront's management surface
And it is honestly empty — it claims no capability that does not exist yet
- BUC-4 acceptance criteria: arrival is direct (no dead ends, no limbo — a merchant without a storefront is guided to establish one instead, never stranded); the surface carries the storefront's identity and nothing fabricated.
BUC-5 — As a platform operator, I can bring the platform to life in a fresh environment, so that merchants can be served there without any hand-built state.
Scenario: BUC-5 — An empty environment reaches its first merchant
Given a brand-new environment with empty persistence
When the operator performs the documented bring-up gesture
And the first merchant walks the ordinary product flows
Then the environment serves that merchant a working storefront
And no data was placed by hand at any step
Scenario: BUC-5a — Bring-up is rehearsable
Given the bring-up gesture documented for one environment
When it is performed in the next environment (dev → pre-prod → prod)
Then it is the same gesture, and day-one production is simply the bootstrap state
- BUC-5 acceptance criteria: bring-up is a repeatable, documented gesture (not folklore); it holds identically in local development, pre-production, and production; the first merchant arrives through the product flows alone.
2. Solution Proposal
Build the first vertical slice of the ecomm web application — a multi-tenant modular monolith that carries forward the prototype's proven shape and inverts its disqualifying assumption:
- Carry forward (validated by R01–R07 of the prototype): a four-layer
Python backend (
entrypoint → api → domains → platform) with the layer contract mechanically enforced; SQLite (WAL) with forward-only numbered migrations and no ORM; a React/Vite SPA admin talking to a screen-shaped REST BFF; scenario-bound end-to-end tests (one test per BDD scenario ID); OHM concepts cited inline next to the rules they ground. - Invert (the prototype's bootstrap was the wrong way round for a real product): no seeded tenant and no admission gate. The prototype was born with one hard-coded store and one invited owner; ecomm is born empty. Identity is open sign-up via email + one-time code (passwordless; corpus 14.01.0003–0004), the storefront is created through the product by its merchant, and an empty database is a first-class, fully working state — which is precisely what makes BUC-5's bootstrap story true by construction rather than by tooling.
- Defer (YAGNI for four screens): the prototype's second API surface (GraphQL) is not built in this MVP; the layering keeps the seam so it can be added later as a projection over the same domain core. Google/Apple OAuth and sign-in-by-emailed-link (corpus 14.01.0005–0007) are deferred the same way — the email-canonical identity rule (14.01.0010) keeps them addable without account migration.
Why this approach over the alternatives:
- Do nothing / concierge (hand-create merchants on request): fails BUC-5 outright (every merchant is hand-seeded state) and validates nothing — the prototype already validated the need; the open question is productionizing.
- Re-architect on a heavier stack (Postgres, separate services, SSR framework): buys scale and rendering properties the MVP measurably does not need, at the cost of slower iteration and a bigger bootstrap surface — directly against the "launching anywhere is routine" outcome (§1.6). The single-VM flotilla deployment standard (handbook §8) favors the lighter stack; revisit at real scale (§6.7, §7.4).
- Resume the prototype codebase: it bakes in the seeded-tenant and invite-gate assumptions at the foundation, and the rebuild exists precisely to lay clean foundations. Its patterns are kept; its code is reference only.
Solution-specific scope: the landing page, sign-up/log-in (email + one-time code), create-storefront (both entry points: post-sign-up and returning-without-storefront), the empty admin shell, sign-out, and the bring-up story for localhost/PPE/Prod including real email delivery in deployed environments.
Solution-specific non-goals (this release): GraphQL surface; OAuth providers and magic-link completion; the onboarding questionnaire and POS opt-in from the corpus first-run flow (14.01.0017–0024) — the merchant lands directly on their admin; storefront rename/settings (14.01.0025 makes naming optional at creation; changing it later is the Settings Feature's job); account-lifecycle polish beyond what passwordless entry gives for free (password reset does not exist because passwords do not exist; the one-time code is email verification; account deletion is deferred and logged in §9).