Build the right cart
Combine recurring product preferences, bounded purchase history, saved lists, current availability, and deterministic household rules.
Technical project guide
A grocery workflow the user can see, trust, and control.
Standing Order Agent prepares a Stop & Shop cart from household preferences, rules, and past behavior; selects an allowed delivery window; then stops for review before the user completes checkout.
12editable diagrams
14technical pages
3runtime entrypoints
2delivery phases
The product
What we are building
A scheduled helper, not an invisible purchasing bot. The user sees the plan, the live progress, every exception, and the exact review snapshot.
Reserve an allowed window
Prepare early enough to find a preferred slot, rank acceptable fallbacks, and never silently choose an unapproved day.
Explain what changed
Freeze exact products, substitutions, quantities, prices, fees, total, and delivery slot into a reviewable snapshot.
Human confirmation is the first release boundary
Live Phase 1 ends at manual final checkout. The architecture contains a future approval gate, but checkout remains disabled by deployment policy until separate authorization and security gates are met.
System map
How the pieces connect
A modular monolith keeps the prototype practical. Provider and retailer boundaries remain replaceable through explicit ports and adapters.
Module map
Explore each responsibility
Every card opens a focused page with an editable draw.io diagram, contracts, data, failure behavior, and implementation notes.
Intelligence
Provider-neutral orchestration for GPT-5.6 and Claude Opus 4.8 with structured results and evaluation gates.
Open moduleBrowser control
Isolated local, visible, remote-CDP, or managed-cloud browser sessions with evidence and takeover.
Open moduleUser preferences
Versioned household budget, delivery, automation, substitution, notification, and pause settings.
Open moduleRules engine
Deterministic safety, item, basket, slot, and approval policies with stable reason codes.
Open modulePreferred products
Household product intent from manual choices, Past Purchases, retailer lists, and confirmed suggestions.
Open moduleScheduling & jobs
Timezone-aware recurrence, durable dispatch, deduplication, retry, skip, and pause.
Open moduleRetailer integration
A stable Stop & Shop commerce contract over reviewed browser actions and authorized observed traffic.
Open moduleOrder orchestration
The durable state machine that coordinates cart preparation, review, approval, and safe confirmation.
Open moduleMVP implementation
The smallest live solution that proves Past Purchases, deterministic rules, cart preparation, and dashboard review.
Open MVP sectionDocker & local Chrome
Deploy the prototype to a Docker VPS while a constrained reverse SSH tunnel reaches a dedicated Chrome profile on the user's computer.
Open deployment guideImplementation plan
A module-by-module path from architecture foundation through assisted live cart and private pilot.
Open planProduct phases
One workflow, two purchase boundaries
The first phase proves useful automation with low risk. The second phase adds explicit approval-bound confirmation only after separate release gates.
Phase A · Simulate
Build every domain module against fake browser, retailer, LLM, and notification adapters.
Phase B · Assist
Prepare the live cart, select the slot, freeze the review snapshot, and hand control to the user.
Phase C · Confirm
Future approval-required checkout with a snapshot hash, amount limit, idempotency, and confirmation verification.
Before implementation
Five decisions that change the build
Account scope
Single private household or multi-household onboarding from day one?
Browser runtime
Confirm the Docker VPS → reverse SSH → dedicated local Chrome topology for the first live run.
Checkout boundary
Confirm that Phase 1 always stops before the retailer’s final order action.
List integration
Read-only Stop & Shop list import or no list integration in the first live test?
Model policy
Primary provider, allowed fallback, provider retention, and household-data boundaries.