In-situ editing
The philosophy of "edit where you are." Implementation lives in helm-editable.
Single-tenant per shop
Every shop gets its own Worker, its own D1, its own R2. No tenant_id columns anywhere. The strongest data isolation the architecture can offer.
Data ownership
The shop owns its data. Kvick operates the software. Export is one click. Deletion is honored.
Audit everything
Every mutation writes an audit row. The chain is tamper-evident. Forensic reconstruction is always possible.
Privacy & PII
What counts as PII, where it lives, how it leaves the system, what gets redacted.
Observability
Every request emits a structured log line. Every error has a request_id. Every cron run reports counts.
Progressive enhancement
The base experience works without JavaScript. JavaScript adds polish, not function. Pages render fast and degrade gracefully.
Fail quietly, recover loudly
When something breaks during a sale, the sale completes. The error gets logged. The operator gets a polite notification. Nobody panics.
Boring tech
Choose the boringest tool that solves the problem. Save the novelty budget for the parts that actually need it.
AI-assisted development
How Claude Code and Claude API are used in building Helm — and what we don't outsource to the model.
Focus stewardship
The search input is the steward of focus on register-speed screens. Refocus is automatic, defensive, and disciplined.
Work-area headers (icon doctrine — rolled back)
The icon-driven dual-action doctrine (Till / Bucket / Slot) was rolled back in v0.6.11. Replaced by a unified work-area header with explicit +Customer + Clear × controls. This page records both — the attempt and the replacement.
No Walk-In on Service
Why a service ticket cannot be attached to a walk-in customer, and the five-layer defense that makes the invariant structurally impossible to violate.
helm-editable doctrine
One inline-edit chassis everywhere. Plain text at rest, dashed underline on hover, solid border + focus ring while editing. No pencils, ever.
No AI in customer-facing prose
AI is woven through the Hub's operator tooling, but in any prose a customer, vendor, or partner can read, AI is not mentioned. "Our team" replaces any reference to AI. Internal engineering docs may name it plainly.
Public Surface Standards
Quality bar for the public-facing surface of every BWS. Two tiers — Baseline (default) and Strict Commercial-Plus (additive). CI-gated, universal across verticals.