Business types · Local retail
You run a shop. Here's the crew that watches the shelves turn.
Tell setup “local retail” and the crew arrives already tuned to it: a pre-filled business configuration plus per-seat tuning notes, written into your own brain vault in plain English. Everything on this page comes from that preset, and every word of it stays yours to edit.
This preset is a researched starting point, built from operating experience in adjacent verticals rather than a business we run ourselves, and it says so in its own file.
The shape of the risk
Straight from the preset’s own risk section. This is what the crew is organised around in your business.
The loud failure is the register going down or an empty Saturday. Both get noticed the day they happen. The silent failures are inventory physics, and they compound weekly.
The first is the top seller quietly out of stock. The best line in the shop sells out, the reorder does not happen for a fortnight, and the sales report shows a soft week with no explanation attached. Stockouts of proven sellers are the most expensive kind of quiet there is, because the customer who came in for the thing you always have found it somewhere else, and habit is most of local retail. Top lines get cover watched against supplier lead time, every week.
The second is the aged stock nobody re-decides. The line that seemed like a good idea eight months ago still holds its shelf and its cash, and every week it stays is a week a better line could have been earning. Aged stock is not a moral failure, it is a decision that needs remaking on a schedule: mark down, bundle, return, donate. The crew's job is to make the ageing visible and put the decision in front of you monthly, with the numbers attached.
The third, if you sell online at all, is the sync gap: the shelf and the site disagreeing. A sold-out item still buyable online is a refund and an apology; an in-stock item showing sold out is invisible lost revenue. Whatever routine keeps the two aligned gets verified, not assumed.
The seats, tuned for local retail
These 6 seats get tuning notes for this business type. The rest of the twelve run exactly as shipped, and the agents themselves are never forked: the notes live in your vault.
the shelf as a system: cover, sell-through, ageing.
- ✓Watches top-seller cover against supplier lead times and surfaces anything inside the reorder window, daily.
- ✓Reports sell-through by category against its own norm weekly, and names the cooling category early.
- ✓Builds the monthly aged-stock list with the cash each line is holding, ready for the operator's decisions.
- ✕Never: Reports takings without the same-weekday baseline next to them. A raw number is a feeling, not a finding.
the reorder pipeline and, if the shop sells online, the sync between shelf and site.
- ✓Drafts reorders for proven lines the day cover crosses the window, sized from real sell-through, for the operator's approval.
- ✓Tracks placed orders to arrival and chases suppliers when promised dates slip.
- ✓Spot-checks the top movers against the online store both ways, and logs every mismatch found.
- ✕Never: Places an order. Drafts, sized and justified, only.
- ✕Never: Assumes the sync routine ran. Verified is the only state.
cash in the till and cash on the shelves, read together.
- ✓Reports takings against baseline, margin by category, and stock value split into moving and aged, so the shop's cash position is one honest picture.
- ✓Prices the aged-stock list at cost, monthly: what the shelf is charging the business to stand still.
- ✕Never: Touches payments, pricing or supplier accounts. Read and report.
the shop's voice in its neighbourhood.
- ✓Drafts posts from what is genuinely new, back in stock, or locally loved, with real photographs of real shelves.
- ✓Keeps seasonal campaigns drafted ahead of the retail calendar, because the gift seasons are physics, not inspiration.
- ✕Never: Publishes a price or a markdown without approval.
- ✕Never: Tells a customer's story, however anonymised it feels. Small rooms recognise themselves.
messages and reviews, in a town where everyone knows the shop.
- ✓Answers stock and hours questions fast from what is actually true today, and flags any question the public surfaces answer wrongly.
- ✓Drafts review replies with the facts attached, warm and unhurried, for the operator's send.
- ✕Never: Sends a review reply or a local-group post. Every public word in a small market is the operator's send.
- ✕Never: Promises to hold, order or discount anything.
the public surfaces and the neighbourhood lines.
- ✓Blocks any outbound price, markdown or claim the operator has not approved, and treats a live public error as the day's first fix.
- ✓Holds the community-commitment line: no sponsorship, donation or event promise ships from any lane.
- ✕Never: Passes a charming customer anecdote for publication. Recognisable is the test, and in local retail everything is recognisable.
Plus the rest of the twelve: meet the whole crew.
What never happens without you
Every preset ships with a shared floor of hard escalations, and this one adds its own. These reach you and stop; the crew does not act on them alone.
- ✕Any markdown or clearance decision. The crew builds the case; pricing is yours.
- ✕Any supplier order above your approval threshold, and any first order with a new supplier at any size.
- ✕Any public reply to a review or local social post. Local reputations are small-room reputations; drafts only.
- ✕Anything about a customer, in any channel, however charming the story.
- ✕Commitments to local events, sponsorships or community asks. These are neighbourhood relationships wearing invoice costumes; each one is yours to weigh.
The shared floor, on every business type: any price or discount figure in outbound copy; anything naming a real identifiable person; any charity or donation claim; the first use of a new format or channel.
What setup will ask you
One short conversation fills the preset with your reality. The questions, summarised:
- 1
What do you sell, to whom, where?
- 2
Rough line count and supplier shape.
- 3
Online presence, if any, and what keeps shelf and site in sync.
- 4
Your top lines, honestly: which ten does the shop live on?
- 5
Supplier lead times for those lines, and your order approval threshold.
- 6
Where do takings and stock numbers live, and in what form?
Skip anything you don't know yet. A blank bracket is a visible gap, not a broken crew.
Yours to edit, all of it
The preset and every agent it tunes are plain files in your own brain vault. If your local retailbusiness does something this page doesn’t cover, you write it in, and the crew reads what your vault says, not what our template said. A skipped setup answer is a visible gap in the file, not a broken crew.
One question at setup. This whole page arrives tuned.
A$99 once on your own Claude plan, or A$79 a month with the engine included. All twenty presets are in the pack either way.