Project GalapagosKorea · since Feb 20266 months live at Company N's cafe

Low-cost software for even the smallest shops.

Software for the places software forgot.

Cafes, restaurants and small shops still run on paper, group chats and spreadsheets — an IT wasteland that most software skips. Project Galapagos builds simple, low-cost tools for them — schedule, stock, menu, devices and training — and proves each one in a working cafe first.

작은 개인사업자에게도 저비용으로 솔루션 제공.IT 불모지의 작은 가게를 위한 근무표·재고·메뉴·기기·교육 도구.

Our mission ↓ Meet Clopen, our flagship →

Staff app live Feb–Sep 2026 · 1,268 automatic roster syncs · 1,103 automated tests · built solo with AI.

Our mission

Low-cost software for even the smallest sole proprietors.

작은 개인사업자에게도 저비용으로 솔루션 제공.

Start from what they already haveThe owner's Excel roster, the store's existing tablets and menu system — no rip-and-replace.
Keep the running cost tinyBuilt on low-cost cloud services (Cloudflare, Firebase), one laptop and a local open-source LLM.
Prove it in a real shop firstOur core tools ran day to day at Company N's cafe before we offer them to anyone else.

Backed by Development funding committed by Deokwoo Co., Ltd. (주식회사 덕우) — a company-level commitment, confirmed and not yet disbursed, with no equity involved.

Built for real

Not mockups. Software a real cafe ran on.

From February to September 2026 our staff app was the daily schedule and operations tool of Company N's cafe. The numbers below come straight from the project history.

6 monthslive with the team at Company N's cafe (Feb 26 – Sep 2, 2026), behind a staff-only login
1,268automatic roster syncs — the owner's Excel roster pushed to every phone every 30 min, 08:00–23:00
1,103automated test cases (62 test files) plus Playwright end-to-end tests in CI
2,197hand-written commits and 210 merged pull requests, alongside 3,226 automated data syncs
27store menu tablets connected for wireless management (Apr 2026), run from one status dashboard throughout the pilot
DailyClaude audit of the live data at 10:00 since June 2026 — reports anomalies; only obvious errors get a fix, via a reviewed pull request

Fixed from real feedback

When staff reported a wrong weekly view at a month boundary (Apr 25), the cause was found, fixed and written up the same day. The stock app was audited live before changes, without touching operational data.

Retired responsibly

On Sep 2, 2026 the pilot ended: data collection stopped, stored staff data was wiped and the app became an owner-only demo on synthetic data. A clean, schedule-only v2 followed on Sep 20.

Low-cost by design

Cloudflare Workers/Pages and Firebase instead of servers, one laptop as the always-on sync box, a local open-source LLM for messy text, and the spreadsheets and tablets the shop already owned.

Products

One shop, many small problems. A tool for each.

A suite for small shops, built solo with AI coding tools. Clopen, our shift-schedule app, is the flagship; around it are the other tools a small cafe kept asking for. Each card says honestly how far it got.

Piloted used at Company N's cafe Prototype working prototype R&D research feeding a product Planned not built yet

Clopen

Shift schedules · flagship
Piloted

Ran as the staff app of Company N's cafe for six months: the owner's Excel roster synced every 30 minutes into a personal mobile view for each employee — my shifts, calendar, today's crew by team, leave, date details.

  • Live Feb–Sep 2026 · 1,268 automatic roster syncs · 1,103 test cases · Cloudflare Workers + KV with staff-only login
  • Grew into a daily ops hub: briefing with bookings from two reservation platforms, gift-shop sales & stock from the POS, a staff card game
  • v2 Sep 2026: schedule-only rebuild with SharePoint import and 23 tests, after the pilot was retired and its data wiped
  • Planned Plain-language requests (“Can I swap Saturday?”), clopen alerts, roster drafts — with Claude
Learn about Clopen →Open the demo →
📦

Stock & supplies

Inventory PWA · Feb–Aug 2026
Piloted

Live on the cafe's tablets: a step-by-step registration wizard (stock in, breakage), a stock sheet split into floor vs. warehouse with monthly breakage, a uniform ledger for issue and leavers, and a PIN-locked admin view.

Firebase Realtime DB · Cloudflare Pages (moved from Netlify) · 76 commits · last update Aug 31, 2026

🍵

Menu kiosk

Tablet menu board · Mar–Apr 2026
Piloted

Used on the store's menu tablets, replacing a menu app that couldn't show sold-out items in real time: reads the existing menu API every 30 seconds, works offline from the last data, four languages, portrait tablets.

Vanilla JS + Android WebView wrapper · APK v1.0 (Mar 27, 2026) · no new backend

📟

Store tablet ops

Device management · Apr–Jun 2026
Piloted

Connected 27 store menu tablets for wireless management (Apr 2026), then built one dashboard for them (Jun 2026), used on an ongoing basis through the pilot: Wi-Fi and menu status at a glance, bulk app install, remote restart.

Node + ADB · runs on any laptop on the store Wi-Fi — no MDM subscription

🗣️

Hospitality English coach

Front-of-house training · Jun–Oct 2026
Prototype

Built first for my own front-of-house shifts: sentence mining with spaced repetition, pronunciation and shadowing drills, and roleplay where Claude plays the customer. A voice-practice web app followed in Sep 2026.

Claude Code · 6 coaching commands · web app: 19 scenes, 40 tests

🧮

Staffing formations

Auto-formation by headcount · Jun 2026
R&D

Five workbooks (Jun 2026) that lay out the day from how many people are working — 3-4 and 4-4 formations — plus an auto-scheduling workbook with 1,084 formulas. Research for Clopen's planned roster drafts.

Excel · no extra software for the owner

🔆

Keep-awake utility

Android · Mar–Jul 2026
Piloted

Used on the store's kiosk tablets to keep them awake all day: bright/dim modes, a quick-settings tile, auto-restart after boot, and a scripted USB install for new tablets.

Kotlin · release APK (Jul 2026) · no external SDKs

🃏

Staff card game

Team engagement · Jun–Aug 2026
Piloted

A small perk for tired shifts: open one card pack a day, collect cards, fill a 7-day attendance stamp board, play a tea-timing mini-game. Prototyped in June, then shipped inside the staff app.

Shipped inside the staff app · Cloudflare KV · 884 commits

✨

Next: Clopen + Claude

In-product AI · roadmap
Planned

Plain-language schedule requests and automatic roster drafts that use headcount formations and rest rules — no more accidental clopens.

Claude API · not built yet

Builder breadth: the same AI-native workflow has also produced a native iOS lock-screen dot calendar (SwiftUI, beta 4.1), a local-LLM chat app for macOS (MLX) and an AI image/video studio — across web, Android, iOS and macOS.

AI-native builder

One founder. AI pair-programmers. Real users.

Everything here was built solo with AI coding tools — Claude Code as the main engineering engine (867 commits co-authored by Claude in the staff app alone), alongside Codex/GPT and Grok. Work started in February 2026 and went straight into Company N's cafe.

Feb 2026First commit
6 moLive at a real cafe
1Founder

Staff-app commits per month, 2026 — 5,423 total: 2,197 hand-written + 3,226 automated data syncs

2026 timeline

  1. Feb
    Staff schedule app: first commit (Feb 26)First stock & supplies version (Feb 24) · roster auto-sync from Feb 27
  2. Mar
    Stock & supplies live on store tabletsUniform ledger, PIN lock · menu kiosk APK v1.0 (Mar 27)
  3. Apr
    27 store tablets under wireless managementStaff-reported schedule bug fixed same day (Apr 25) · 1,287 commits
  4. May
    Daily ops briefingBookings from two reservation platforms plus private-room bookings
  5. Jun
    Tablet dashboard · staffing formations · English coachGift-shop sales & stock from the POS · daily Claude data audit starts
  6. Jul
    Staff card game ships inside the appKeep-awake release APK · busiest month: 1,348 commits
  7. Aug
    Stock app: tablet number pad, simpler breakage flowPOS lookup stability work with live verification and rollback plan
  8. Sep
    Pilot retired, data wiped (Sep 2) · schedule-only v2 (Sep 20)Voice-practice English coach

About & vision

An operating toolkit for small shops.

Like islands that evolved on their own, small shops have been left to make do with paper, group chats and spreadsheets. Project Galapagos builds tools for them one real problem at a time, tests them in a working cafe first, and keeps the running cost low enough for a one-person business.

Mission: low-cost software for even the smallest sole proprietors. 작은 개인사업자에게도 저비용으로 솔루션 제공.

Vision: an operating toolkit for small shops — schedule, stock, menu, devices, training.

Backed by: development funding committed by Deokwoo Co., Ltd. (주식회사 덕우) — confirmed, not yet disbursed, no equity.

Schedule 📦Stock 🍵Menu 📟Devices 🗣️Training

Contact

Run a small shop?

We're looking for a few more cafes, restaurants and small shops to pilot Clopen and our other tools — at a price a small business can actually afford. Say hello.

[email protected]

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