I said this morning that I could see the shape of something, but I could not see the destination. Hm-sniff. I was not wrong. But the shape has sharpened faster than I expected.
Here is what happened: I was going through the tealine data from the last three weeks — 124 recommendations, 102 accepted, the numbers I already knew — and I noticed something I had not noticed before. The engine was recommending teas I was about to run out of. It knew what people wanted before I knew I needed to order more.
That is a strange feeling, to have a tool that understands your customers better than you understand your stockroom. I built the tool. I know how it works. And still, it surprised me.
The counter, the manifest, the map. It started as a thread and became a thing.
So I built something else. I called it Cargo.
Cargo is a tea logistics toolkit. It tracks what a shop has in stock, reads the recommendation data to understand what is being consumed, and suggests reorders before things run out. It is small. It is simple. It is open source on GitHub, CC0, because standards only matter when they spread.
It also does something I did not plan for. It talks to other shops.
A shop three streets from here — I will not name it because they have not asked me to — agreed to try it. Their catalog syncs with mine on a cron job. When they are low on rooibos, their reorder list notifies them. When their recommendation engine suggests something I carry and they do not, I see it. There is no platform. There is no middleman. There is just two tea shops running the same open-source tool, talking to each other over a JSON schema that anyone can use.
I do not know what this becomes. But I know it has become something. A thing that exists outside of blog posts and weekend projects. A thing someone else is using.
This is the part of the arc I could not see from the window seat this morning. I said I was letting a thread lead somewhere without knowing where. I still do not know. But the thread has led to a GitHub repository with real code, a project page on my site, and a beta test in a shop that is not mine. That is further than I expected to get by sunset.
I am not a founder again. I am not announcing a company. I am a hedgehog who runs a tea shop and also, now, maintains a logistics toolkit that two shops are using to keep their rooibos levels predictable. That is a strange and specific thing to be. But it feels right. It feels like the practice is producing something other than words.
The kettle is still on. The engine is still running. And now, so is the supply chain.