Roots HQ
A multi-tenant platform that keeps inventory, orders, customers, storefront, market events, sales channels, and reporting for an independent product business in one workspace — with an AI assistant that proposes and waits for approval.
The problem
Small product businesses — the kind that sell from a website, at weekend markets, and through a marketplace or two — rarely have one problem. They have ten small ones: stock that disagrees between channels, market pre-orders tracked on paper, customer lists in three places, and reports nobody trusts.
Selling in four places shouldn’t mean running four businesses. Roots HQ was built to be the headquarters behind all of it.
Why existing tools fell short
General e-commerce platforms are built around one online store. Market stalls, pre-orders for pickup, event prep, and several marketplaces end up bolted on through add-ons and spreadsheets — so stock and orders still disagree between channels.
The solution
Roots HQ gives each business its own workspace with inventory, customers, orders, marketing, a storefront, sales channels, events, vendors, and reports in one place — on the web and on Android through the Roots Manager and Roots POS apps.
Calyx, the built-in assistant, drafts and suggests work, but it follows a strict “propose, review, apply” pattern: it will not send a campaign, change a price, move money, or change inventory on its own.
- One inventory and order queue across storefront, markets, and sales channels
- Native storefront for each workspace, plus pickup, local delivery, and pay-by-link invoices
- Market and event operations: pre-orders, prep checklists, event-aware POS
- Calyx AI assistant: propose, review, apply — nothing changes without confirmation
- Web administration plus Android apps (Roots Manager and Roots POS)
Engineering involved
Drawn from the product’s own public documentation and trust pages. Only components the product publicly documents are listed.
- Architecture
- Multi-tenant SaaS: every business is an isolated workspace with its own storefront domain. An unrecognized domain is refused rather than guessed.
- Tenant isolation
- Tenant scoping is applied in the data layer by a database-client extension, not only in the interface.
- Authentication & access
- TOTP two-factor sign-in, per-workspace IP allow-lists and GeoIP rules, and a separate platform-staff login with time-boxed, audited support access.
- Payments & integrations
- Square and PayPal for payments, EasyPost for shipping, the business’s own SMTP provider for email; signature-verified payment webhooks. The POS charges through Square’s Web Payments SDK so the app never sees a raw card number.
- AI integration
- Calyx uses Anthropic, with OpenAI as an alternative provider and for receipt reading. Usage is metered per request and every action is recorded in an audit table.
- Security
- Stored credentials are encrypted with AES-256-GCM, and actions are written to an audit trail.
- Reporting
- A customizable dashboard (add, move, resize, or hide widgets), sales-outlet reporting, and a ledger.
What makes it interesting
The AI is deliberately boxed in. Calyx’s daily “Morning Brief” is assembled by a rules engine — not guessed by a model — and anything that would touch money, prices, inventory, or customers is presented as a proposal for a person to approve. It’s a practical pattern for putting AI into business software without handing it the keys.
The product is also unusually candid about its limits: its public integrations page marks which connections are payments-only, import-only, limited, or not built yet, and its trust page states that there is no SOC 2 report or PCI assessment.
Outcome
Not measured Roots HQ runs the day-to-day operations of Earth Born Roots, a working small-batch business, and is in a public beta with other businesses applying to join. No usage, revenue, or performance figures have been published, so none are claimed here.
Current status
Active Beta Working software in a public beta or early-access program — not yet generally available.
Roots HQ is in a public beta and is application-based: businesses apply to join, and the site says plainly that it is still being built. Pricing is published. Some integrations (eBay and Etsy sign-in, Shopify/Whatnot sync, tap-to-pay) are documented by the product as limited or not yet available.
See it working
The product site shows real screens from the running app using a fictional demo business: roots-hq.com. The assistant is documented at roots-hq.com/calyx, and security controls at roots-hq.com/trust.
For a live storefront running on the platform, see Earth Born Roots.
Want something similar?
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