Open source · MIT · Next.js

AI runs the shop.You keep the keys.

Cartwright is an AI-native commerce engine built for trusted operation: scoped tools, confirmation-gated writes, auditable actions, agent checkout — and a repo you can leave with.

$npx create-cartwright@latest my-shop
Inspect the safety model →Source on GitHub
engine
v0.42.0
licence
MIT
platform fee
0%
repo
yours, from commit one

What the command answers with

recorded from a real scaffold

The first-run welcome screen of a freshly scaffolded Cartwright shop: “Your site was just born”, with three ways to begin — build it with AI, a guided setup wizard, or compose a look.
One command, and the shop is already running with a database, auth, an admin and checkout behind it. Nothing here is a template preview — it is the site, waiting for you to say what it sells.

One operation, end to end

It asks. You decide. It is written down.

An agent can reach every tool its key allows — and still cannot change your shop on its own. Writes stop, show their work, and wait for a person. What you approve is recorded with the actor that asked, and can be put back.

admin · assistantapikey · discounts:write

agent

“Set the sunglasses 20% down for the weekend and put it on the banner.”

it would change

  • discounts.createWEEKEND20 · −20%
  • products.update12 products in Sunglasses
  • settings.update_brandingannouncement bar
waiting for youNothing has changed yet.RejectApprove
applied3 changes · approved by you

audit log

10:42apikey:sb_live_…4f2discounts.createrevert ↩

the write stops here until you release it

Three doors, one house

Everyone operates the same shop.

A human, a coding agent, and a shopping agent all work the same engine — one database, one audit log, one repo that belongs to you.

Door one

You, in a browser

A full admin — products, orders, content, design, integrations — plus an AI copilot that plans first and asks before it writes. Run the business end to end without a vendor dashboard in sight.

/admin

Door two

Your AI coding agent, in a terminal

Agent rules files ship in the repo, and 87 REST tools let an agent design, stock, translate, and reconfigure the shop — destructive operations require explicit confirmation, and every write lands in the audit trail.

POST /api/v1/tools

Door three

Shopping agents, over the wire

llms.txt, JSON-LD on every citable page, a product feed, a built-in MCP server, and ACP checkout endpoints — so AI assistants can find your shop, cite it, and buy from it.

/api/mcp · /api/acp

All three doors open into the same owned codebase — MIT-licensed, in your GitHub, on your infrastructure. Leave anytime — it's your repo.

What is actually shipping

Every claim has a receipt.

SurfaceShipping proofGuardrailWhat it means for you
AI admin37 allowlisted tools25 require confirmation · every call auditedThe machine cannot silently alter the shop.
MCP87 tools · 21 scopesHashed keys, expiry, per-tool scope checksYour agent can operate the shop, not merely talk about it.
ACPCheckout sessions + product feedDeterministic totals, idempotent completionBuyer agents can complete real commerce.
Discovery/llms.txt + JSON-LDGenerated from shop data, never hand-writtenMachines understand the store without scraping it.
VoiceGemini Live, server-dispatched toolsEphemeral tokens · session and daily capsCustomers can shop by speaking, under the same gates.
Local AIOllama providerCapability-tiered per model; unknown models read-onlySensitive workflows need not leave the machine.

Exit freedom

The first commit is the exit plan.

Cartwright scaffolds into a repository you own and then gets out of the way. There is no control plane holding your storefront up, and no per-order cut on the way through.

Stop using Cartwright services tomorrow and the deployed shop keeps running — because it was never running on ours.

What you keep, in detail →
receipt
repository
customer-owned
database
customer-chosen
infrastructure
customer-controlled
license
MIT
platform fee
0%

Built with Cartwright

Real sites, running the engine today.

Every release ships only after these three live sites pass it — a max-features webshop, an open demo shop, and a website-mode company site.

Solbrillen.dk homepage

Solbrillen.dk

solbrillen.dk

The eyewear store the engine was extracted from — now running the latest template with every feature flag on.

See it in the showcase →

Northbound Coffee homepage

Northbound Coffee

demo.cartwright.app

The open demo shop: full storefront loop in Stripe test mode, nightly reset. Browse, edit, order freely.

See it in the showcase →

Teloz

teloz.net

The company site behind Cartwright — the same engine in website mode: no cart, just pages, run from the same admin.

See it in the showcase →

install

One line. Real shop in five minutes.

Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows (via WSL). Node 22+ required. No GitHub token, no marketplace install — just npm.

Quick start →All CLI flags
$npx create-cartwright@latest my-shop
pnpm create cartwrightnpm create cartwright@latestbunx create-cartwright

FAQ

Honest answers, no marketing-speak.

If your question is not here, open a GitHub issue. We will add it.

Yes — all of it. The engine template repo, cartwright-template, is public and MIT-licensed, and so are the CLI (create-cartwright) and this site. The CLI scaffolds from the public template repo, so no token is required — and the code it gives you is yours to fork, modify, and ship.
No platform fees. You pay the underlying services you choose — Vercel hosting, Turso or Postgres, Stripe’s standard processing, Anthropic/Gemini if you use AI. There is no per-order tax going to cartwright. Optional paid tiers (Plus $49/mo, Cloud $199/mo, Enterprise) layer on hosted services, support, and Pro tooling — see pricing for the full breakdown.
Two paths. Today: scaffold cartwright, use the Hoptify import (palette + products via Firecrawl) plus product CSV import, and point your DNS over. The Stripe customer ID is the link key. Planned with Plus: an agentic onboarding flow that takes a source URL and runs a five-agent migration to a deployed Cartwright shop. The interactive preview is live today; the agent itself is still in development.
Medusa and Saleor are commerce engines you connect to a frontend. cartwright is a full shop you own end-to-end. next-forge is a SaaS starter — cartwright is the same opinionated spine, but for commerce specifically, with AI baked in.
You need to read TypeScript and have run Next.js dev once. The setup wizard handles every secret through a UI, so you do not edit env files unless you want to. Anything past “set up your shop” is normal Next.js work.
The admin ships with agentic helpers — drafting product copy, generating SEO metadata, answering customer questions in the storefront chat, and exposing a /api/mcp endpoint so external agents can act on the shop with tools you define. The Plus roadmap adds MCP integrations for Klaviyo, HubSpot, Slack, Zapier, Airtable, Notion, and four others so the agent can act on them directly — see integrations.
GitHub Issues — on cartwright-template for the engine, on cartwright-app for docs/CLI bugs. Paid setup help is available — email hello@cartwright.app.
When the template contract is stable enough that we will not break your fork on minor bumps. Realistic target: 8–12 weeks after the first dogfood shop ships.

Ship a real shop this week.

Scaffold cartwright, drop in your Stripe keys, and have a checkout flow up before lunch. No platform contract, no per-order fee — and the repo is yours from the first commit.

Get startedStar on GitHubNeed setup help?