Hi HN,
I’m sharing a project I’ve been working on with a client called CartOS. As someone who has spent a lot of time in the e-commerce space, I was interested in their approach to 'un-siloing' the merchant stack.
The platform is built for businesses that want Shopify-level ease of use but need deeper control over the theme engine and backend extensibility. It uses Liquid templating for front-end flexibility, but the 'Bolt' system is what caught my eye—it allows for adding complex logic (SEO engines, shipping protection, reviews) as modular units rather than messy third-party app injections.
A few technical highlights:
-> Unified Logic: It bridges digital storefronts with a native POS (NFC, KDS integration) on a single database, avoiding the typical sync lag between retail and web.
-> Liquid Support: Full control over the storefront design for those comfortable with Shopify’s templating language.
-> Built-in Automation: It includes 'Cascade,' a native marketing engine, so you aren't piping data out to third-party email tools just to send a recovery flow.
It was developed by a team with 30 years of enterprise experience (Salloq), and the focus was on making the 'infrastructure' invisible so merchants can just scale.
I’d love to hear this community's thoughts on the 'Bolt' architecture vs. a traditional App Store model. Does the 'all-in-one' approach appeal to you, or do you prefer the modularity of separate services?
Check it out: https://cart-os.com/
I'll try to answer what I can about the architecture!
