Vertical logistics

Vertical: Logistics & supply chain — spec it like you've shipped a pallet

SMB shipping & inventory has a deep vocabulary and a pile of rules that look optional until a real customer's data hits them. The incumbents (ShipHero, CartonCloud, Descartes ShipRush, GoFreight, AfterShip, FreightPOP) encode decades of this. A naive spec models a "shipment" as a tracking number and a "warehouse" as a quantity column — and ships a toy. This skill is the domain framing so architect/pm don't.

The four products and their incumbents:

Product	Archetype	Wedge	Closest incumbent
shipment-tracking	dashboard	branded customer-facing tracking	AfterShip (lite)
warehouse-lite	crud	small-warehouse WMS	ShipHero / CartonCloud
route-optimization	booking	multi-stop route optimization	Descartes / FreightPOP
po-mgmt	crud	purchase-order lifecycle	GoFreight / FreightPOP

1. Domain vocabulary (use these terms in the spec, not paraphrases)

• TMS vs WMS — Transportation Management System (moving goods between places: carriers, rates, routes, tracking) vs Warehouse Management System (goods at rest inside a building: SKUs, locations, pick/pack/ship). Don't conflate them; route-optimization + shipment-tracking are TMS-flavoured, warehouse-lite is WMS, po-mgmt straddles.
• Multi-carrier — a shipment can go via USPS / UPS / FedEx / DHL / regional carriers. Each has its own API, label format, status codes, and webhook shape.
• Rate shopping — given a parcel, query carriers and pick cheapest/fastest meeting the SLA. Drives carrier choice; depends on dimensional weight.
• Zones — carrier distance bands (origin→dest); rate is a function of zone × weight.
• Dimensional weight (DIM) — billable weight = max(actual weight, L×W×H / DIM divisor). A big light box bills as if heavy. Ignoring DIM under-quotes every rate.
• BOL (Bill of Lading) — the carrier contract / receipt for a shipment (esp. freight).
• ASN (Advance Ship Notice) — supplier's heads-up of an inbound shipment; feeds receiving so the warehouse knows what's arriving before it lands.
• SKU + lot/batch — SKU identifies the product; lot/batch identifies a specific production run (expiry, recall, FIFO). Same SKU, different lots, are not interchangeable.
• Pick / pack / ship — the outbound fulfilment sequence inside a warehouse.
• Putaway — placing received inventory into its storage location.
• Cycle count — periodic partial inventory audit (vs full physical count); keeps on-hand honest without shutting the warehouse.
• Reorder point + safety stock + lead time — reorder when on-hand ≤ (demand × lead-time) + safety stock. Drives PO creation timing.
• 3PL — third-party logistics provider; runs the warehouse/shipping on behalf of others.
• PO → receiving → put-away — the inbound lifecycle: order goods, receive against the PO, put away into locations.
• Dropship — supplier ships direct to the end customer; inventory never touches your warehouse.
• Last-mile — final leg to the customer's door; where most delivery cost/failure lives.
• Proof of delivery (POD) — signature / photo / timestamp confirming delivery.
• SLA / transit time — promised delivery window; the constraint rate-shopping optimises against.

2. Non-obvious domain rules (the ones incumbents get right)

• Tracking is multi-carrier with NORMALIZED statuses. Every carrier's webhook payload and status vocabulary differs ("In Transit" vs "MV" vs "departed facility"). You must map each carrier's raw events onto ONE normalized status enum (e.g. pending → info_received → in_transit → out_for_delivery → delivered / exception). The normalized timeline is the product; the raw event is provenance.
• Branded tracking is the low-switching customer-facing wedge. The shipper's customers see a branded tracking page instead of the carrier's. Cheap to switch to, sticky once adopted — it's the AfterShip-lite entry point. (See shipment-tracking below.)
• Route-optimization is a real VRP (Vehicle Routing Problem), not "sort stops by distance". Capacity, time windows, vehicle count, and service times make it NP-hard. Defer the algorithm to [[geo-routing-engineer]] — this skill only frames the domain and the entity shape; do not let the spec hand-roll the solver.
• Dimensional weight drives cost. Any rate-shopping or quoting feature that ignores DIM produces wrong prices. Capture L×W×H on every parcel.
• Warehouse needs lot/batch + cycle counts, not just a quantity integer. Recalls, expiry (FIFO/FEFO), and audit honesty all require lot granularity and periodic counts.
• PO lifecycle = create → approve → receive → reconcile. A PO isn't a row that flips to "done"; it accrues received quantities (often partial, across multiple receipts) and is reconciled against the invoice. Skipping receive/reconcile makes the PO a sticky note.

3. What a naive build gets wrong

• Single-carrier tracking — hardcodes one carrier; real shippers use several.
• Un-normalized carrier statuses — stores raw carrier strings, so the UI and any automation can't reason across carriers. Normalize on ingest.
• Route-opt as nearest-neighbour — greedy nearest-stop gives bad routes and ignores capacity/time-windows. It's VRP → [[geo-routing-engineer]].
• Inventory without lot/batch or cycle count — a bare quantity column can't do recalls, expiry, or audit; on-hand drifts and nobody trusts it.
• PO without receiving/reconciliation — no partial receipts, no invoice match; the PO is decorative.
• Ignoring dimensional weight in rate shopping — quotes are systematically too low; margins evaporate on bulky-light parcels.

4. Must-model entities (the shapes that prevent rework)

Pair these with [[migration-ready-schema]] (source_ref + import_batch_id on importable entities; model carriers/suppliers/customers as their own tables, not inline fields).

• Shipment — carrier (FK) + a normalized status + a tracking-event timeline (ordered events, each with carrier-raw payload + normalized status + timestamp + location). Parcel dims (L×W×H + weight) for DIM. POD reference.
• InventoryItem — SKU (FK) + lot/batch + location (bin/shelf, its own entity) + on-hand qty + cycle-count records (counted qty, variance, timestamp, counter).
• PurchaseOrder — full lifecycle: create → approve → receive → reconcile. Line items with ordered vs received qty (partial receipts → a Receipt entity), supplier (FK), reconciliation against invoice.
• Route — ordered stops + constraints (vehicle capacity, time windows, service time per stop). Hand the optimisation algorithm to [[geo-routing-engineer]] — the spec defines the entity and constraints, not the solver.

5. Per-product notes (wedge + the one domain thing)

• shipment-tracking (dashboard) — wedge: branded customer-facing tracking page (AfterShip-lite, low switching cost). The one thing: multi-carrier ingestion with normalized status mapping — every carrier's webhook normalized onto one enum. Carrier/tracking ingestion → [[connector-builder]].
• warehouse-lite (crud) — wedge: small-warehouse WMS for shops outgrowing spreadsheets. The one thing: lot/batch + location + cycle count — inventory is not a quantity column.
• route-optimization (booking) — wedge: multi-stop route optimization; highest value, hardest. The one thing: it's a real VRP — model stops + constraints here, but the solver is [[geo-routing-engineer]]'s. Do not ship nearest-neighbour.
• po-mgmt (crud) — wedge: purchase-order management. The one thing: the full create → approve → receive → reconcile lifecycle with partial receipts, not a status flag.

6. Compliance (light — flag, don't over-build)

• Carrier ToS — each carrier API has terms on caching/displaying tracking data and branding. Respect them; don't scrape where an API exists.
• Hazmat — if shipping dangerous goods, special labelling/declaration applies. Flag if in scope; defer the heavy ruleset.
• Customs (cross-border) — commercial invoice, HS codes, duties for international parcels. Capture the basics (declared value, HS code) if cross-border is in scope; defer heavy customs brokerage logic.
• Proof-of-delivery retention — PODs (signatures/photos) are dispute evidence; retain them per the shipper's policy and don't expire them early.

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Cross-refs: [[geo-routing-engineer]] (route VRP solver), [[connector-builder]] (carrier & tracking ingestion), [[migration-ready-schema]] (importable entities).