Open Merchant is a local-first, AI-native desktop workbench for deciding whether a product opportunity is commercially worth pursuing — without losing the evidence, assumptions, calculations, and report behind the decision.
It is built for solo ecommerce sellers, founders, and product researchers who want one inspectable project folder per decision instead of scattered tabs, spreadsheets, and notes. AI assistants draft; you approve every step. Your files stay on your machine.
Create a project folder, record a research objective and evidence, compare competitor listings, enter cost assumptions and selling-price scenarios, calculate deterministic unit economics, and generate an evidence-linked Markdown opportunity report. AI assistants can draft evidence entries, report sections, research plans, and integrity checks — but every draft is clearly marked and nothing is saved until you accept it.
Windows, macOS, and Linux. Built on Electron with a TypeScript monorepo.
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| Unit economics — exact decimals, ledger-style rows | The opportunity report, rendered as a paper document |
More views: home · objective · evidence · competitors · artifacts & history
Open Merchant ships with six specialist assistants rather than one chatbot:
| Assistant | What it drafts |
|---|---|
| Research planner | A checklist of evidence to gather for your objective |
| Evidence assistant | Structured sources from material you paste in |
| Competitor analyst | Competitor listing entries from pasted listings |
| Economics reviewer | Sanity flags on your assumptions versus market prices |
| Report writer | Decision summary, observations, risks, opportunities |
| Auditor | Whether your drafted claims are backed by recorded evidence |
Ground rules:
- Bring your own key — or no key at all. Four providers are built in: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, and local endpoints (Ollama, LM Studio, or any OpenAI-compatible server). Local models run entirely on your machine and need only a base URL — no key, no cloud. Cloud keys are encrypted with OS-backed credential storage and never appear in project folders, artifacts, or logs.
- Drafts are not saves. Assistant output enters the UI marked as an AI draft; it becomes project data only when you edit and save it.
- Provenance follows the machine. Accepted AI content is journaled with the agent id, provider, model, prompt hash, and artifact fingerprint.
- What changed since last time? The Artifacts tab diffs your latest generated report against the previous generation side by side, and the provenance journal is searchable by agent, provider, and model — no raw JSONL reading required.
- No autonomous browsing. Assistants read only what you paste into them.
- Commerce math is never done by an AI or by floating point — see below.
Download the current installer for your platform from GitHub Releases. The app keeps itself current: on startup it passively checks this project's own Releases feed, downloads updates in the background (delta downloads where supported), and offers to restart — or simply applies the update on quit. Checks are read-only against GitHub; nothing about your projects or usage leaves your machine.
Security note for our users: because we are an independent developer team, our software is not yet registered in Microsoft's or Apple's developer registries — and those registries are expensive. Your operating system may therefore flag the installer as "unrecognized" on first launch. Don't worry: the app is clean and does exactly what this README describes. The warnings come from the missing certificate, not from the software. What to expect on each platform:
- Windows — SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Choose More info → Run anyway; the prompt softens as download reputation builds. The installer may also note an "unknown publisher" — installation proceeds normally either way.
- macOS — Gatekeeper blocks the first launch of apps from unidentified developers. If macOS refuses to open the app, open System Settings → Privacy & Security, find the message about Open Merchant, and click Open Anyway (right-click → Open on the app works too). On Apple Silicon,
xattr -cr "/Applications/Open Merchant.app"in Terminal clears it in one step if needed. - Linux — no extra steps: make the AppImage executable (
chmod +x) and run it.
A CA-issued certificate is on the roadmap and will remove these warnings automatically — no action or change needed on your side when it lands.
Each project is an ordinary directory that you own and can inspect outside the app:
my-project/
.openmerchant/
manifest.json # identity, objective, currency, schema version
runs.jsonl # meaningful operations (create, calculate, generate…)
provenance.jsonl # generated artifacts -> run, sha256, AI origin
evidence/sources.jsonl # user-owned inputs
market/competitors.json # user-owned inputs
economics/assumptions.json
economics/scenarios.json # generated from assumptions
reports/report-sections.json
reports/opportunity-report.md # generated
All writes are atomic replace-on-success: an interrupted save leaves the previous file intact. Malformed files are rejected loudly, never silently repaired. Projects created by Open Merchant V0 (schema version 1) can be migrated via Import legacy project on the Home screen.
All commerce math runs in tested application code using arbitrary-precision decimals — not an LLM, not binary floating point. Rounding is half-away-from-zero to two decimal places, applied only when a value is emitted:
marketplace fee = selling price × marketplace fee rate / 100
payment fee = selling price × payment fee rate / 100
total cost = acquisition + shipping + fees + other costs
gross profit = selling price − total cost
gross margin = gross profit / selling price × 100
Competitor statistics ignore unpriced listings and report min, max, average, and median of valid prices only. The current engine's outputs are pinned against golden fixtures derived from the original Rust implementation.
Prerequisites: Node.js 22+, pnpm 9+, Git.
pnpm install
pnpm dev # run the desktop app
pnpm test # all package tests
pnpm lint # eslint
pnpm typecheck # strict TS across the monorepoapps/desktop/ Electron app (main, preload, renderer)
packages/shared/ Zod schemas: artifacts, IPC contract, errors, agent outputs
packages/core/ Domain engine: exact-decimal money, economics, statistics,
validation, report rendering, atomic workspace store,
path guards, run/provenance journals, V0 import
packages/ai/ Provider-agnostic LLM seam (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, and
local-endpoint adapters, mock provider) and the specialists
packages/sdk/ Typed DesktopClient over the validated IPC contract +
in-memory mock client
packages/ui/ Design tokens and primitives ("The Merchant's Ledger")
examples/ Demo project (marked demo data, not live claims)
docs/ Architecture notes and release checks
The renderer never imports Electron: everything crosses the single zod-validated IPC contract exposed through packages/sdk.
pnpm --filter @open-merchant/desktop distProduces an NSIS installer (Windows), DMG (macOS), or AppImage (Linux) under apps/desktop/release.
- Releases are built by GitHub Actions: pushing a
v*tag runs the release workflow, which builds all three platforms on GitHub runners and publishes them — together with the auto-update feed (latest.yml) — to GitHub Releases. - Developer signing without a CA or legal identity: run
powershell -File dev-signing.ps1once (insideapps/desktop) to create a self-signed code-signing certificate under the aliasOpen Merchant Developer; subsequent local builds are signed automatically, and the same certificate can be added as theCSC_LINK/CSC_KEY_PASSWORDrepo secrets for signed CI builds. - For testing updates locally,
update-feed-server.cjsserves a release folder as an update feed andOPEN_MERCHANT_TEST_UPDATE_URLpoints the installed app at it.
See ROADMAP.md for what has shipped, what is in progress, and the direction of the product.
- No cloud sync, accounts, teams, or mobile clients.
- Assistants cannot browse: you supply page content by pasting it.
- One writer per project at a time; do not edit a project elsewhere while Open Merchant has unsaved changes.
- The checked-in example project contains clearly-marked demo data, not live commercial claims.
Open Merchant is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 only (AGPL-3.0-only).
Copyright © 2026 Xeyronox.