Warehouse Insights

Most warehouses work with multiple disconnected systems for managing orders and inventory. This spreads data across different locations, making it difficult to get a clear overview or perform actions like updating stock when an order is placed. Warehouse Insights solves this by bringing everything into one real-time dashboard.

For the MVP I identified seven core features: a KPI dashboard, orders and inventory overview pages, a product detail page, authentication, real-time data, and notifications. Each feature had its own spec file with a user story and acceptance criteria, so I always knew exactly what I was building and when it was done.

For real-time functionality I used Pusher, and for authentication I used Auth.js with Google as the provider. I also kept a backlog.md file as a checklist to track progress across all features.

Pusher's documentation doesn't cover Next.js specifically, which made the implementation difficult to figure out. After working through it I got a solid understanding of how to integrate real-time functionality into a Next.js application. I also noticed a tendency to refactor code mid-session, while not inherently bad, it pulled focus away from the MVP and wasted time better spent on core features.

Warehouse Insights ended up better than expected, a real-time dashboard that gives warehouse managers a clear, centralized view of their operations. The application is cleanly structured under a /dashboard route with an intuitive sidebar for navigating between overviews, making it easy to monitor stock, track orders, and act on live notifications.