Prism Domain Context

What Is Prism?

Prism is Violet's core checkout orchestration product. It enables channels (marketplaces, platforms) to buy products from Violet merchants.

Prism vs Beam

	Prism	Beam
Direction	Read Products, Write Orders	Write Products, Read Orders
Flow	Ingest products from stores → Create orders there	Publish Violet products to destinations → Read orders back
Customer	Channels (marketplaces, platforms)	Destination merchants (dropshippers)

Key Concepts

Channels

Platforms and marketplaces that use Violet's API to offer products from multiple merchants to their shoppers.

Merchants

Sellers who connect their stores (Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, etc.) to Violet to make their products available through channels.

Offers

Products listed on Violet, sourced from merchant stores. Each offer represents a product available for purchase through channels.

Orders / Bags

When a shopper buys products through a channel:

• Order: The complete purchase
• Bag: Products from a single merchant within an order (multi-vendor support)

Core Flows

Merchant Onboarding

1. Merchant connects store via OAuth
2. Products sync to Violet catalog
3. Merchant sets commission rates
4. Products become available to channels

Checkout Flow

1. Channel displays Violet products
2. Shopper adds to cart
3. Channel creates order via API
4. Violet splits order into bags by merchant
5. Orders created in merchant stores
6. Fulfillment tracked back to channel

VioletDashboard Patterns

When working with VioletDashboard:

API Proxy Pattern (MANDATORY)

• ALL backend API calls MUST go through Next.js API routes (pages/api/)
• Direct client-side calls to backend services are NOT supported

Redux for State Management (MANDATORY)

• Use Redux Toolkit thunks and reducers for ALL async operations
• React Query is NOT used
• Follow existing patterns: thunks in redux/thunks/, reducers in redux/reducers/

Form Handling

• React Hook Form + Yup validation
• Redux integration for submission

Feature Flags

• Environment variables (build-time, not runtime)
• Format: FEATURE_NAME_ENABLED

Key Repositories

Repo	Purpose
VioletDashboard	Channel/Merchant dashboards (Next.js)
VioletConnect	Merchant onboarding app (Next.js)
MerchantService	Backend merchant API
OrderService	Order processing
prism-brain	Product brain (specs, strategy)

Key Metrics

Metric	Purpose
Checkout Conversion	Orders completed / checkouts started
Order Success Rate	Successful orders / total orders
Fulfillment Time	Time from order to fulfillment
Merchant Connect Rate	Stores connected / signup attempts