Reckoneer — how it works
Every block of the Reckoneer pipeline, explained step by step. Each stage page gives a plain-English walkthrough, defines the technical terms, and traces where the words come from. Pick any stage to begin.
Shopify store
A live Shopify store must exist before Reckoneer can do anything. Reckoneer cannot create stores — that happens in Shopify.
Dev Dashboard app
A custom Shopify app must be installed on the store to give Reckoneer API access. This is a one-time setup per store.
Competitor Capture
Reckoneer visits the competitor URL, captures screenshots, extracts HTML and CSS, and records design tokens. All output is stored and passed to the next stage.
Catalog Extraction
Reckoneer reads the client's Shopify store via the Admin API and extracts the full product catalog — titles, descriptions, images, variants, and prices.
Sitemap Analysis
Reckoneer fetches the competitor's sitemap, maps their page structure, and identifies which page types exist and how they are organized.
Style Guide Extraction
Reckoneer analyzes all captured design data and produces a structured style guide: color palette, typography scale, spacing system, and component patterns.
Product Matching
Reckoneer matches the client's products against the competitor's catalog structure, identifying which products should appear in which collections and how they map to the competitor's organization.
Theme Build
Claude Code builds the Shopify theme based on the approved design spec. All sections, templates, and settings are generated to match the approved direction. The theme is pushed to the store as a dev theme.
Push to Dev
The built theme is pushed to the client's Shopify store as an unpublished development theme. A preview URL is generated for operator review.
Merchant Review
The operator reviews the theme via the Shopify preview URL. They can request changes (loop back to build) or approve and proceed to publish.
Staging
The approved theme is merged to the staging branch on GitHub. The Shopify GitHub integration automatically syncs it to an unpublished staging theme on the store for final review before go-live.
Pre-Publish Review
The operator reviews the staging theme one final time via its preview URL. This is the last gate before the theme goes live to customers.
Live
Operator reviews the preview URL on the actual store, then clicks Publish. The theme goes live. The run is complete. Re-deploy is available for future updates.