hotfix.
patch notes for people who work with AI. a merch brand where every product ships as a version, every drop is a release, and nothing sold out is ever deleted. it just gets deprecated.
WHAT I BUILT
the whole brand runs on one idea: products are patch notes. each drop carries a version string that is assigned once and never reused, so the catalogue reads like a changelog instead of a lookbook.
sold-out drops are never removed. they move to the archive struck through and marked deprecated, permanently viewable and permanently unbuyable. that is the collectible mechanic, and it is a data model decision, not a marketing one.
a static astro store on cloudflare pages with a worker and D1 behind it, a cart drawer, and hosted stripe checkout with tax handled at the till. no CMS, no react, hats and shirts at $54 to $56 CAD.
product images are composited, never AI-generated, because diffusion mangles lettering. a python tool renders each product name as real text, warps it to the fabric with a displacement map, and relights it with the blank's own shadows so the type stays pixel perfect.
printful in toronto prints and ships in CAD, resend handles the mail. the whole operation runs without inventory, a warehouse, or a person in the middle.
the site is deliberately plain: paper, ink, geist mono, one green status dot. the joke only lands because the storefront refuses to be in on it.