Build your own Square with Claude Code
Point of sale for small businesses: item catalogue, checkout screen for a tablet, card payments and more.
The Claude Code prompt
Build my own take on Square: point of sale for small businesses. Give it an original name, logo, colours and copy, and do not use Square's name, branding or assets. Version one should have: - Item catalogue - Checkout screen for a tablet - Card payments - Receipts - Sales reports The hard part: In-person payments. Use Stripe Terminal. How to build it: 1. Read this folder first. If it is empty, set up Next.js (App Router, TypeScript, Tailwind) with Postgres through Prisma or Supabase, and Supabase Auth or Auth.js for sign-in. Write a short PLAN.md with the data model, screens, third-party services and what you are leaving out of version one. 2. Build the core loop end to end before anything else: item catalogue, working with real data saved to the database. 3. Add the rest of the features one at a time, and seed realistic demo data so every screen looks alive. 4. Keep API keys in environment variables, and put any paid service behind a small interface with a local stub, so the app runs on a fresh machine without accounts. 5. Run it, click through every screen on desktop and mobile widths, fix what breaks, and finish with a summary of what works, what is stubbed and how to deploy it.
Paste it into Claude Code in an empty folder. It plans first, so read PLAN.md and steer before it starts building.
Version one
- Item catalogue
- Checkout screen for a tablet
- Card payments
- Receipts
- Sales reports
The hard part
In-person payments. Use Stripe Terminal.
Make it yours: a niche Square ignores, an original name and brand, and one feature it does badly done well.
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