Planning corpus: this is the real design-discussion doc for epic demo-store-northline-depth, synced verbatim from this repo’s own internal planning process.

Design Discussion: demo-store-northline-depth

0. Context

Backlog epic 35. Direct instance of the user’s explicit critique: “these aren’t themed, they aren’t integrated, we hardly have actions, it should have a true menu, a true set of products.” Epic 34 (done, merged) fixed “not themed.” This epic fixes the rest, for Northline Home Tech first (the user named it first of the 3 stores).

Confirmed by direct inspection, not assumed:

apps/reference-storefront/components/nav-top-bar.tsx (introduced by epic 34, extracted verbatim from the pre-epic-34 layout) renders exactly: brand link · Cart · Search · “Fall Sale” (a hardcoded link to campaign/fall-sale, a dragon-merch-only campaign that does not exist for Northline) · Account · Admin: Plugins · a link back to the framework landing page · cross-demo switch links. Zero category or service-area links exist in the nav for any demo. This is the literal “hardly have actions, it should have a true menu” gap.
apps/reference-storefront/lib/seed-northline.ts: 5 services, 1 category (installation-services, everything dumped into it), 8 defined service areas but only 1 (Cedarbrook) actually gets a published CMS location page. This is the literal “a true set of products” gap — a real installer business would have several distinct service categories (TV/theater, security/cameras, networking, smart-home/automation) and every service area should have its own real page, not 1 of 8.

1. Scope

Northline Home Tech only — the backlog explicitly sequences this before the other 2 demo stores (“applies to Northline Home Tech first”). Epics 36/37 (Print Shop rebrand, new plant-shop demo) are separate, later epics; this epic does not touch dragon-merch or any new demo slug.

The hardcoded “Fall Sale” nav link bug is real and in scope for this epic (it’s an existing functional defect, not a Northline-depth feature) — the nav should link to whatever’s actually real for the active demo, not a dragon-merch-specific campaign slug baked into a shared component.

2. Design questions

(a) How does the nav become demo-aware without re-forking NavTopBar/NavRail? Resolved: both components already receive demoSlug as a prop (added by epic 34). Extend the prop contract with a navLinks: Array<{ href: string; label: string }> array the page layout builds server-side per demo (categories the demo’s MarketingCatalogService actually has, resolved at render time — not hardcoded per-demo branching inside the nav components themselves, which would defeat the point of a shared, demo-agnostic nav component). The existing hardcoded “Fall Sale” link is deleted; if a demo has a live campaign, it becomes one more entry in this same navLinks array, built from real CMS/campaign data, not a literal string.

(b) Real product/service depth — new subsystem, or richer seed data? Resolved: richer seed data only. Every subsystem this needs already exists and is proven (marketing-catalog for categories, catalog for multi-tier SKUs via generateSkus, service-areas for location pages). This is a seed-data-and-CMS-content depth problem, not an architecture problem — no new subsystem, no schema change.

3. Scope assessment

Medium. Bounded to one demo’s seed data + shared nav component props + one CMS content-authoring pass. No new subsystem, no new package, no persistence-model change. Auto-proceeding to story decomposition per this repo’s established medium-scope default.

4. Stories

catalog-and-location-depth — split Northline’s 5 services into 4 real categories (TV & Home Theater, Security & Cameras, Networking & Fiber, Smart Home & Automation), add real tiered variants for at least 2 services (e.g. camera install priced per-camera-count: 1/4/8-camera packages, not one flat SKU), and publish real CMS location pages for all 8 service areas (today only 1 of 8 exists), each with distinct, non-templated-feeling content (real hours, a locally-flavored blurb, the services actually offered in that specific area per its existing areaIndices subset).
real-nav-and-actions — fix the nav contract (§2a): demo-built navLinks covering the 4 new categories + a service-area picker/link, delete the hardcoded “Fall Sale” link from the shared nav components, confirm search actually returns Northline results for real queries (not just that the search page loads), confirm every nav link resolves to a real, non-404 page.
verification-and-closeout — live-verify the full nav across every category/service-area link, confirm cart/checkout still works end to end with the new tiered SKUs, confirm dragon-merch’s nav is unaffected (proving the demo-aware navLinks refactor didn’t leak Northline-specific content into the other demo), update docs/subsystems/15-service-areas.md if its content-depth claims need updating, close out the backlog row, merge to master.

5. Risks

Medium — deleting the hardcoded “Fall Sale” link and replacing it with demo-built navLinks touches the one shared nav component both demos render through. Mitigation: story 3’s acceptance criteria explicitly requires confirming dragon-merch’s own nav still shows its real Fall Sale campaign link (now built dynamically from its own real campaign data, not hardcoded) — a demo-aware fix, not a regression.

6. Open questions

None blocking.