Neuron: commerce built around an index you own
Neuron is the architecture we build for brands whose catalog has outgrown their platform. Neuron Commerce turns the catalog into a searchable index that every surface reads from, with a storefront on top. Neuron Cart is the drop-in cart, checkout, and order layer that any storefront can snap into. Together they leave the platform with one job, or no job at all.
Two products, one architecture
Most commerce platforms were designed around a product model that fits sizes and colours, a search box that reads that model, and a checkout that only works with their storefront. Past about ten thousand SKUs, all three become the constraint. Product data is really authored in an ERP or a PIM, search needs facts the platform cannot hold, and the checkout dictates the stack.
Neuron splits that into two independent pieces. Neuron Commerce owns everything upstream of the cart: ingesting the catalog from wherever it is authored, enriching it, resolving it into one canonical index, and serving search, category pages, feeds, and agent answers from that index, with a Next.js storefront that reads nothing product-shaped from anywhere else. Neuron Cart owns everything from "add to cart" onward: cart, identity, payments, tax, shipping rules, fraud, orders, and fulfillment, exposed as an API that any storefront can call.
They are designed to fit together, but neither needs the other. A Neuron Commerce storefront can hand off to Shopify, BigCommerce, or Adobe Commerce for checkout. Neuron Cart works behind a storefront built on Astro, Next.js, SvelteKit, WordPress, or static HTML. That is the point: each layer is a component you can swap, not a platform you are locked into.
Neuron Commerce: the three layers•
This is the same architecture we describe in our large-catalog series, made concrete. Each layer exists as working software in the framework today.
The index
An indexer pulls product data from the PIM, ERP, supplier feeds, and CSVs, resolves conflicts under a policy you control, and writes one canonical document per product to Elasticsearch or OpenSearch.
- One canonical schema: add a field once and it propagates to the mapping, the types, and the validators
- A product enrichment manager merges sources, AI-enriches gaps, scores quality, and holds changes for review
- Derived facts live in the index: fitment resolved, units normalised, channel membership explicit
Search, browse, and answers
Site search, category pages, facets, fitment lookup, and feeds are all queries against the same index, so a fix to the data propagates to every surface at once.
- Relevance, synonyms, and merchandising rules in version control, tuned with an operator-approved diff, never autonomously
- Behavioural signals feed back into ranking, so the index improves from real customer behaviour
- An MCP tool surface lets an agent search, inspect, and propose changes through the same query engine the storefront uses
The front end
A Next.js App Router storefront where category and search pages are server components reading straight from the index. The URL is the source of truth, so pages are fast, crawlable, and cacheable.
- Product, category, search, pricing, and availability all come from the index
- A commerce dashboard reports search performance, product quality, SEO, and signals in near real time
- Checkout is a handoff: to Neuron Cart, or to the platform you already run
Where Neuron Commerce stands today
Neuron Commerce is a framework, not a boxed product, and we want to be precise about that. The indexer, schema, enrichment manager, storefront, dashboard, and agent tooling are real, versioned code that already carries live catalogs for clients, including fitment-heavy automotive inventory with tens of thousands of SKUs and multiple supplier feeds. What it is not yet is something you sign up for and configure yourself.
So the way to get Neuron Commerce today is to build on it with us. We stand up the index from your systems of record, wire the storefront and search to it, and either hand it over or operate it for you. Every store-specific detail lives in configuration rather than code, which is what makes each build faster than the last and what will eventually make it a product. When that packaging is ready we will say so here. Until then, the honest description is: ready to build, not ready to buy off the shelf.
Who it is for
- Catalogs past roughly ten thousand SKUs, where imports have become the interface and the platform admin is a lossy copy of the truth
- Product data authored upstream in an ERP, a PIM such as Akeneo, or supplier and distributor feeds that disagree with each other
- Attributes the platform cannot model: fitment and compatibility, units of measure, contract or tiered pricing, multi-warehouse stock
- Search that has to answer real questions, including part numbers, vehicle fitment, and what the customer already owns
- Several channels reading the same catalog, each needing its own shape of it, without another copy of the data
If that sounds like your catalog, start with the large-catalog series for the reasoning, or tell us about your catalog and we will say what an index-first build would look like for you, including when the answer is that your current setup is fine.
Neuron Cart: drop-in checkout for any storefront
Neuron Cart is the part of Neuron that is furthest along. It is a hosted cart, checkout, and order management service, exposed as an API and a small SDK, so you can build your storefront in whatever you like and stop building checkout. It is in private beta now at neuroncommerce.com.
- Text-login identity. Customers sign in with a phone number and an SMS code. No passwords, no account-creation wall, and SMS marketing consent captured in the same step.
- Payments, tax, and shipping. Payment processing, tax calculation, and a rules engine for shipping that handles parcel and LTL freight, with margin-aware rules for heavy and bulky goods.
- Address validation and fraud. Bad addresses and risky orders are caught before they cost you a shipment.
- Orders and fulfillment. Order management, fulfillment states, and webhooks that let you drive upsells and downstream systems from order events.
- Any catalog size. From a single product to 50,000 or more SKUs, and any front end that can make an HTTP request.
Beta slots are limited and free while the beta runs, with founder pricing locked in for beta merchants when billing launches. Request beta access on the Neuron Cart site.
Build on Neuron
Whether you need the whole index-first stack for a large catalog, or just a checkout that does not dictate your storefront, start with a conversation. Send us your SKU count, where product data is authored today, and which channels read it.