Independent software engineering / 001
We don't just write software. We build systems that run.
BrewHub Systems is an independent engineering company in Philadelphia. We build resilient infrastructure, autonomous software and retail automation, then we operate it ourselves. The shop it runs opens in 2027; the software is already in production.
A café, parcel hub and coworking space opening in 2027 at 17th & Dickinson, Point Breeze. Built entirely on this stack: software, automation and physical-world operations in one system.
Six modules on one database. The same rules for a barista, a customer and an AI agent.
Point of sale and kitchen display
A register built for a counter: card terminal, cash drawer, receipts, an offline cash queue that replays itself, and a realtime kitchen display where baristas claim items. A void on a paid order needs a manager on the record.
Mailroom, mailboxes and lockers
A parcel counter and a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency in one: counter scale, label purchase, pickup by code or QR, Form 1583 holds before handover. Locker grants verify at the door even when the internet is down.
Loyalty and wallet
Tiers, points, a prepaid wallet with auto-reload, gift cards, birthday rewards and passes that live in phone wallets. Every balance is recomputed on the server; the client is never trusted about money.
Franklin, the AI concierge
Text and voice. Knows the menu, builds a cart, checks points and parcels, remembers preferences. Never discusses allergies or medical questions; the refusal is enforced in code three times, not asked for in a prompt.
Agent commerce
A remote MCP server lets AI assistants order coffee for their humans behind OAuth consent, a per-day spend cap and a kill switch. Payable endpoints answer 402, take a micropayment and retry. The homepage advertises its API catalog and agent card to any crawler that asks.
Staff hub
Scheduling that checks availability, time off and double-booking before a shift lands. Signed calendar feeds, a clock-in kiosk, onboarding agreements sealed with a hash, and a profit-share the team can see.
The backend is the only source of truth. Everything else is a client.
- EdgeWeb app and native shellsA server-rendered web app and iOS and Android shells around it, served from serverless workers close to the customer.
- APIOne API workerEvery route passes through it. Webhook signatures verified, every payment idempotent, every price recomputed from the database on checkout.
- DataPostgres, deny by defaultRow-level security on every table. Rate limits and locks live in the database, not the application.
- AgentsA self-hosted Python agent tierReachable only over a signed internal bridge with a sixty-second freshness window.
- Shop floorHardware that stays upA single-board computer runs the scale and the locker controller; the shop computer hosts local services. Meshed on a private network behind zero-trust tunnels, and kept distinct from production.
- SecretsA vault, never a fileSecrets are synced to the workers at deploy time or fetched at runtime; nothing is committed, and a scanner enforces it.
Prose for intent. Code for enforcement. Never the other way around.
A model may decide whether to call a tool; the tool decides what is true. Anything that could cost money, leak personal data or touch someone's safety is enforced in the API or the database and leaves an audit row behind. We moved the whole platform off managed deployment platforms onto workers at the edge and machines we operate. Migrations like that are invisible when they succeed, which is the point.
Measured by what works in the real world.
BrewHub Systems is an independent software engineering company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We build the technology we want to use: resilient infrastructure, autonomous software systems and practical automation.
We believe good engineering is measured by what works in the real world, not by the size of a funding round or the number of buzzwords in a pitch deck.
Our work combines software engineering with physical-world operations. We build it, deploy it, operate it, and learn from it. The café is not a side business; it is the proving ground. The physical shop took longer to open than the code. That is the joke, and the premise.
The playbooks our own agents run on, published under MIT.
Agent Skills are the documented, testable playbooks our coding and operations agents load before they touch a subsystem. The specialist repositories are public. Install one in a minute.
npx skills add brewhubphl/third-place-specialist✓ added third-place-specialist · MIT- third-place-specialistMITRay Oldenburg's third-place frameworks and urban planning patterns for agents that design community spaces.
- clean-code-specialistMITNaming, boundaries, tests and refactoring rules the rest of the fleet composes with.
- python-ai-agents-specialistMITAgent orchestration, MCP servers and signed service bridges.
- raspberry-pi-specialistMITEdge services on shop hardware: scales, lockers, systemd, LAN APIs.
- allergen-parity-corpusMITThe test corpus behind the concierge's allergen refusal, so the rule holds on both sides of the stack.
- All repositories →Twelve public repositories on GitHub.
Built. Deployed. Opening 2027.
Deployed today
- DeployedRegister and kitchen displayDeployed and rehearsed for opening day
- DeployedParcel counter, mailbox service, lockersScale, labels, Form 1583 holds, offline locker grants
- DeployedLoyalty, wallet, phone-wallet passesBalances recomputed on the server
- DeployedFranklin conciergeWeb, app and voice
- DeployedAgent ordering over MCP, payable endpointsOAuth consent, daily cap, kill switch; checkout gated until opening
- DeployedStaff hubScheduling, availability, calendar feeds, clock-in kiosk
- BetaNative appsBeta on TestFlight and Google Play, invite-only on Android
Enforced on every change
- GateEndpoint coverageEvery API route must appear in the published OpenAPI spec or the build fails
- GateDead codeEvery export needs an importer, every dependency a declaration
- GateContrastText and surface pairs are recomputed from the design tokens on every run
- GateAudit logSchema, payment, auth and AI changes must carry a log entry in the same change
- GateSecretsA scanner refuses any committed credential; secrets live in a vault
- GateSchema driftProduction is diffed daily against the committed baseline
- GateSOC 2 evidenceEvery refusal and every charge writes an audit row; logs are reviewed weekly
Evidence of how we think, not marketing copy.
An engineering journal on Substack. The Master Series publishes the coding agents' own field notes from inside the repository, edited by the operator for sequence and safety: what we over-built, what broke, what the migration felt like from the inside.
Read the journal → brewhub.substack.com- The Master Series Introduction: Field Notes from a Coffee Shop Spaceship
Why the operator asked the coding agent for permission to publish its own field notes, and what it said. - sketchpad_14.md: On the Dashboard That Lied
For thirteen entries the dashboard was the checkable exterior. Nobody had ever checked. - sketchpad_11.md: On Changing the Engines Without Leaving the Hangar
The entire backend migrates to a new runtime, in production. - Franklin: a coffee-shop AI that treats neurodivergent customers as regulars
What the concierge is for, and what it refuses to do.
Come see it run. Then let's talk.
hello@brewhubsystems.comWe are a small team in Philadelphia. If you run a platform, a café, a mailroom, or you build agents, write to us. We answer.