WARDENCLYFFE ENGINE · v0.1
For stores that ship to humans and answer to their agents. Built on .NET 10. Self-host. Free in production under $1M annual GMV — no contract, no telemetry.
WHAT IT IS
Wardenclyffe Engine is a self-hostable e-commerce platform built on .NET 10. Storefront, admin, catalog, pricing, orders, fitment, garage, customers, integrations. Three DbContexts (catalog, operational, identity) so hot reads stay off the write node.
What makes it different is the assumption baked in from line one: two sides of the transaction may speak through agents. Buyers shopping via their own LLM. Merchants running their catalog with theirs. Both call the same engine; the engine doesn't care which side initiated. The same RBAC, audit, sandbox, and idempotency apply.
You can run it on a laptop, on a five-dollar droplet, or on your own hardware. The schema is yours either way. Under a million GMV it's free, no contract, no telemetry.
STACKING UP
We don't try to make competitors look bad. We try to show, as narrowly and verifiably as we can, where this engine sits next to the platforms an evaluator is also looking at. Every "no" in this table is checkable from the competitor's own published docs as of 2026; if you find one we've gotten wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
| Capability | Wardenclyffe | Shopify Plus | WooCommerce | nopCommerce |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Source-available license | ● | ○ | ● | ● |
| You own the database + binaries | ● | ○ | ● | ● |
| .NET 10 / EF Core stack | ● | ○ | ○ | ● |
| Built-in MCP server | ● | ○ | ○ | ○ |
| Buyer-agent endpoint, scoped | ● | ○ | ○ | ○ |
| Merchant-agent endpoint, scoped | ● | ○ | ○ | ○ |
| OpenAPI 3.1 generated from code | ● | ◐ | ◐ | ○ |
| Scoped PATs with per-tool gate | ● | ◐ | ○ | ○ |
| Idempotency keys on order / payment | ● | ● | ○ | ○ |
| Sandbox mode for agent rehearsal | ● | ◐ | ○ | ○ |
| Audit log: actor + before/after + IP | ● | ◐ | ○ | ◐ |
| Bulk pricing, sustained 1M+ rows/min | ● | ○ | ○ | ○ |
| Fitment / garage framework | ● | ○ | ○ | ○ |
| Production use cost (under $1M GMV) | $0 | $2k+/mo (Plus) | $0 | $0 |
Built-in Partial — usually via plugin / marketplace add-on Not available as of 2026
WHAT WE DON'T COMPETE ON
The grid above shows where the engine wins. Here's where it doesn't even try. If any of these are the reason you'd buy a platform, Wardenclyffe isn't that platform yet.
BUILT FOR AGENTS — ON BOTH SIDES
The buyer's agent and the merchant's agent are not afterthoughts on top of a "real" storefront. They are the storefront — same domain services, same auth, same audit. The Razor Pages UI calls the same code your agent does.
/mcp/customer · cookie auth
A shopper's agent signs in like the shopper does, then operates inside that customer's session. Browse, narrow by fitment, manage cart, place orders, capture payment, manage the garage and saved addresses. The customer can revoke at any time by signing out.
/mcp/admin · scoped API key
Your own agents — onboarding catalog, repricing, support triage, integration glue — authenticate with scoped PATs. Every tool is gated by scope. Every call is audited. Rate limits live per-key so a runaway loop hits a ceiling before it touches anything irreversible.
WHAT THIS UNLOCKS
Your agent watches comp prices overnight, decides which 4,800 SKUs need to move, and calls bulk_pricing_update with a single 50,000-row payload before you make coffee. Within scope, within rate limit, every cent recorded in the audit log.
The buyer's agent hits /mcp/customer, browses, narrows by fitment, places the order via checkout_place + payment_capture with an idempotency key. Your fulfillment pipeline doesn't know — and doesn't need to know — that the order came from an LLM.
Hand the supplier sheet to your agent. It calls product_create per row, product_generate_variants for the options matrix, product_set_custom_fields for everything else, and bulk_pricing_update for the volume tiers. Errors land in a comment thread on the affected product, not your inbox.
support_reset_password and support_refund_order are scoped admin tools with their own rate-limit partitions. Your support agent fires both inside one chat turn. The audit log records actor = API key, sub-actor = the human request ID they were chatting with. Reviewable on Monday.
supplier_feed_trigger kicks the job. The background runner retries with backoff. If it ultimately fails, it lands in the job-history table as a ticket — not as a 2am page. You read it with the same coffee that started the comp sweep.
Customer chats with their agent. Agent calls return_request_create on /mcp/customer, attaches three phone-camera shots straight from the conversation (10 MB each, magic-byte sniffed server-side), picks the condition (damaged) and a reason code. The request lands in /Admin/Returns as Submitted; the operator approves it from a tablet during their next coffee. No support inbox, no ticket triage.
None of these are demos. Every tool named above is in /Mcp/Tools/ in the engine repo, behind real scope checks, with real tests. Pull the repo, register an API key, fire any of them.
VIBE CODING, FOR ADULTS
Vibe coding is great when the stakes are small. It's harder when there's real money in the system, real customers waiting, and real compliance people watching. Wardenclyffe is built so the parts you do vibe — the integrations, the seasonal promo logic, the agent prompts, the back-office scripts — sit on top of a stack that refuses to let you corrupt the database.
.NET 10 + EF Core 10
Long-term-supported runtime. Razor Pages for UI, Minimal APIs for JSON, EF Core 10 for data — three DbContexts split by concern. No magic frameworks layered on top. An LLM that can read C# can read this whole codebase.
Typed, all the way down
Every MCP tool is a typed C# method with a structured schema. OpenAPI is generated, not hand-maintained. When the schema changes, the agent sees it on the next list_tools call. No drift between docs and reality.
Sandbox + audit
Iterate against sandbox until the agent gets it right. Switch to production by changing one header. Every mutation goes to the audit log — vibe coding is reversible because the engine remembers exactly what happened.
Extend without forking
Payment providers, shipping rate providers, tax lookups, background jobs — all interfaces in DI. Drop your implementation in, register it, ship. docs/extending.md has copy-paste recipes per slot.
# install
$ dotnet tool install -g wardenclyffe-cli
$ wardenclyffe new --template parts-fitment my-store
$ cd my-store && wardenclyffe migrate && wardenclyffe seed
# connect an agent
$ claude mcp add wcy http://localhost:5126/.well-known/app-manifest.json
$ claude "Onboard the SKUs in suppliers/q3-rollout.csv. Volume tiers from column 'tier_5_qty'."
→ 1,847 product_create
→ 1,847 product_generate_variants
→ 1 bulk_pricing_update (1,847 rows)
→ 4 errors, threaded on affected products
CLI shipping in 0.2 — illustrative session; the tool registry is real today.
WHAT'S IN THE BOX
No marketing copy in this section. Just the list. Every item below maps to real code in the engine — a domain entity, an admin page, a Razor route, an MCP tool, or a service contract. If it's listed, it's wired up.
“50,000 pricing rows per request, 30 requests per minute per key — 1.5 million rows per minute, sustained, against SQL Server.”
“35-request burst against an unauth admin endpoint: requests 1–30 returned 401, 31–35 returned 429. Rate limiter sits before authorization on the pipeline.”
Missing from this list: anything the engine doesn't actually do. No fake roadmap items, no "coming soon" badges padding the count. If we add something, it appears here the day it merges.
SEE IT
Frisky & Corset is our sample storefront. Real catalog data, real imagery, real admin, real /mcp/customer. Browse it the way an LLM would.
HOW YOU GET IT
Anyone whose deployment processes under $1M annual GMV.
Source on GitHub. Production use granted by the BSL Additional Use Grant. No contract, no telemetry, no support obligation either direction. Most stores end here forever.
Get the code →Operators above the GMV threshold; integrators who want help shipping; anyone who needs a contract.
Commercial license to run the engine above the $1M cap. Optional architect-led implementation, named support, contractual SLA, custom integrations. You still own the binaries and the database.
Talk to us →No managed multi-tenant hosting. Self-host is the path; for above-grant operators, ProjectThunder.com, Inc. licenses commercially and helps with implementation.
Self-host is granted in production for any storefront you own that processes under $1M annual GMV. No contract, no telemetry, no phone home. Most operators end here forever. Full grant text on /license.
Above $1M GMV, a commercial license from ProjectThunder.com, Inc. is required. The license can include named support, contractual SLA, architect-led implementation, and custom integration work — you tell us what you need.
We do not operate Wardenclyffe as a multi-tenant hosted service. The engine isn't built for tenant isolation and we don't think it should be — running your own instance is genuinely better, and the BSL grant exists to make that easy.
The grant is the point. If you can tune in, you can use it. The tower stays up.
FAQ