An Inventory That Remembers What Happened

Give objects a memory

Where did that container go? Was it opened? Why is it on the use-soon list? The Inventory System answers from a history of actions: onboarding, observations, moves, quantity changes, quality checks, finishing, discarding, and relabeling. Its first workflow is kitchen-focused, with explicit workspaces leaving room for other kinds of physical inventory.

Concept illustration for inventory-system; not a product screenshot.

Give every object a durable handle

Stable QR labels connect the database to the object in your hand. A label can be generated during onboarding, prepared in advance as an unassigned sticker, or scanned later to reach an item's current state and quick actions. The label's identity remains stable while the asset's location, condition, quantity, and lifecycle evolve around it.

Four questions about one object

These dimensions describe different things; a single status would hide useful distinctions.

flowchart TD
    Item[Labeled object] --> Life[Lifecycle: active or finished]
    Item --> Presence[Presence: here or missing]
    Item --> Quality[Quality: condition or freshness]
    Item --> Confidence[Confidence: how certain]

Model the questions separately

The system avoids compressing every question into one ambiguous status. Lifecycle records whether an item is active, finished, or discarded. Presence records whether it is present, unobserved, likely missing, or known to be absent. Quality records freshness or usefulness, while projection confidence expresses how much the system trusts its current understanding. Those axes feed queues with concrete reasons, turning the ledger into a practical list of what needs attention.

Photo-assisted onboarding is optional and review-first. An uploaded food image can prepare a suggested draft, but the user confirms the details before creating the item. The original input is treated as transient private material; only bounded thumbnail and medium derivatives are retained for public-facing views. Manual onboarding remains fully functional when image analysis is unavailable.