Directed Putaway Assistant
Stop stock from landing in random spots nobody can find later. Import your receipts and bin master, let AI suggest the right bin for each SKU by velocity, size, zone and capacity, and update the location only after a person confirms it.
A web tool where you load the day's received items, and AI suggests the best bin for each one using velocity, item size, zone rules and current bin capacity — preferring a bin that already holds that SKU. A putaway associate or supervisor confirms or overrides each suggestion, only confirmed putaways update the bin on-hand, and the tool exports a clean location-update CSV in the exact columns your WMS expects.
Before you start
- A Supabase account (free)
- A Vercel account (free)
- A received-items export and a bin/location master (CSV or Google Sheet is fine)
- Item dimensions and velocity class for your SKUs
- Claude Code or any AI coding agent
The problem this kills
A truck gets received and the goods have to go somewhere. In a perfect world every SKU lands in a bin that fits it, sits in the right zone, is close to the pick face if it sells fast, and consolidates with stock that's already there. In the real world a new associate puts the fast-mover three aisles away, crams an oversize carton into a half-full bin, splits the same SKU across five locations, or drops it in a "temporary" spot that becomes permanent. Then a picker burns ten minutes hunting for inventory the system swears is in the building.
Bad putaway is expensive twice: once when you do it, and again every single time someone has to find that stock later. Cycle counts go sideways, pick paths get longer, and bins that say they're empty are actually jammed. The rules for doing it right aren't complicated — velocity, size, zone, capacity, consolidate-where-it-already-lives — they're just tedious to apply to every line, every receipt, every day, the same way.
This is exactly the kind of rules-based, high-volume decision a small internal tool does better than a clipboard or a person's memory — and you don't need to be a developer to build it.
What you'll build
A simple internal web tool for your inbound dock. You load the day's received items (a CSV or Google Sheet) and your bin/location master with each bin's zone, size and capacity. The tool runs a putaway engine: for each received line it scores the candidate bins and suggests the best location — preferring a bin that already holds that SKU (consolidation), respecting the item's zone and size, putting fast-movers near the pick face, and only offering bins that actually have room. It flags the awkward ones — oversize that won't fit anywhere, a SKU with no home zone, a bin that's already full — so a person can decide.
A putaway associate or supervisor works the list one line at a time: accept the suggestion, or override it with a different bin and a reason. Only a confirmed putaway updates the bin's on-hand and writes the location record. When the batch is done, the tool exports a clean location-update CSV in the exact columns your WMS imports — so the system of record matches the floor.
What's inside the Implementation Plan
The plan is a single file you paste into an AI coding agent. It opens by interviewing you about your warehouse — how putaway works today and who does it, what your bins and SKUs are named, where zones and velocity classes come from, your real and peak receiving volumes, your capacity and zone rules, and your nastiest edge cases — and then tailors the data model, the suggestion logic, and every later step to your answers. This is a tool shaped around how your warehouse actually stores product, not a generic template.
From there it walks the agent through the database schema, the two imports (bin master and received items) with their duplicate guards, the bin-suggestion engine, the confirm-or-override screen, the on-hand update on confirmation, and the location-update CSV export. Every step ends with a ready-to-copy prompt. Because the whole thing runs on CSV in and WMS-ready CSV out, you can build and use it this weekend even with no live connection to your WMS.
The governance it includes (this is the point)
Putaway changes where your inventory lives, so it's built like it matters: login so only your warehouse team can use it, row-level security so each site only sees its own bins and receipts, and a complete audit trail of every import, suggestion, confirmation, override and export — who did what, and when. Nothing moves automatically: the engine suggests, and a person confirms before any location record or bin on-hand changes — that's the hard human-in-the-loop gate. Duplicate guards on the receipt line and the putaway mean the same line can't be put away twice and the same location update can't be exported twice.
Who it's for
Putaway associates, inventory control, and warehouse supervisors who want stock to land where it belongs the first time — and stay findable. If you can explain how you decide which bin a SKU goes in, you can build this.
You've got this — open the plan, paste the first prompt, and let it interview you about your warehouse.