{
 "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
 "title": "Geenius MVP blog",
 "home_page_url": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/",
 "feed_url": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/feed.json",
 "description": "Practical posts on briefs, ten designs far apart, the design library, shops that say test and letting your own AI build, from the team behind Geenius MVP.",
 "language": "en",
 "items": [
  {
   "id": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/write-the-brief-first/",
   "url": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/write-the-brief-first/",
   "title": "Write the brief before you look at a design",
   "summary": "Why a site starts with a brief of facts, what to put in it, and how it keeps your words and your AI honest when designs change.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Geenius MVP team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "websites",
    "craft"
   ],
   "content_text": "Most people start a website by looking at designs. That is backwards, and it is why so many sites look good for a week and say little. The look is the easy part. The facts are what the site is for.\nIn Geenius MVP a site starts with a brief: a short document of what the business is, what it offers, where it is, who it is for and what a visitor must be able to do. Everything written later, by you or by your own AI, is built on it.\nWhat goes in\nWrite the facts a stranger would need. The name and what you do, in a sentence. The place and the area you serve. Opening hours and how to reach you. The three or four services or products you actually offer. What you want a visitor to do: call, book, buy, ask. The languages the site should speak. And where each fact can be checked, such as your own pages or a register.\nWhat stays out\nAnything you cannot source. A review nobody wrote, a claim of being the best, a price you are not sure of. If your AI writes the content, tell it to research from official sources and to write only what it can source. A site with fewer claims that are all true is better than a site that sounds bigger.\nWhy before the design\nWhen you draw ten designs far apart for the same brief, the words stay the same and the look changes. That is how you judge a design honestly: the same facts, ten ways. If the brief is thin, every design looks thin, and you will blame the design.\nLanguages\nA brief names the languages. A site can have several, and the content document tells you what is untranslated or empty, so a missing page is a to-do and not a surprise.\nKeep it short\nA good brief fits on a page. It is not marketing copy. It is the fact sheet the marketing copy is built from, and the thing you check a claim against when somebody asks where a sentence came from.\nRead about the brief and content or start with getting started."
  },
  {
   "id": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/ten-designs-far-apart/",
   "url": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/ten-designs-far-apart/",
   "title": "Ten designs far apart, not ten variations",
   "summary": "How Geenius MVP draws ten designs as different as the library allows, what the closest pair tells you, and how to choose without being overwhelmed.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Geenius MVP team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "designs",
    "product"
   ],
   "content_text": "Ask a builder for options and you usually get one design in ten colours. That is not a choice. A real choice is between things that differ in what matters: the structure of the menu, the weight of the type, the mood of the palette, the shape of each section.\nGeenius MVP draws ten designs for a brief and tries to make them as far apart as the library allows. It also tells you how far.\nThe closest pair\nA design is a choice along several axes: direction, desktop menu, mobile menu, dock, palette, type pair, line language and the variant of each section. The report of a draw includes the closest pair, which is the fewest axes in which any two of the ten differ. If the closest pair differs in six axes, no two designs are close relatives. If it says one, you are looking at siblings and should draw again.\nSuited to the brief\nThe draw is suited to the industry in the brief. A dentist's draw does not include a brutalist portfolio direction, and a bakery's does not include a corporate one. Within the suitable parts, it spreads.\nChoosing\nEvery design comes with a preview that needs no sign-in, so you can send the links to the people who have an opinion. If your AI is helping, it can show the ten previews as pictures in your chat. Pick one, or note two, and look at them with your real words in them. The words are the same in all ten, because the brief is.\nLock what you like\nIf you love a palette but not the menu, lock the palette and draw again. Every new design keeps it. If you have favourites in the library, they get a bonus in the draw, so your taste gradually shows up in the options.\nThen change a part\nA design is where you start, not where you are stuck. The part editor lets you change the hero, the menus, the dock, the palette, the type pair or any section on its own and see the site change at once.\nWhat it does not do\nIt does not judge the result for you. The library only has approved parts, so nothing in it is broken, but approved is not the same as right for you. Look at the previews on a phone as well.\nSee ten designs far apart in the docs."
  },
  {
   "id": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/approved-parts-only/",
   "url": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/approved-parts-only/",
   "title": "Why a design library counts what is approved",
   "summary": "What approved means in the Geenius MVP design library, why the numbers are taken from the registry, and how proposed parts wait for a person.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Geenius MVP team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "library",
    "product"
   ],
   "content_text": "A library that claims to have thousands of designs is easy to build and hard to trust. Most of them are variations nobody looked at, and some are broken in ways nobody noticed.\nThe Geenius MVP design library takes the opposite approach. It counts what has been approved, and it says how many are waiting.\nThe numbers\nAs of the registry built on 12 October 2026: 16 directions are approved and 144 are proposed. There are 50 approved desktop menus and 50 mobile menus, with 2 proposed of each. There are 52 docks, 120 palettes, 112 type pairs and 13 line languages, all approved. Section variants: 162 approved and 196 proposed.\nWe read these from the library's own registry, which is generated from the library and checked by a test that fails when the shipped file is out of date. We do not remember them.\nWhat approved means\nA person looked at the part and said yes. The default draw uses only approved parts. Proposed parts are in the library with their metadata, and they are reviewed before they join. Your own compositions work the same way: a recipe that only names existing parts is proposed, rendered live for you, and approved or declined.\nWhy so few directions\nSixteen directions is not many, and that is intentional. A direction is a whole look. Sixteen that are approved and far apart are more useful than a hundred that are variations. The axes multiply: menus, docks, palettes, type and sections are chosen separately, so the number of combinations is far larger than the number of directions.\nChecked, not hoped\nPalettes are checked for contrast before they can be saved, and the CSS of the library uses semantic tokens only, which a lint enforces. Fonts are self-hosted and open licensed, so a published site does not call a font service.\nWhat it is not\nIt is not a promise that every combination is beautiful. Approved parts are individually sound. Choosing among them is still a human act, which is why we draw ten and ask you to choose.\nRead about the design library."
  },
  {
   "id": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/a-shop-that-says-test/",
   "url": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/a-shop-that-says-test/",
   "title": "A shop that says test, until a person says live",
   "summary": "How a Geenius MVP shop starts in test mode on a mock payment, what has to be true before it goes live, and why an AI never flips the switch.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Geenius MVP team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "shops",
    "product"
   ],
   "content_text": "The most dangerous moment of a small web shop is the first real order. If the payment is not what you think, the VAT is wrong, or the terms are a template nobody read, you learn it from a customer.\nA Geenius MVP shop is therefore a test shop until a person says otherwise.\nTest mode\nA new shop runs on a built-in mock payment and says so. You can put products in the catalog, publish in seconds and run a whole test order through checkout to the orders view. A test order is not a sale and no money moves. A live shop never uses the mock.\nWhat checkout does\nCheckout is guest checkout always. It shows the information the law asks for before the order, the terms, and the order button in its legally required words. Prices are gross for consumers, with VAT per line at the product's rate for the Netherlands (21, 9 and 0 percent) or Germany (19, 7 and 0 percent), and the browser never sends a price: every amount is recomputed on the server from the catalog. An order keeps the exact terms version it was placed under.\nReadiness\nBefore going live you ask for the readiness check. It lists what holds the shop back, in the order to fix it: the seller's name, address and e-mail, the terms, the payment account. Legal texts are templates, not legal advice, so have them checked.\nGoing live\nA live shop sells through Stripe Connect on the seller's own Express account, as a direct charge with the platform's fee. An owner or admin on a plan sets the account up and Stripe hosts the onboarding. Only a person switches the shop to live. An agent can draft the shop, fill the catalog and run a test order, but it cannot mark an order paid or switch the shop live.\nWhat is not there yet\nPickup slots with capacity, local delivery, customer accounts, file delivery as a kit and the EU withdrawal function are not built. If you need them, say so in the feature requests, and plan accordingly.\nSee web shops and shop payments."
  },
  {
   "id": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/a-portal-for-your-clients/",
   "url": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/a-portal-for-your-clients/",
   "title": "A portal for your clients, from a spec",
   "summary": "How a Geenius MVP web app gives clients a member area with kits, why members are never Geenius OS accounts, and the cautions about data.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Geenius MVP team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "web-apps",
    "product"
   ],
   "content_text": "Many small businesses end up with the same need: a place where their clients sign in and see their own things. An appointment, a job in progress, a document to sign, an invoice, a message. A website cannot do that, and a custom app is too much.\nA Geenius MVP web app is a site with a spec.\nKits, not code\nA web app is made of kits. Members gives sign-in by e-mail code or magic link, with sessions per device, rate limits and lockout. Records gives your own entities. Booking, jobs, memberships, tickets, reviews and rewards are service-business kits; portal, matters, appointments, documents, invoices and messages are the client-portal kits. Twenty-eight kits are built, and four shop kits are not.\nA starting point\nThere are twenty-two web-app starting points: a member portal, a salon, a studio, a repair shop, a trades business, a clinic portal, a tax advisor, an agency and more. You start from one and patch the spec. Your AI can do that, and every problem it makes comes back with a JSON path, so it can fix itself.\nMembers are not accounts of ours\nThe members of a web app are the app's own people, your clients and customers. They are not Geenius OS accounts. They sign in with an e-mail code, and you can export everything kept about a member or erase them with their records.\nCautions\nTwo cautions are repeated on the starting points that need them. The deployment runs in the United States, so for law, health and tax starting points use fictional data only until an EU region exists. And legal texts are templates, not legal advice. Some portal kits also read Geenius OS tools (Contacts, Matters, Bookings, Invoices, Files) which the standalone app does not reach yet.\nTry it with fictional data\nA client portal can be loaded with fictional demo data, and cleared again with one action, so you can see it work before a real client does.\nSee web apps and kits."
  },
  {
   "id": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/your-ai-drafts-you-decide/",
   "url": "https://mvp.geenius.io/blog/your-ai-drafts-you-decide/",
   "title": "Your AI drafts, you decide",
   "summary": "How to use your own AI with Geenius MVP through Geenius OS: it researches, writes and draws, and a person chooses the design and approves the publish.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Geenius MVP team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "ai",
    "product"
   ],
   "content_text": "An AI is very good at the first draft of a website and not so good at knowing which draft is right for you. Geenius MVP is built around that split.\nWhat your AI can do\nThrough Geenius OS your AI gets the tool geenius_mvp. It can create a site, write the brief and the content, draw ten designs far apart, edit sections, set features, check a palette, create a web app from a preset and validate its spec, put products in the catalog and run a test order. The door has 173 documented actions in five tools for sites, web apps, shops, the catalog and analytics, and more areas for the kits' back office.\nThe rule: previews first\nWhen it creates a site it gets ten designs with previews that need no sign-in. A good ask tells it to show you the previews, as pictures if it can, and to wait for your choice before it goes on. You look at them with your real words in them and pick.\nWhat it should not do\nInvent claims, prices or reviews. Ask it to research the business from official sources and to write only what it can source. Prices in a shop come from the catalog and are recomputed on the server, so there is no price for it to invent.\nWhat it cannot do\nPublish without an admin or owner seat; a refusal names the role it needs. Switch a shop to live or mark an order paid: only a person does. Reach the parts that still live in Geenius OS, such as contact forms, bookings and pictures from Files, from the standalone app.\nA first ask\nAsk it to make a local-business website for your business, to write the brief from your own public pages, to draw ten designs and show you the previews, and to wait for your choice before it publishes. That one sentence gets you the whole loop with you in the right place.\nOn which plans\nThe door is on every plan. The visitor chat on published sites is the one AI feature of the product and needs Premium or Max. During early access people request access and payments are in test mode.\nSee use with your AI and the tool reference."
  }
 ]
}